Re: [cgiapp] Re: Writing the CGI::Application book

[Sam Tregar <suppressed>]

On Sun, 25 Jan 2004, Cees Hek wrote:

> > Did you know you can do the same thing in just a few lines of Perl
> > code?  And those lines will be a lot easier to debug and maintain
> > later (see reference to my cursing colleague for proof!).
>
> You can get the data in a few lines of code, but you can't wrap it in an
> object in just a few lines of code.

Sure you can!  I do it all the time.  Something like:

    while ($row = $sth->fetchrow_arrayref()) {
        my $obj = bless({}, $pkg);
        @suppressed = @$row;

Now $obj is an object in $pkg, with an attribute for each item in
@fields (which is also used to build the SELECT).  And since we use
Class::MethodMaker to build accessors this really is just a few lines
of code total.

> So effectively what you are doing is creating an object that abstracts
> the interface to the database, by wrapping your data in a custom object
> specifically written for this data.  This way your controller and view
> objects don't need to know DBI or SQL, they interact directly with your
> abstraction modules.

Exactly.  There's no SQL in the CGI::Application controller classes.
The only modules that know about the database are the model classes.

> The goal here is the same, but the means are different.  You need to
> write a custom class for every data object you need.  Class::DBI just
> generalizes this job for you (with some limitations as happens with
> every attempt at generalization).

Right.  The question is, does it do a good enough job to be worth the
added complexity.  My judgement, based on building many projects
without it and watching one built with it from the sidelines, is no.

-sam

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