NAME DBIx::Class::Objects - Rewrite your DBIC objects via inheritance VERSION version 0.05 SYNOPSIS my $schema = My::DBIx::Class::Schema->connect(@args); my $objects = DBIx::Class::Objects->new({ schema => $schema, object_base => 'My::Object', roles => [qw( My::Role::Thing )], }); $objects->load_objects; my $person = $objects->objectset('Person') ->find( { email => 'not@home.com' } ); # If found, $person is a My::Object::Person object, not a # My::DBIx::Class::Schema::Result::Person WARNING The DBIx::Class::Objects module is an experiment to "fix" (for some values of "fix") some issues we traditionally have with ORMs by allowing the programmer to use easily use objects as they wish to rather than the hierarchy forced on them by DBIx::Class. This is ALPHA code and may be a very bad idea. Use at your own risk. DESCRIPTION Consider a database where you have people and each person might be a customer. The following two tables might demonstrate that relationship. CREATE TABLE people ( person_id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT, name VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL, email VARCHAR(255) NULL UNIQUE, birthday DATETIME NOT NULL ); CREATE TABLE customers ( customer_id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT, person_id INTEGER NOT NULL UNIQUE, first_purchase DATETIME NOT NULL, FOREIGN KEY(person_id) REFERENCES people(person_id) ); If your schema starts with Sample::Schema::, in DBIx::Class terms you'll find that Sample::Schema::Result::Person might_have a Sample::Schema::Result::Customer: __PACKAGE__->might_have( "customer", "Sample::Schema::Result::Customer", { "foreign.person_id" => "self.person_id" }, ); As a programmer, you might find that frustrating. From your viewpoint, you might think that Customer isa Person. Or perhaps you also have Employees in your database and a person can be both a customer and an employee, how do you model that? For DBIx::Class, you have delegation: my $customer = $person->customer; my $employee = $person->employee; Whereas for OO code, you might want to have a Person class and Employee and Customer roles. Or maybe you're a fan of multiple inheritance (I hope not) and you create a CustomerEmployee class which tries to inherit from both Customer and Employee. Not having full control over your object hierarchy is merely one of the problems with the Object-Relational Impedence Mismatch . Or maybe you're dismayed to instantiate a Sample::Schema::Result::Person object and discover that you have 157 methods because you were forced to inherit from DBIx::Class::Core, when all you wanted was the name, email and birthday. This experiment tries to minimize that. METHODS new my $objects = DBIx::Class::Objects->new({ schema => $schema, object_base => 'My::Object', }); The new constructor takes two required arguments and one optional argument: * schema (required) A DBIx::Class::Schema object. * object_base (required) The package prefix of your name objects. If your schema classes resemble something like Sample::Schema::Result::Person, your returned objects will have names like My::Object::Person (assuming you used My::Object for the object_base parameter). * debug (optional) At the present time, this will print to STDERR a list of objects you're trying to build and whether or not a concrete implementation was found or it's being built on the fly. Trying to load My::Object::Person My::Object::Person found. Trying to load My::Object::Order My::Object::Order not found. Building. Trying to load My::Object::Customer My::Object::Customer found. Trying to load My::Object::Item My::Object::Item not found. Building. Trying to load My::Object::OrderItem My::Object::OrderItem not found. Building. * roles (optional) This will apply the optional Moose role(s) to your My::Object classes. Useful for if you have some utility functions you would like applied to each table without having to create files for every table. load_objects $objects->load_objects; Similar to DBIx::Class::Schema's load_namespaces, but it's an instane method instead of a class method. It will load all of your objects for you. It will ensure that your objects inherit from DBIx::Class::Objects::Base and will apply the parameterized role DBIx::Class::Objects::Role::Result. The base class is what allows things like update to be called directly on the object. Is is the parameterized role which sets up the delegation to the DBIx::Class objects. objectset my $person = $objects->objectset('Person') ->find( { email => 'not@home.com' } ); This method is similar to $schema->resultset, but it returns sets of DBIx::Class::Objects objects instead of results. The interface is the same as DBIx::Class::ResultSet, but calling methods like find, next, first, all and so on should do the right thing (famous last words). LET'S DELEGATE TO DBIx::Class RESULTS DBIx::Class::Objects is an attempt to allow you to recompose your DBIx::Class objects as you would like. Instead of DBIx::Class returning resultsets and results, DBIx::Class::Objects returns objectsets and objects. You can do anything you want with the latter. Basic Usage Using this module is as simple as this: my $schema = Sample::Schema->connect(@args); my $objects = DBIx::Class::Objects->new({ schema => $schema, object_base => 'My::Object', }); $objects->load_objects; my $person = $objects->objectset('Person') ->find( { email => 'not@home.com' } ); And you'll discover that you get back a My::Object::Person object instead of a Sample::Schema::Result::Person object. In DBIx::Class, if you don't explicitly create resultset classes, a default resultset class will be created for you. In DBIx::Class::Objects, if you don't explicitly create object classes, a default one is created for you. For example, if you don't have a My::Object::Person class written (or if DBIx::Class::Objects can't find it), you will have a basic My::Object::Person instance with the following methods (according to the debugger): DB<2> m $person BUILD _my_object_person birthday customer email meta name object_source person_id result_source update via DBIx::Class::Objects::Base: DESTROY via DBIx::Class::Objects::Base: new via DBIx::Class::Objects::Base -> Moose::Object: BUILDALL via DBIx::Class::Objects::Base -> Moose::Object: BUILDARGS via DBIx::Class::Objects::Base -> Moose::Object: DEMOLISHALL via DBIx::Class::Objects::Base -> Moose::Object: DOES via DBIx::Class::Objects::Base -> Moose::Object: does via DBIx::Class::Objects::Base -> Moose::Object: dump via UNIVERSAL: VERSION via UNIVERSAL: can via UNIVERSAL: isa That's actually not too bad, compared to DBIx::Class. If you remove UNIVERSAL methods and methods in ALL CAPS, you get this: _my_object_person birthday customer email meta name object_source person_id result_source update via DBIx::Class::Objects::Base: new via DBIx::Class::Objects::Base -> Moose::Object: does via DBIx::Class::Objects::Base -> Moose::Object: dump That's actually a fairly clean object. The person_id, email, name and birthday objects are handled by the result_source. If you want to update the object, you do this: $person->name($new_name); $person->update; Creating your own objects Having these objects spring up automatically is great and if you have 100 result sources, it's nice that you don't have to write 100 object classes. However, though you have far fewer methods, what's the point? Well, you can write your own classes: package My::Object::Person; use Moose; use namespace::autoclean; # this is optional. If you forget to include it, DBIx::Class::Objects will # inject this for you. However, it's good to have it here for # documentation purposes. extends 'DBIx::Class::Objects::Base'; sub is_customer { my $self = shift; return defined $self->customer; } __PACKAGE__->meta->make_immutable; 1; Again, that's not much of a win, but what if you want inheritance? package My::Object::Customer; use Moose; extends 'My::Object::Person'; __PACKAGE__->meta->make_immutable; 1; You've now inherited the delegated methods from My::Object::Person. my $customer_os = $objects->objectset('Customer')->search( \%dbix_class_search_args ); foreach my $customer ($customer_os->next) { if ( $some_condition ) { $customer->name('new name'); $customer->update; # updates $customer->person, too } } For every object, calling result_source gets you the original DBIx::Class::Result, say $customer->result_source; # Sample::Schema::Result::Customer say $customer->person->result_source; # Sample::Schema::Result::Person and calling object_source gets you the encapsulating DBIx::Class::Objects object. AUTHOR Curtis "Ovid" Poe, Dan Burke dburke at addictmud.org BUGS Please report any bugs or feature requests to bug-object-bridge at rt.cpan.org, or through the web interface at http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=DBIx-Class-Objects. I will be notified, and then you'll automatically be notified of progress on your bug as I make changes. SUPPORT You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command. perldoc DBIx::Class::Objects You can also look for information at: * RT: CPAN's request tracker (report bugs here) http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=DBIx-Class-Objects * AnnoCPAN: Annotated CPAN documentation http://annocpan.org/dist/DBIx-Class-Objects * CPAN Ratings http://cpanratings.perl.org/d/DBIx-Class-Objects * Search CPAN http://search.cpan.org/dist/DBIx-Class-Objects/ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT Copyright 2014 Curtis "Ovid" Poe. 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