NAME

Zoidberg::DispatchTable - Class to tie dispatch tables

SYNOPSIS

        use Zoidberg::DispatchTable;

        my %table;
        tie %table, q{Zoidberg::DispatchTable},
                $self, { cd => '->Commands->cd' };

        # The same as $self->parent->{objects}{Commands}->cd('..') if
        # a module can('parent'), else the same as $self->Commands->cd('..')
        $table{cd}->('..');

        $table{ls} = q{ls('-al')}

        # The same as $self->ls('-al', '/data')
        $table{ls}->('/data');

DESCRIPTION

This module provides a tie interface for converting config strings to CODE references. It takes an object references ($self) as starting point for resolving subroutines. If the object has a method parent() the refrence returned by this method is used as the root for resolving subroutines, else the object itself is used as root. The root is expected to contain a hash {objects} (possibly of the class Zoidberg::PluginHash) with references to "child" objects.

Strings are converted to CODE references at first use to save time at initialisation.

The following strings are supported:

  String              Interpretation
  ----------          -----------------
  sub                 Sub of the reference object
  ->sub               Sub of the root object
  ->sub(qw/f00 b4r/)  Sub of the root object with arguments
  ->object->sub       Sub of a child object of the root
  ->sub()->..         Sub of the root object

You can store either config strings or CODE references in the table.

The tables is transparent to CODE references, they are used as given. ( An earlier version of this module did currying .. this behaviour is altered. )

If you store an ARRAY ref it is expected to be of the form [$value, $tag], where $tag is an identifier used for handling selections of the table. The $value can again be a string or CODE ref.

If you store a HASH ref it will be tied recursively as a DispatchTable.

Keys are kept in the order they are first added, thus keys(%table) will always return the same order. This is to keep zoid's plugins in the order they are added. Also for each key a stack is used. Deleting a key only pops it's stack.

This modules doesn't check for security issues, it just runs arbitrary code.

EXPORT

This module can export the methods wipe, stack and tags.

wipe(\%table, $tag, @keys)

Wipes entries with tag $tag from given set of kaeys or from the whole table.

stack(\%table, $key, $tags)

Returns the whole stack for an given key, useful to loop trough stacks. $tags is a boolean, when true all items are returned as a sub array of CODE ref with tag.

tag(\%table, $key)

Returns the tag for the given key.

tags(\%table, $key)

Returns an array of all tags for given key.

AUTHOR

Jaap Karssenberg || Pardus [Larus] <pardus@cpan.org>

Copyright (c) 2003 Jaap G Karssenberg. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

SEE ALSO

Zoidberg