jhthorsen's perl blog

CatalystX::Controller::Sugar

2009-09-10T00:00:00-07:00

I’ve written a module I think is rather useful: CatalystX::Controller::Sugar. This module (will hopefully) make chained actions be your default when writing a controller in Catalyst. I remember when I first started looking at Catalyst - I didn’t see the reason for doing chained actions, and I certainly didn’t understand how they worked. I still think it’s a pain to set it up, but hopefully it’s a bit easier using the sugar module.

In addition to sugar for chains, it exports some other functions, which I use most the time. This is something I think is a pain:

# 139 characters
sub foo :Chain('/') PathPart('') CaptureArgs(0) {
  my $self = shift;
  my $c = shift;
  $c->stash->{'answer_to_everything'} = 42;
}

…which can be written this way, with sugar:

# 53 characters
chain sub {
    stash answer_to_everything => 42;
};

I hardly ever use $self, but I wery often use stash(), session() and forward() so that’s why I’ve chosen to export those functions (among some others). The module is also quite simple to use:

use CatalystX::Controller::Sugar;
# your controller code
1;

…instead of:

use CatalystX::Controller;
use Moose;
BEGIN { extends 'Catalyst::Controller' }
# your controller code
1;

Does my pod suck? Is the module not flexible enough? Let me know.

rt.cpan.org - great fun!

2009-09-09T00:00:00-07:00

I must say I enjoy getting rt-tickets. “Why?”, you might ask. Well, It’s probably the only way I can actually know that someone use, or has tried to use a module I’ve written. The bad (if you can call it bad) thing about getting a ticket is that it’s rather critical that it gets fixed. This part I’m not so good at. But let’s not forget that it’s not only the original auther that can fix a bug… Which reminds me that I should also file some bugs/requests/patches to various projects I’ve forked off github.

So much to do, and so little time :-)

Line noise: parentheses

2009-06-01T00:00:00-07:00

I’ve been discussing how bad perl code looks and I’m a bit surprised: I consider () more noisy than $, %, @ and friends, while the people I discuss this with, really likes parentheses. Consider this:

push(@text, sprintf('I got %i foos', int(shift(@{ $obj->get_foo() }))));

Versus:

push @text, sprintf 'I got %i foos', int shift @{ $obj->get_foo };

I don’t understand how the first one is less noisy than the second (!). I also don’t understand how you can maintain or read the first one.

Disclaimer: Yes, I know the example code doesn’t make any sense.

Wow, Moose is cool!

2009-05-30T00:00:00-07:00

I was introducing Moose (and perl oo) to a java guy the other day, and he replied: “No, shit. Is that possible?”, “Now I understand the fuzz about multiple inheritance” and “Wow, Moose is cool!”.

I must confess: It brings comfort to my heart to hear a Java guy talk down on his own language, but it’s even sweeter to hear something nice about perl.

But back to the topic: What was so cool about Moose? The short answer is Moose::Role. I had a hard time understanding roles, and the usage for them, but after getting the short answer “You use roles to build your classes, and your classes to build objects” - it suddenly got a lot clearer to me.

Roles to build classes, ey? Yes, instead of putting functionality in different packages, and inheriting from them, you write roles and consume their functionality in a class, which imho gives me a lot cleaner interface.

I try to look at Roles like something like this:

package Foo;
do MyOtherFile.pm;
1;

But of course there’s a lot more sugar to it in “Mooseland” :-)

Which name to pick?

2009-05-12T00:00:00-07:00

I’m writing a new module, which is currently named “Net::DHCPd”. It’s not a good name imo, since Net::DHCPd sounds more like a module that actually is a dhcp server, which mine is not.

This is what it can, or is supposed to support in the future:

Interact with ISC DHCPd
Start/stop/restart the daemon
Parse and build config
Check config file for error
Parse leases file

So what should it be called? I’m thinking about naming it ISC::DHCPd, since it’s primary target is to interact with that spesific server. But can I call it the same as what the actual server is called?

Let me know if you have any idea.

More perl modules

2008-05-06T00:00:00-07:00

I’m working on some more perl-modules now: YAML::Object and POE::Component::TFTPd. I’ve also fixed some issues with SNMP::Effective, and written a new implementation, that uses Net::SNMP instead of SNMP.

The YAML-module is a result of bad typing: I’m quite sick of doing $config->{typoo}{key}. YAML::Object enables you to use method notation, so the above would become $config->typoo->key, and calling key() on an undef value will barf with a nice error message.

I’m pretty exited about the POE::Component, since I’ve never written anything quite like it before. Check out POE If you haven’t already done so, it’s really cool :)

YAPC::Europe::2007 Vienna

2007-08-30T00:00:00-07:00

YAPC::Europe::2007 was a blast! I can’t really put my finger on what was the best, because it was all good. I really recommend every Perl-programmer out there to come to next years YAPC in Denmark/Copenhagen.I had a talk this year as well (Operator overloading, one of the magicks of Perl), but I wasn’t any happy about it. Even so, I got some positive feedback, which I don’t really understand. I will try again next year, if they accept me. I might have to trick them into accepting me, since it’s a bit off topic, but I’ll wait and see…

YAPC::Europe::2006 Birmingham

2006-09-04T00:00:00-07:00

Hello peeps. It’s been a while now, but I finally got some spare time to communicate with the world again…

I’ve been to the YAPC::Europe this week, and I must say it was quite fun – or at least the time I actually spent in Birmingham. Read more in my diary.

SNMP::Effective

2006-02-19T00:00:00-08:00

I’m done writing the code for SNMP::Effective now. It has show to be quite promising after some tests: 4000 hosts in 50 seconds is quite better than what I had with a previous module. I’m hoping to release SNMP::Effective on CPAN, later this year. But first I need to complete eAdmin 2.0

In the meanwhile, you could try SNMP::Multi, which gave me the idea to write my own.