return \ "Hello World!";
}
-Well, you should put your content in an external file...
+Properly put content in an external file...
-------- File: /cgi-bin/my_cgi --------
Hello World!
-How about if we want to add substitutions...
+Adding substitutions...
-------- File: /cgi-bin/my_cgi --------
[% greeting %] World! ([% date %])
-How about a form with validation (inluding javascript validation)...
+Add forms and validation (inluding javascript validation)...
-------- File: /cgi-bin/my_cgi --------
->require_auth (hook)
# exits nav_loop if true
- ->morph
- # check ->allow_morph
- # check ->allow_nested_morph
+ ->morph (hook)
+ # check ->allow_morph (hook)
# ->morph_package (hook - get the package to bless into)
# ->fixup_after_morph if morph_package exists
# if no package is found, process continues in current file
->next_step (hook) # find next step and add to path
->set_ready_validate(0) (hook)
- ->unmorph
- # only called if morph worked
+ ->unmorph (hook)
# ->fixup_before_unmorph if blessed to current package
# exit loop if ->run_step returned true (page printed)
->info_complete (hook - ran if prepare was true)
->ready_validate (hook)
+ ->validate_when_data (hook)
# returns false from info_complete if ! ready_validate
->validate (hook - uses CGI::Ex::Validate to validate form info)
->hash_validation (hook)
# merge form, base, common, swap, and errors into merged swap
->print (hook - passed current step, merged swap hash, and merged fill)
->file_print (hook - uses base_dir_rel, name_module, name_step, ext_print)
- ->swap_template (hook - processes the file with CGI::Ex::Template)
- ->template_args (hook - passed to CGI::Ex::Template->new)
+ ->swap_template (hook - processes the file with Template::Alloy)
+ ->template_args (hook - passed to Template::Alloy->new)
->fill_template (hook - fills the any forms with CGI::Ex::Fill)
->fill_args (hook - passed to CGI::Ex::Fill::fill)
->print_out (hook - print headers and the content to STDOUT)
See the hash_base, hash_common, hash_form, hash_swap, hash_errors,
swap_template, and template_args hooks for more information.
-The default template engine used is CGI::Ex::Template which is now a subclass
-of Template::Alloy. The default interface used is TT which is the
-Template::Toolkit interface. Template::Alloy allows for using TT documents,
-HTML::Template documents, HTML::Template::Expr documents, Text::Tmpl documents,
-or Velocity (VTL) documents. See the L<Template::Alloy> documentation
+The default template engine used is Template::Alloy. The default
+interface used is TT which is the Template::Toolkit interface.
+Template::Alloy allows for using TT documents, HTML::Template
+documents, HTML::Template::Expr documents, Text::Tmpl documents, or
+Velocity (VTL) documents. See the L<Template::Alloy> documentation
for more information.
=head1 ADDING ADDITIONAL FORM FILL VARIABLES
This preset type of path can also be automated using the CGI::Path
module. Rather than using a preset path, CGI::Ex::App also has
methods that allow for dynamic changing of the path, so that each step
-can determine which step to do next (see the jump, append_path,
+can determine which step to do next (see the goto_step, append_path,
insert_path, and replace_path methods).
During development it would be nice to see what happened during the
See the discussions under the methods named "find_hook" and "run_hook" for more details.
+Some hooks expect "magic" values to be replaced. Often they are
+intuitive, but sometimes it is easy to forget. For example, the
+finalize hook should return true (default) to indicate the step is
+complete and false to indicate that it failed and the page should be
+redisplayed. You can import a set of constants that allows for human
+readible names.
+
+ use CGI::Ex::App qw(:App__finalize);
+ OR
+ use MyAppPkg qw(:App__finalize); # if it is a subclass of CGI::Ex::App
+
+This would import the following constants:
+App__finalize__failed_and_show_page (0),
+App__finalize__finished_and_move_to_next_step => (1 - default), and
+App__finalize__finished_but_show_page ("" - still false). These
+constants are provided by CGI::Ex::App::Constants which also contains
+more options for usage.
+
The following is the alphabetical list of methods and hooks.
=over 4
-=item allow_morph (method)
+=item allow_morph (hook)
Should return true if this step is allowed to "morph" the current App
object into another package. Default is false. It is passed a single
argument of the current step. For more granularity, if true value is
a hash, the step being morphed to must be in the hash.
+If the returned value is "1", and the module doesn't exist, then the
+App will continue to run blessed into the current package. If there
+is an error requiring the module or if the module doesn't exist and
+the return value is "2" (true but not 1), then App will die with the
+appropriate error.
+
To enable morphing for all steps, add the following:
+(Packages that don't exists won't be morphed to)
sub allow_morph { 1 }
+To force morphing for all steps add the following:
+
+ sub allow_morph { 2 }
+
To enable morph on specific steps, do either of the following:
sub allow_morph {
return {
edit => 1,
- delete => 1,
+ delete => 2, # must morph
};
}
sub allow_morph {
my ($self, $step) = @_;
- return $step =~ /^(edit|delete)$/;
+ return 1 if $step eq 'edit';
+ return 2 if $step eq 'delete';
+ return;
}
See the morph "hook" for more information.
-=item allow_nested_morph (method)
-
-Similar to the allow_morph hook, but allows for one more level of morphing.
-This is useful in cases where the base class was morphed early on, or
-if a step needs to call a sub-step but morph first.
-
-See the allow_morph and the morph method for more information.
-
-Should return a boolean value or hash of allowed steps - just as the
-allow_morph method does.
-
=item append_path (method)
Arguments are the steps to append. Can be called any time. Adds more
=item auth_args (method)
-Should return a hashref that will be passed to the new method of CGI::Ex::Auth.
+Should return a hashref that will be passed to the auth_obj method
+which should return a CGI::Ex::Auth compatible object.
It is augmented with arguments that integrate it into CGI::Ex::App.
See the get_valid_auth method and the CGI::Ex::Auth documentation.
See the get_valid_auth method.
+=item auth_obj (method)
+
+Passed auth_args. Should return a CGI::Ex::Auth compatible object. Default
+is to call CGI::Ex::Auth->new with the passed args.
+
=item base_dir_abs (method)
Used as the absolute base directory to find template, validation and conf files.
Caches results in $self->{'conf'}.
+If the conf_file can't be found, the method will die unless
+conf_die_on_fail returns 0 (defaults to true).
+
+=item conf_args
+
+Used by conf_obj.
+
+Defaults to $self->{'conf_args'} which defaults to {}. Will have
+paths => $self->conf_path added before passing to CGI::Ex::Conf->new.
+
=item conf_file (method)
Used by conf for finding the configuration file to load. Defaults
to $self->{'conf_file'} which defaults $self->name_module with the extention
-returned by $self->conf_ext added on. For example, if name_module
-returns "my_app" and conf_ext returns "ini" the value returned will
+returned by $self->ext_conf added on. For example, if name_module
+returns "my_app" and ext_conf returns "ini" the value returned will
be "my_app.ini".
The value returned can absolute. If the value will be searched for
in the paths passed to conf_obj.
-The conf_ext may be any of those extentions understood by CGI::Ex::Conf.
-
-=item conf_ext
-
-Used by the default conf_file method. Defaults to $self->{'conf_ext'} which
-defaults to 'pl' meaning that the read configuration file should return a
-valid perl hashref.
+The ext_conf may be any of those extentions understood by CGI::Ex::Conf.
=item conf_obj
a path or an arrayref of paths to look the configuration file returned by
conf_file when that file is not absolute.
-=item conf_args
-
-Used by conf_obj.
-
-Defaults to $self->{'conf_args'} which defaults to {}. Will have
-paths => $self->conf_path added before passing to CGI::Ex::Conf->new.
-
=item conf_validation
Used by default conf method.
for a long jump to the end of all nav_loops (even if they are
recursively nested). This effectively short circuits all remaining
hooks for the current and remaining steps. It is used to allow the
-->jump functionality. If the application has morphed, it will be
+->goto_step functionality. If the application has morphed, it will be
unmorphed before returning. Also - the post_navigate method will
still be called.
+=item ext_conf
+
+Used by the default conf_file method. Defaults to $self->{'ext_conf'} which
+defaults to 'pl' meaning that the read configuration file should return a
+valid perl hashref.
+
=item ext_print (method)
Added as suffix to "name_step" during the default file_print hook.
be done via the auth_args hash. See the auth_args method and
CGI::Ex::Auth perldoc for more information.
+=item goto_step (method)
+
+This method is not normally used but can solve some difficult issues.
+It provides for moving to another step at any point during the
+nav_loop. Once a goto_step has been called, the entire nav_loop will
+be exited (to simply replace a portion of a step, you can simply
+run_hook('run_step', 'other_step')). The method goto_step effectively
+short circuits the remaining hooks for the current step. It does
+increment the recursion counter (which has a limit of ->recurse_limit
+- default 15). Normally you would allow the other hooks in the loop
+to carry on their normal functions and avoid goto_step. (Essentially,
+this hook behaves like a goto method to bypass everything else and
+continue at a different location in the path - there are times when it
+is necessary or useful to do this).
+
+The method jump is an alias for this method.
+
+Goto_step takes a single argument which is the location in the path to
+jump to. This argument may be either a step name, the special strings
+"FIRST, LAST, CURRENT, PREVIOUS, OR NEXT" or the number of steps to
+jump forward (or backward) in the path. The default value, 1,
+indicates that CGI::Ex::App should jump to the next step (the default
+action for goto_step). A value of 0 would repeat the current step
+(watch out for recursion). A value of -1 would jump to the previous
+step. The special value of "LAST" will jump to the last step. The
+special value of "FIRST" will jump back to the first step. In each of
+these cases, the path array returned by ->path is modified to allow
+for the jumping (the path is modified so that the path history is not
+destroyed - if we were on step 3 and jumped to one, that path would
+contain 1, 2, 3, *1, 2, 3, 4, etc and we would be at the *). If a
+step name is not currently on the path, it will be replace any remaining
+steps of the path.
+
+ # goto previous step (repeat it)
+ $self->goto_step($self->previous_step);
+ $self->goto_step('PREVIOUS');
+ $self->goto_step(-1);
+
+ # goto next step
+ $self->goto_step($self->next_step);
+ $self->goto_step('NEXT');
+ $self->goto_step(1);
+ $self->goto_step;
+
+ # goto current step (repeat)
+ $self->goto_step($self->current_step);
+ $self->goto_step('CURRENT');
+ $self->goto_step(0);
+
+ # goto last step
+ $self->goto_step($self->last_step);
+ $self->goto_step('LAST');
+
+ # goto first step (repeat it)
+ $self->goto_step($self->first_step);
+ $self->goto_step('FIRST');
+
=item handle_error (method)
If anything dies during execution, handle_error will be called with
=item js_validation (hook)
-Requires JSON or YAML. Will return Javascript that is capable of
-validating the form. This is done using the capabilities of
-CGI::Ex::Validate. This will call the hook hash_validation which will
-then be encoded either json or into yaml and placed in a javascript
-string. It will also call the hook form_name to determine which html
-form to attach the validation to. The method js_uri_path is called to
-determine the path to the appropriate validate.js files. If the
-method ext_val is htm, then js_validation will return an empty string
-as it assumes the htm file will take care of the validation itself.
-In order to make use of js_validation, it must be added to the
-variables returned by either the hash_base, hash_common, hash_swap or
-hash_form hook (see examples of hash_base used in this doc).
-
-By default it will try and use JSON first and then fail to YAML and
-then will fail to returning an html comment that does nothing.
+Will return Javascript that is capable of validating the form. This
+is done using the capabilities of CGI::Ex::Validate and
+CGI::Ex::JSONDump. This will call the hook hash_validation which will
+then be encoded into json and placed in a javascript string. It will
+also call the hook form_name to determine which html form to attach
+the validation to. The method js_uri_path is called to determine the
+path to the appropriate validate.js files. In order to make use of
+js_validation, it must be added to the variables returned by either
+the hash_base (default), hash_common, hash_swap or hash_form hook (see
+examples of hash_base used in this doc).
=item jump (method)
-This method should not normally be used but is fine to use it on a
-regular basis. It provides for moving to the next step at any point
-during the nav_loop. It effectively short circuits the remaining
-hooks for the current step. It does increment the recursion counter
-(which has a limit of ->recurse_limit - default 15). It is normally
-better to allow the other hooks in the loop to carry on their normal
-functions and avoid jumping. (Essentially, this hook behaves like a
-goto method to bypass everything else and continue at a different
-location in the path - there are times when it is necessary or useful
-to do this).
-
-Jump takes a single argument which is the location in the path to jump
-to. This argument may be either a step name, the special strings
-"FIRST, LAST, CURRENT, PREVIOUS, OR NEXT" or the number of steps to
-jump forward (or backward) in the path. The default value, 1,
-indicates that CGI::Ex::App should jump to the next step (the default
-action for jump). A value of 0 would repeat the current step (watch
-out for recursion). A value of -1 would jump to the previous step.
-The special value of "LAST" will jump to the last step. The special
-value of "FIRST" will jump back to the first step. In each of these
-cases, the path array returned by ->path is modified to allow for the
-jumping (the path is modified so that the path history is not destroyed
-- if we were on step 3 and jumped to one, that path would contain
-1, 2, 3, *1, 2, 3, 4, etc and we would be at the *).
-
- ### goto previous step
- $self->jump($self->previous_step);
- $self->jump('PREVIOUS');
- $self->jump(-1);
-
- ### goto next step
- $self->jump($self->next_step);
- $self->jump('NEXT');
- $self->jump(1);
- $self->jump;
-
- ### goto current step (repeat)
- $self->jump($self->current_step);
- $self->jump('CURRENT');
- $self->jump(0);
-
- ### goto last step
- $self->jump($self->last_step);
- $self->jump('LAST');
-
- ### goto first step
- $self->jump($self->first_step);
- $self->jump('FIRST');
+Alias for the goto_step method.
=item last_step (method)
-Returns the last step of the path. Can be used to jump to the last step.
+Returns the last step of the path.
=item load_conf (method)
The morph call occurs at the beginning of the step loop. A
corresponding unmorph call occurs before the loop is exited. An
-object can morph several levels deep if allow_nested_morph returns
-true. For example, an object running as Foo::Bar that is looping on
-the step "my_step" that has allow_morph = 1, will do the following:
+object can morph several levels deep. For example, an object running
+as Foo::Bar that is looping on the step "my_step" that has allow_morph
+= 1, will do the following:
Call the morph_package hook (which would default to returning
Foo::Bar::MyStep in this case)
Samples of allowing morph:
- sub allow_morph { 1 }
+ sub allow_morph { 1 } # value of 1 means try to find package, ok if not found
sub allow_morph { {edit => 1} }
sub allow_morph { my ($self, $step) = @_; return $step eq 'edit' }
-It is possible to call morph earlier on in the program. An example of
-a useful early use of morph would be as in the following code:
-
- sub allow_morph { 1 }
-
- sub pre_navigate {
- my $self = shift;
- if ($ENV{'PATH_INFO'} && $ENV{'PATH_INFO'} =~ s|^/(\w+)||) {
- my $step = $1;
- $self->morph($step);
- $ENV{'PATH_INFO'} = "/$step";
- $self->stash->{'base_morphed'} = 1;
- }
- return 0;
- }
-
- sub post_navigate {
- my $self = shift;
- $self->unmorph if $self->stash->{'base_morphed'};
- }
-
-If this code was in a module Base.pm and the cgi running was cgi/base
-and called:
-
- Base->navigate;
-
-and you created a sub module that inherited Base.pm called
-Base/Ball.pm -- you could then access it using cgi/base/ball. You
-would be able to pass it steps using either cgi/base/ball/step_name or
-cgi/base/ball?step=step_name - Or Base/Ball.pm could implement its
-own path. It should be noted that if you do an early morph, it is
-suggested to provide a call to unmorph. And if you want to let your
-early morphed object morph again - you will need to provide
-
- sub allow_nested_morph { 1 }
-
-With allow_nested_morph enabled you could create the file
-Base/Ball/StepName.pm which inherits Base/Ball.pm. The Base.pm, with
-the custom init and default path method, would automatically morph us
-first into a Base::Ball object (during init) and then into a
-Base::Ball::StepName object (during the navigation loop).
-
-Since it is complicated to explain - it may be a bit complicated to
-those who will try to follow your code later. CGI::Ex::App provides
-many ways to do things, but use the best one for your situation.
-
=item morph_package (hook)
Used by morph. Return the package name to morph into during a morph
=item next_step (hook and method)
-Returns the next step in the path. If there is no next step, it
-returns the default_step.
-
-It can be used as a method to return the next step in the path
-to pass to a method such as ->jump.
+As a method it returns the next step in the path - if the path
+has more steps left.
It is also used as a hook by the refine_path hook. If there is no
more steps, it will call the next_step hook to try and find a step to
Take the information generated by prepared_print, format it using
swap_template, fill it using fill_template and print it out using
-print_out. Default incarnation uses CGI::Ex::Template (a subclass of
-Template::Alloy) which is compatible with Template::Toolkit to do the
-swapping. Arguments are: step name (used to call the file_print
-hook), swap hashref (passed to call swap_template), and fill hashref
-(passed to fill_template).
+print_out. Default incarnation uses Template::Alloy which is
+compatible with Template::Toolkit to do the swapping. Arguments are:
+step name (used to call the file_print hook), swap hashref (passed to
+call swap_template), and fill hashref (passed to fill_template).
During the print call, the file_print hook is called which should
return a filename or a scalar reference to the template content is
Changing the behavior of ready_validate can help in making wizard type
applications.
+You can also use the validate_when_data hook to change the behavior of
+ready_validate. If valiate_when_data returns true, then
+ready_validate will look for keys in the form matching keys that are
+in hash_validation - if they exist ready_validate will be true. If
+there are no hash_validation keys, ready_validate uses its default
+behavior.
+
=item refine_path (hook)
Called at the end of nav_loop. Passed a single value indicating
=item recurse_limit (method)
Default 15. Maximum number of times to allow nav_loop to call itself.
-The recurse level will increase every time that ->jump is called, or if
+The recurse level will increase every time that ->goto_step is called, or if
the end of the nav_loop is reached and the process tries to add the
default_step and run it again.
-If ->jump is used often - the recurse_limit will be reached more
+If ->goto_step is used often - the recurse_limit will be reached more
quickly. It is safe to raise this as high as is necessary - so long
as it is intentional.
step basis, or override a method for all of the steps, or even to
break code out into separate modules.
+=item run_hook_as (method)
+
+Similar to run_hook - but allows for temporarily running a
+hook in another package.
+
+ sub blah_morph_package { 'SomeOther::Module' }
+ my $hash = $self->run_hook_as('hash_swap', 'blah'); # runs as SomeOther::Module
+
+ # OR
+
+ my $hash = $self->run_hook_as('hash_swap', 'SomeOther::Module');
+
+Note that the second form will use 'SomeOther::Module' as the step name
+which will be somewhat misleading in looking up names.
+
=item run_step (hook)
Runs all of the hooks specific to each step, beginning with pre_step
=item set_ready_validate (hook and method)
Sets that the validation is ready (or not) to validate. Should set the value
-checked by the hook ready_validate. The following would complement the
-processing flag above:
+checked by the hook ready_validate. Has no affect if validate_when_data
+flag is set.
+
+The following would complement the "processing" flag example given in
+ready_validate description:
sub set_ready_validate {
my $self = shift;
=item swap_template (hook)
Takes the template and hash of variables prepared in print, and
-processes them through the current template engine (default engine is
-CGI::Ex::Template a subclass of Template::Alloy).
+processes them through the current template engine Template::Alloy.
Arguments are the template and the swap hashref. The template can be
either a scalar reference to the actual content, or the filename of
The default method will create a template object by calling the
template_args hook and passing the returned hashref to the
template_obj method. The default template_obj method returns a
-CGI::Ex::Template object, but could easily be swapped to use a
+Template::Alloy object, but could easily be swapped to use a
Template::Toolkit based object. If a non-Template::Toolkit compatible
object is to be used, then the swap_template hook can be overridden to
use another templating engine.
return $t->output;
}
-As of version 2.13 of CGI::Ex::Template you could also simply do the
-following to parse the templates using HTML::Template::Expr syntax.
+Uou could also simply do the following to parse the templates using
+HTML::Template::Expr syntax.
sub template_args {
return {SYNTAX => 'hte'};
=item template_args (hook)
-Returns a hashref of args that will be passed to the "new" method of CGI::Ex::Template.
+Returns a hashref of args that will be passed to the "new" method of Template::Alloy
The method is normally called from the swap_template hook. The swap_template hook
will add a value for INCLUDE_PATH which is set equal to template_path, if the INCLUDE_PATH
value is not already set.
-The returned hashref can contain any arguments that CGI::Ex::Template (a subclass of Template::Alloy)
+The returned hashref can contain any arguments that Template::Alloy
would understand.
sub template_args {
=item template_obj (method)
Called from swap_template. It is passed the result of template_args
-that have had a default INCLUDE_PATH added via template_path. The default
-implementation uses CGI::Ex::Template (a subclass of Template::Alloy)
-but can easily be changed to use Template::Toolkit by using code
-similar to the following:
+that have had a default INCLUDE_PATH added via template_path. The
+default implementation uses Template::Alloy but can easily be changed
+to use Template::Toolkit by using code similar to the following:
use Template;
would append 'bar' and 'baz' to the path should all validation succeed.
+=item validate_when_data (hook)
+
+Defaults to "validate_when_data" property which defaults to false. Called
+during the ready_validate hook. If returns true, ready_validate will look
+for keys in the form matching keys that are in hash_validation - if they exist
+ready_validate will be true. If there are no hash_validation keys, ready_validate
+uses its default behavior.
+
=item verify_user (method)
Installed as a hook to CGI::Ex::App during get_valid_auth. Should return
Seemingly the most well know of application builders.
CGI::Ex::App is different in that it:
- * Uses Template::Toolkit compatible CGI::Ex::Template (a
- subclass of Template::Alloy) by default.
+ * Uses Template::Toolkit compatible Template::Alloy by default.
CGI::Ex::App can easily use another toolkit by simply
overriding the ->swap_template method.
CGI::Application uses HTML::Template.
CGI::Prototype is that it is extremely short (very very short). The
->activate starts the application in the same manner as CGI::Ex::App's
->navigate call. Both use Template::Toolkit as the default template
-system (CGI::Ex::App uses CGI::Ex::Template which is TT compatible).
+system (CGI::Ex::App uses Template::Alloy which is TT compatible).
CGI::Ex::App is differrent in that it:
* Offers more hooks into the various phases of each step.