NAME Data::Object ABSTRACT Modern Perl Development Framework and Standard Library SYNOPSIS use Data::Object; fun hello_world($name) { say "Hello, $name."; } DESCRIPTION Data-Object is a robust development framework for modern Perl development, embracing Perl's multi-paradigm programming nature, flexibility and vast ecosystem that millions of engineers already know and love. This framework aims to provide a standardized and cohesive set of classes, types, objects, functions, patterns, and tools for jump-starting application development with modern conventions and best practices. The power of this framework comes from the extendable (yet fully optional) type library which is integrated into the object system and type-constrainable subroutine signatures (supporting functions, methods and method modifiers). We also provide classes which wrap Perl 5 native data types and provides methods for operating on the data. Contrary to popular opinion, modern Perl programming can be extremely structured and quite beautiful, leveraging many advanced concepts found on other languages, and some which aren't. Abilities like method modification (augmenting), reflection, advanced object-orientation, type-constrainable object attributes, type-constrainable subroutine signatures (with named and positional arguments), as well roles (similar to mixins or interfaces in other languages). INSTALLATION If you have cpanm, you only need one line: $ cpanm -qn Data::Object If you don't have cpanm, get it! It takes less than a minute, otherwise: $ curl -L | perl - -qn Data::Object Add Data::Object to the list of dependencies in cpanfile: requires "Data::Object" => "0.90"; # 0.90 or newer If cpanm doesn't have permission to install modules to the current perl, it will automatically set up and install to a local::lib in your home directory. See the local::lib documentation for details on enabling it in your environment. We recommend using a Perlbrew or Plenv environment. These tools will help you manage multiple perl installations in your $HOME directory. They are completely isolated perl installations. GETTING STARTED This creates a class representing a person which greets another person. package Person; use Data::Object Class, App; has name => ( is => 'ro', isa => 'Str' ); method hello(Person $person) { return 'Hello '. $person->name .', How are you?'; } 1; This creates a function that returns how one person greet another person. #!perl use Person; use Data::Object Core, App; fun greetings(Person $p1, Person $p2) { return $p1->hello($p2); } my $p1 = Person->new(name => 'Jane'); my $p2 = Person->new(name => 'June'); say(greetings($p1, $p2)); # Hey June This demonstrates much of the power of this framework in one simple example. If you're new to Perl, the code above creates a class with a single (read-only string) attribute called name and a single method called hello, then registers the class in a user-defined type-library called App where all user-defined type constraints will be stored and retrieved (and reified). The class method takes a single argument which must be an instance of the class being created. The main program (namespace) initializes the framework and specifies the user-defined type library to use in the creation of a single function greetings which takes two arguments which must both be instances of the class we just created. It's important to note that in order for the code above to execute, the App type library must exist. This could be as simple as: package App; use Type::Library -base; 1; That having been explained, it's also important to note that while this example showcases much of what's possible with this framework, all of the sophistication is totally optional. For example, method and function signatures are optionally typed, so the declarations would work just as well without the types specified. In fact, you could then remove the App type library declarations from both packages and even resort rewriting the method and function as plain-old Perl subroutines. This flexibility to be able to enable more advanced capabilities is common in the Perl ecosystem and is one of the things we love most. The wiring-up of things! If you're familiar with Perl, this framework is in-part the wiring up of Moo (with Moose support), Type::Tiny, Function::Parameters, Try::Tiny and data objects in a cooperative and cohesive way that feels like it's native to the language. PACKAGE CLASS use Data::Object::Space; my $space = Data::Object::Space->new('data/object'); "$space" # Data::Object $space->path; # Data/Object $space->file; # Data/ $space->children; # ['Data/Object/', ...] The package class, Data::Object::Space, provides methods of loading, blessing, inspecting, and otherwise operating on packages. TYPE SYSTEM package Config; use Data::Object Class; has 'data' => ( is => 'ro', isa => 'HashRef', req => 1 ); method json() { return new_json; } method save(PathObj $path) { return $path->write($self->data->dump); } 1; The type system and core type library offered in Data::Object::Config::Library provide type constraints for the most common types of objects and values. These type constraints can be declared in class attribute declarations as well as in method and function signatures. The type-constrainable aspects of the Data-Object framework are context-aware, i.e. the framework provides mechanisms for mapping user-defined type libraries to namespaces so that user-defined types can be used in type validation alongside core types. This prevents any need to extend the core type library and prevents type constraint naming collisions across applications. OBJECT SYSTEM package App::Person; use Data::Object Class, App; has 'fname'; has 'lname'; has 'parents' => ( is => 'ro', isa => 'Tuple[AppPerson, AppPerson]', lzy => 1 ); The underlying object system uses Moo which is a light-weight Moose compatible framework for declaring classes, attributes, and method-modifiers, as well as constructing objects, with clear and concise syntax. Data-Object takes this functionality further by providing an integrated type system and syntactic sugar around the class attribute declaration. TYPE BUILDER package App::Type::Label; use parent 'Data::Object::Type'; sub name { return 'Label'; } sub parent { return 'Str'; } sub coercions { my $coercions = []; push @$coercions, 'Str', sub { shift =~ s/\W//gr }; return $coercions; } sub validation { my ($self, $data) = @_; return if !$data; return $data !~ /\W/; } 1; The type system provided is based on the Type::Tiny system and takes advantage of many of the features and functions available, such as coercion and parameterization. The Data::Object::Config::Library library is itself a Type::Library, and extends the Types::Standard, Types::TypeTiny, Types::Common::Numeric and Types::Common::String libraries, and provides additional types based on the classes, roles and rules offered as part of this framework. Many of the Data-Object type constraints are defined via an abstract base class, Data::Object::Type, which makes the super-class a type-constraint builder, which is then registered with the Data-Object type library. This base class provides a pattern for easily defining type constraints with coercions and which might be parameterized that can be registered in any Type::Library library. ROLES AND RULES package Persona; use Data::Object Rule; requires 'id'; requires 'fname'; requires 'lname'; requires 'created'; requires 'updated'; around created() { # do something ... return $self->$orig; } around updated() { # do something ... return $self->$orig; } 1; Roles offer us a way to reuse behavior without relying on inheritance. Rules are roles but meant to establish by convention the separation of interface declaration and behavior abstraction, i.e. rules are where we put the “interface” rules, and roles are where we put the behavior. SINGLETON SUPPORT package App::Config; use Data::Object State; extends 'Config'; has 'datastore'; has 'environment'; has 'servers'; 1; Occasionally it makes sense to declare some persistent state and the Data::Object::State class allows you to do that with all of the features and benefits of a Moo or Moose derived object. PODISH PARSER package App::Command; use Data::Object Data; =help fetches results from the api =cut my $data = Data::Object::Data->new; my $help = $data->content('help'); 1; The pod-ish parser, offered in Data::Object::Data, allows you to parse files and packages and extract pod-like sections of information. This is a powerful ability that rethinks what, why and how we use POD (plain old documentation) data, and opens up your application to make use of this data in cool new ways. DISPATCHERS use Data::Object::Dispatch; my $package = 'Logger'; my $dispatch1 = Data::Object::Dispatch->new($package); $dispatch1->call(@args); my $dispatch2 = Data::Object::Dispatch->new($package, 'log', time); $dispatch2->call('Something went wrong'); # i.e. Logger::log(time, 'Something went wrong') Dispatchers are basically closures which when called execute subroutines in a package, and can be curried. This concept is often found in functional programming and is extremely powerful in that it creates an inversion of control by allowing the closure creator to decide how the call will be executed. The Data::Object::Dispatch class can be used directly or subclassed to create sophisticated applications. FUNCTION SIGNATURES use Data::Object; fun output($string) { say $string; } fun collect(Any @args) { return (map do('dump', $_), @args); } output(collect(@data)); Everything offered by this framework is optional and one of its best features is the type-constrainable method and function signatures which leverages the core type library and can easily interoperate with a user-defined type library (or libraries). CALLER CONFIGURATION package Authenticatable; use Data::Object Rule; package Authentication; use Data::Object Role; package User; use Data::Object Class; with 'Authentication'; with 'Authenticatable'; It's an important and intentional design decision to make this framework highly configurable. It's really Perlish that way. Using the do and Data::Object modules is the entry point into this framework and is where the configuration of the various features begins. The import process has been designed to be idempotent, and declaring the use of the same module multiple times with different parameters is encouraged. CONSTRUCTOR FUNCTIONS use Data::Object; my $file = do('path', 'dump.json'); my $json = do('json' $file->slurp); say(do('dump', $json)); The constructor functions offered through Data::Object::Export, when called, return instances of the classes they're associated with. They are merely a convenience and provide a way to quickly load a class and construct an object at runtime. These functions can be proxied to by the special (albeit slightly evil) do function, which overloads the core “do” function. This super-function is made available to every namespace where the Data-Object framework is configured. DATA TYPE OBJECTS use Data::Object::Code; # returns a code object my $code = Data::Object::Code->new(sub{ join ' ', @_ }); # returns truthy $code->isa('Data::Object::Code'); # returns a string object representing 'Hello World' my $string = $code->call('Hello', 'World'); # returns a new string object $string = $string->split('')->reverse->join('')->uppercase; # returns a number object (returns truthy) and outputs "DLROW OLLEH" my $result = $string->say; # returns truthy $result->isa('Data::Object::Number'); This framework also provides classes which wrap Perl 5 native data types and provides methods for operating on that data, e.g. Data::Object::Array, Data::Object::Code, Data::Object::Hash, and Data::Object::String, to name a few. These are referred to as the data type classes which construct data objects. FUNCTION CLASSES my $data = Data::Object::Array->new([1..4]); my $sets = []; my $func = Data::Object::Func::Array::EachNValues->new( arg1 => $data, arg2 => 2, arg3 => fun ($v1, $v2) { push $@sets, [$v1, $v2]; } ); my $result = $func->execute; Each data type class' methods correspond to a function class which encapsulates the subroutine logic, enforces its signature, provides execution automation, and establishes an architecture that's easy to evolve and maintain. These classes provide the logic that gets executed whenever a method call is made on a data object. STANDARD LIBRARY # Data::Object::Any # Data::Object::Array # Data::Object::Class # Data::Object::Cli # Data::Object::Code # Data::Object::Config # Data::Object::Data # Data::Object::Dispatch # Data::Object::Exception # Data::Object::Float # Data::Object::Hash # Data::Object::Integer # Data::Object::Json # Data::Object::Kind # Data::Object::Number # Data::Object::Path # Data::Object::Regexp # Data::Object::Replace # Data::Object::Role # Data::Object::Rule # Data::Object::Scalar # Data::Object::Search # Data::Object::Space # Data::Object::State # Data::Object::String # Data::Object::Template # Data::Object::Type # Data::Object::Undef # Data::Object::Yaml # etc The framework is meant to offer a kind-of standard library of functionality, concepts, and patterns for developing modern Perl applications. Again, everything provided is optional and has been designed to be configurable.