NAME

KelpX::AppBuilder - Create re-usable apps with Kelp

SYNOPSIS

KelpX::AppBuilder makes it trivial to reuse your entire route map and views in an entirely new Kelp application. You create a base app, which can still be run normally, and from there you can start a new project and reuse everything from your base app without duplicating things.

USAGE

Create a base application

This launches your main application, allowing you to attach other ones onto it

  package BaseApp;
  
  use KelpX::AppBuilder;

  sub build {
      my ($self) = @_;
      my $routes = $self->routes;

      # The only thing we need to do is tell KelpX::AppBuilder what
      # apps we want to load. Their routes will be added onto BaseApps.

      $r->kelpx_appbuilder->apps(
          'TestApp',
          'TestApp2'
      );

      # Then load the main ones as normal

      $r->add('/' => BaseApp::Controller::Root->can('index'));
      $r->add('/login' => BaseApp::Controller::Auth->can('login'));
      $r->add('/accounts/manage/:id' => {
          to      => BaseApp::Controller::Accounts->can('manage'),
          bridge  => 1
      });
      $r->add('/accounts/manage/:id/view', BaseApp::Controller::Accounts->can('view'));
  }

  1;

Creating an app for your base

We'll call our new app 'TestApp' (original, eh?). All your app really needs to provide is a function called maps. This should return a hash reference of your routes. Don't forget to include the absolute path to your controllers (ie: Using the + symbol)

  package TestApp;

  use KelpX::AppBuilder;

  sub maps {
      {
          '/testapp/welcome', '+TestApp::Controller::Root::welcome'
      }
  }

  1;

And that's all there is to it.

Using templates from apps

One thing you're probably going to want to do is use something like Template::Toolkit to process your views in apps that aren't the base. Fortunately KelpX::AppBuilder::Utils will deploy module_dir from File::ShareDir for you, so in your controllers something like this could happen:

  package TestApp::Controller::Root;

  use KelpX::AppBuilder::Utils;

  # create some way to access the view path globally
  # so you don't have to keep writing it
  sub view_path { module_dir('TestApp') . '/views/' }

  sub index {
      my ($self) = @_;
      $self->template(view_path() . 'index.tt');
  }

So now when the index method is called from TestApp, it'll search lib/auto/TestApp/views for its templates.

This is probably your best option for now, as KelpX::AppBuilder does not have a safe way to load app configuration just yet (working on it!).

PLEASE NOTE

This module is still a work in progress, so I would advise against using KelpX::AppBuilder in a production environment. I'm still looking at ways to make KelpX::AppBuilder more user friendly, but unfortunately reusing an application is not a simple process :-)

AUTHOR

Brad Haywood <brad@geeksware.com>

LICENSE

You may distribute this code under the same terms as Perl itself.