NAME

Sub::Versions - Subroutine versioning syntactic sugar

VERSION

version 1.01

SYNOPSIS

    # ...in a class somewhere...

    package MyExampleClass;
    use strict;
    use warnings;
    use Sub::Versions;

    sub new {
        return bless( {}, shift );
    }

    sub simple_method : v1 {
        return 'version 1';
    }

    sub simple_method : v2 {
        return 'version 2';
    }

    # ...meanwhile, elsewhere...

    use MyExampleClass;
    my $object = MyExampleClass->new;

    $object->simple_method;     # returns "version 2"
    $object->v1->simple_method; # returns "version 1"

    # select "simple_method" version 42 or higher if available
    $object->subver( '>= 42', 'simple_method' )->();

    # ...or with Moose...

    package MyOtherExampleClass;
    use Moose;
    use Sub::Versions;

    sub simple_method : v1 {
        return 'version 1';
    }

    sub simple_method : v2 {
        return 'version 2';
    }

DESCRIPTION

This module provides automatic syntactic sugar for simple subroutine versioning. By specifying a version in the form "v#" as a subroutine attributes, this module will perform a series of compile time symbol table surgeries so you can call subroutines by explicit version or the latest version implicitly.

    use MyExampleClass;
    my $object = MyExampleClass->new;

    $object->simple_method;     # calls the latest version of the method
    $object->v1->simple_method; # calls version 1 of the method

Versions must be specified in the form /v\d+/. The exact version number you use is irrelevant. The only importance is the relative value of the version numbers to each other. The largest version number is considered the most current version of the subroutine.

    package MyExampleClass;
    use Sub::Versions;

    sub simple_method : v1 {
        return 'version 1';
    }

    sub simple_method : v2 {
        return 'version 2';
    }

Explicit Versioned Methods

The compile time symbol table surgeries will result in a subroutine being injected into your class a name that is the combination of the original subroutine name and the version. So for example, if you have "simple_method" and you specify it as the "v2" version, then "simple_method_v2" gets injected into your class. You can access the method directly with this name if you prefer. But the key thing to keep in mind is that if you write a "simple_method_v2" method and have a "simple_method" method tied to the "v2" version, then you'll get a subroutine redefined warning.

Motivation and Purpose

In the process of building an REST/JSON API web service, I found I needed a way to very simply version calls to parts of the model. I needed to support legacy versions in parallel with the most recent version and allow consumers to explicitly call a particular version.

Sub Version Selection Method

If you don't know the version you want to access exactly, call the method subver() and provide it with a version vector and method name.

    # select "simple_method" version 42 or higher if available
    $object->subver( '>= 42', 'simple_method' )->();

You can: >, <, >=, <=, or =, with or without a space between that and the version number. Only specifying a version number implies a = vector.

SEE ALSO

Sub::Util, Devel::Hook.

You can also look for additional information at:

• GitHub

• CPAN

• MetaCPAN

• AnnoCPAN

• Travis CI

• Coveralls

• CPANTS

• CPAN Testers

AUTHOR

Gryphon Shafer <gryphon@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2017 by Gryphon Shafer.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.