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NAME

Object::ArrayType::New - Inject constants and constructor for ARRAY-type objects

SYNOPSIS

  package MyObject;
  use strict; use warnings;
  use Object::ArrayType::New
    [ foo => 'FOO', bar => 'BAR' ];
  sub foo     { shift->[FOO] }
  sub bar     { shift->[BAR] ||= [] }

  package main;
  my $obj = MyObject->new(foo => 'baz');
  my $foo = $obj->foo; # baz
  my $bar = $obj->bar; # []

DESCRIPTION

ARRAY-backed objects are light and fast, but obviously slightly more complicated to cope with than just stuffing key/value pairs into a HASH. The easiest way to keep track of where things live is to set up some named constants to index into the ARRAY -- you can access your indexes by name, and gain compile-time typo checking as an added bonus.

A common thing I find myself doing looks something like:

  package MySimpleObject;
  use strict; use warnings;

  sub TAG () { 0 }
  sub BUF () { 1 }
  # ...

  sub new {
    my $class = shift;
    my %params = @_ > 1 ? @_ : %{ $_[0] };
    bless [
      $params{tag},             # TAG
      ($params{buffer} || [])   # BUF
      # ...
    ], $class
  }
  sub tag     { shift->[TAG] }
  sub buffer  { shift->[BUF] }
  # ...

... when I'd rather be doing something more like the "SYNOPSIS".

This tiny module takes, as arguments to import, an ARRAY of pairs mapping a new() parameter name to the name of a constant. The constant represents the item's position in the object's backing ARRAY.

If the constant's name is boolean false, the uppercased parameter name is used as the name of the constant:

  use Object::ArrayType::New
    [ foo => '', bar => '' ];
  # same as foo => 'FOO', bar => 'BAR'

If the parameter's name is boolean false, there is no construction-time parameter. The constant is installed and the appropriate position in the backing ARRAY is set to undef at construction time; this can be useful for private attributes:

  use Object::ArrayType::New
    [ foo => 'FOO', '' => 'BAR' ];
  sub foo  { shift->[FOO] ||= 'foo' }
  sub _bar { shift->[BAR] ||= [] }

An appropriate constructor is generated and installed, as well as constants that can be used within the class to index into the $self object.

The generated constructor takes parameters as either a list of pairs or a single HASH. Parameters not specified at construction time are undef.

That's it; no accessors, no defaults, no type-checks, no required attributes, nothing fancy. Class::Method::Modifiers may be convenient there; the above raw Perl example could be written something like:

  use Object::ArrayType::New [ tag => '', buffer => 'BUF' ];
  sub tag    { shift->[TAG] }
  sub buffer { shift->[BUF] }
  use Class::Method::Modifers;
  around new => sub {
    my ($orig, $class) = splice @_, 0, 2;
    my $self = $class->$orig(@_);
    $self->[BUF] = [] unless defined $self->[BUF];
    $self
  };

if $ENV{OBJECT_ARRAYTYPE_DEBUG} is true, generated code is printed to STDERR before being evaluated.

Constants aren't currently sanity-checked ahead of time; attempting to use invalid identifiers will result in vague 'Illegal declaration ...' failures.

AUTHOR

Jon Portnoy <avenj@cobaltirc.org>