CGI::Application::StruUsereContributed Perl DocCGI::Application::Structured(3)NAMECGI::Application::Structured - A medium-weight, MVC, DB web
micro-framework.
SYNOPSIS
A simple, medium-weight, MVC, DB web micro-framework built on
CGI::Application. The framework combines tested, well known plugins and
helper scripts to provide a rapid development environment.
The bundled plugins mix the following methods into your controller
runmodes:
$c->forward(runmode)
$c->redirect(url)
$c->tt_param(name=>value)
$c->tt_process()
$c->schema()->resultset("Things")->find($id)
$c->resultset("Things)->search({color=>"red"})
$c->log->info('This also works')
my $value = $c->session->param('key')
my $conf_val = $c->cfg('field');
my $select = $c->superform->select(
name => 'select',
default => 2,
values => [ 0, 1, 2, 3 ],
labels => {
0 => 'Zero',
1 => 'One',
2 => 'Two',
3 => 'Three'
}
);
sub method: Runmode {my $c = shift; do_something();}
$c->fill_form( \$template )
my $results = $ ->check_rm(
'form_display','_form_profile')
|| return $c->check_rm_error_page;
DESCRIPTION
I have taken to heart a recent comment by Mark Stosberg on the CGIApp
mailing list:
"Titanium is just one vision of what can be built on top of
CGI::Application. Someone else could easily combine their own
combination of CGI::Application and different favorite plugins,
and publish that with a different name."
CGI::Application::Structured, like Titanium, is an opinionated
framework, based on CGI::Application. Both frameworks includes a
number of vetted CGI-App plugins each of which are well documented and
tested. C::A::Structured, however takes the view that developer time
and consistent projects structures can often be more cost-effective
than focusing on the highest performance on low cost hosting solutions.
That being said, C::A::Structured can be deployed on CGI, FastCGI or
mod_perl based on your needs.
C::A::Structured focuses on:
· adequate performance under CGI, but with more focus speed of
development.
· a well-defined project structure with directories for model
classes, controllers and view templates.
· a powerful templating DSL via Template Toolkit integration.
· a integrated Object Relational Mapper, DBIx::Class
· no runmode configuration required.
· integrated form building to simplify creation of complex HTML form
elements.
· clean url-to-controller mapping by default.
C::A::Structured comes in two packages:
· CGI::Application::Strutured - encapsulates the runtime environment.
· CGI::Application::Structured::Tools - includes project creation and
developemt scripts for developers.
CGI::Application::Structured::Tools are used to generate a micro-
architecture and helper scripts that work within that structure to
speed development and maintain project structure across development
teams and projects. The helper scripts eliminate the tedium of error-
prone manual creation of controllers, templates and database mappings
and provide a recognizeable structural conventions that reduced stress
on the developer when working across multiple apps, or working with
other developers code on the same project.
The first script that is used is 'cas-starter.pl'. This script is used
to generate the initial project skeleton. The skeleton app contains a
base controller class rather than runnable module as would be found in
Titanium. Also generated is a default 'Home' controller subclass and a
URL dispatcher that is customized to default to the Home controllers
generated 'index' runmode.
cas-starter.pl also generates additional helper scripts in your
projects 'scripts' subdirectory:
· create_controller.pl
· create_dbic_schema.pl
'create_controller.pl' is used by the developer to generate additional
controller subclasses of your base module with a default 'index'
runmode and a default TT template for that runmode.
'create_dbic_schema.pl' generates a DBIx::Class::Schema subclass and a
set of resultset subclasses for your database. These Object Relational
Maps (ORM) will greatly simplify and speed database assess and
manipulation in the development process.
Finally CGI::Application::Structured aims to be as compatible as
possible with Catalyst. Many plugins used in
CGI::Application::Structured are also available for Catalyst, or are
even defaults in Catalyst. If your projects needs grow in scope or
scale to require Catalyst, porting much of your code will be very easy.
CGI::Application::Structured Tutorial
In this tutorial we will build a simplistic database driven web
application using CGI::Application::Structured to demonstrate using the
starter and helper scripts as well as the minimal required
configuration.
CGI::Application::Structured assumes that you have a database that you
want to use with the web. If you have a database you can use for this
tutorial. Otherwise, jump to the "Create The Example Database" section
at the bottom of this page before starting the tutorial.
Installation
You will need to install CGI::Application::Structured which provides
the runtime requirements. You will also need to install
CGI::Application::Structured::Tools which supplies the development
environment.
~/dev$ sudo cpan
cpan> install CGI::Application::Structured
... ok
cpan> install CGI::Application::Structured::Tools
... ok
cpan> exit
Creating A Project
~/dev$ cas-starter.pl --module=MyApp1 \
--author=gordon \
--email="vanamburg@cpan.org" \
--verbose
Created MyApp1
Created MyApp1/lib
Created MyApp1/lib/MyApp1.pm # YOUR *CONTROLLER BASE CLASS* !
Created MyApp1/t
Created MyApp1/t/pod-coverage.t
Created MyApp1/t/pod.t
Created MyApp1/t/01-load.t
Created MyApp1/t/test-app.t
Created MyApp1/t/perl-critic.t
Created MyApp1/t/boilerplate.t
Created MyApp1/t/00-signature.t
Created MyApp1/t/www
Created MyApp1/t/www/PUT.STATIC.CONTENT.HERE
Created MyApp1/templates/MyApp1/C/Home
Created MyApp1/templates/MyApp1/C/Home/index.tmpl # DEFAULT HOME PAGE TEMPLATE
Created MyApp1/Makefile.PL
Created MyApp1/Changes
Created MyApp1/README
Created MyApp1/MANIFEST.SKIP
Created MyApp1/t/perlcriticrc
Created MyApp1/lib/MyApp1/C # YOUR CONTROLLERS GO HERE
Created MyApp1/lib/MyApp1/C/Home.pm # YOUR *DEFAULT CONTROLLER SUBCLASS*
Created MyApp1/lib/MyApp1/Dispatch.pm # YOUR CUSTOM DISPATCHER
Created MyApp1/config
Created MyApp1/config/config-dev.pl # YOU CONFIG -- MUST BE EDITED BY YOU!
Created MyApp1/script
Created MyApp1/script/create_dbic_schema.pl # IMPORTANT HELPER SCRIPT
Created MyApp1/script/create_controller.pl # ANOTHER IMPORTANT HELPER SCRIPT.
Created MyApp1/server.pl # SERVER USES YOUR CUSTOM DISPATCH.PM
Created MyApp1/MANIFEST
Created starter directories and files
Configure Your Database
CGI::Application::Structured is database centric in some sense and
expects that you have a database. Before running your app via
server.pl you need to configure your database access.
The example config is generated at MyApp1/config/config.pl. The
contents are shown here.
use strict;
my %CFG;
$CFG{db_dsn} = "dbi:mysql:myapp_dev";
$CFG{db_user} = "root";
$CFG{db_pw} = "root";
$CFG{tt2_dir} = "templates";
return \%CFG;
Using the root account is shown here as a worst-practice. You should
customize the file supplying the correct database dsn, user and
passwords for your database.
If you do not have a database and want to use an example see "Create
Example Database" below before continuing.
The configuration file will be found automatically when running with
the built in server, but when you deploy your application you may want,
or need, to update the config file location in lib/MyApp1/Dispatch.pm
to point to your production config file.
For information on advanced configuration see:
CGI::Application::Plugin::ConfigAuto
Generate A DBIx::Class Schema For Your Database
From your project root directory run the helper script to generate
DBIx::Class::Schema and Resultset packages. This will use the
configuration you supplied in config_dev.pl to produce a DB.pm in your
apps lib/MAINMODULE directory
~/dev/My-App1$ perl script/create_dbic_schema.pl
Dumping manual schema for DB to directory /home/gordon/dev/MyApp1/lib/MyApp1/DB ...
Schema dump completed.
Given the example database shown below your resulting DBIx::Class
related files and folders would look like this:
~/dev/MyApp1$ find lib/MyApp1/ | grep DB
lib/MyApp1/DB
lib/MyApp1/DB/Result
lib/MyApp1/DB/Result/Orders.pm
lib/MyApp1/DB/Result/Customer.pm
lib/MyApp1/DB.pm
For more information see: CGI::Application::Plugin::DBIC::Schema,
DBIx::Class
Run Your App
Now that your database is configured and the schema generated you can
run your app.
Run the server:
~/dev/MyApp1$ perl server.pl
access your default runmode at /cgi-bin/index.cgi
CGI::Application::Server: You can connect to your server at http://localhost:8060/
Open your browser and test at
http://localhost:8060/cgi-bin/index.cgi
For more information on the nature of the development server see:
CGI::Application::Server
Try Plugin::DebugScreen;
CAS comes with CGI::Application::Plugin::DebugScreen.
Plugin::DebugScreen provides a very useful stack trace with multi-line
source quotations for each level of the stack. cas-starter.pl has put
debug.sh in your project root directory. It sets up the environment
for Plugin::DebugPage and runs the built in server.
Edit lib/MyApp1/C/Home.pm to generate an error to demonstrate the
DebugScreen:
sub index: StartRunmode {
my ($c) = @_;
# add this line for demo of debug screen
die "testing";
$c->tt_params({
message => 'Hello world!',
title => 'C::Home'
});
return $c->tt_process();
}
Run the server in debug mode:
~/dev/MyApp1$ bash debug.sh
access your default runmode at /cgi-bin/index.cgi
CGI::Application::Server: You can connect to your server at http://localhost:8060/
Open your browser and test/demo the Plugin::DebugScreen:
http://localhost:8060/cgi-bin/index.cgi
Remove the line you added to Home.pm
For more information on Plugin::DebugScreen see:
CGI::Application::Plugin::DebugScreen
Create A New Controller
This is where the create_controller.pl helper script comes in very
handy. create_controller.pl will create a new controller with a default
runmode called 'index', and an index template to go with it.
As an example we can generate a new module to interact with the Orders
table of the example database.
~/dev/MyApp1$ perl script/create_controller.pl --name=Orders
will try to create lib/MyApp1/C
Created lib/MyApp1/C/Orders.pm
will try to create template directory templates/MyApp1/C/Orders
Created templates/MyApp1/C/Orders
Created templates/MyApp1/C/Orders/index.tmpl
You can restart server.pl and view default output at:
http://localhost:8060/cgi-bin/orders
Add a new runmode to lib/MyApp1/C/Orders.pm to show the orders that we
have from the example database.
sub list: Runmode{
my $c = shift;
my @orders = $c->resultset("MyApp1::DB::Result::Orders")->all;
$c->tt_params(orders =>\@orders);
return $c->tt_process();
}
Then add a template for this runmode at
templates/MyApp1/C/Orders/list.tmpl with the following content:
<h1>Order List</h1>
<table>
<tr><th>Cust No</th><th>Order No</th></tr>
[% FOREACH order = orders %]
<tr>
<td>[% order.customer_id %]</td>
<td>[% order.id %]</td>
</tr>
[% END %]
</table>
Restart server.pl and visit page to see list of orders at:
http://localhost:8060/cgi-bin/orders/list
For advanced information on creating controllers, runmodes and
templates see: CGI::Application::Plugin::AutoRunmode,
CGI::Application::Plugin::TT, CGI::Application and Template::Toolkit.
Creating The Example Database (if you don't already have one)
The CGI::Application::Structured distrubution contains an example sql
file that you can use for this example app. Use the download link at
CGI::Application::Structured on CPAN, grab the archive and extract the
file from the 'examples' directory of the distribution.
The script will create the 'myapp1_dev' database, create 2 tables and
load a few Notice that the create table statements end with
'engine=InnoDB'. This is important since our DBIC generator script
will create perl modules to represent database table relationships,
based on the metadata in the database. While the InnoDB engine will
work, the default engine for mysql will not store the relationship
metadata and you would then need to hand-craft the relationships at the
botton of the generated DB::Result classes.
Example:
~/dev/MyApp1$ mysql -u root -p < example_tables.mysql.ddl
The contents of the example sql file are as follows:
CREATE DATABASE myapp1_dev;
USE myapp1_dev;
CREATE TABLE customer(
id integer not null auto_increment PRIMARY KEY,
last_name varchar(25) null,
first_name varchar(25) not null
)engine=InnoDB;
CREATE TABLE orders(
id integer not null auto_increment PRIMARY KEY,
customer_id integer not null,
order_status varchar(10) default "OPEN" not null,
order_date TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP not null,
CONSTRAINT orders_customer_id_fk FOREIGN KEY (customer_id) REFERENCES customer(id)
)engine=InnoDB;
INSERT INTO customer (last_name, first_name) VALUES("Doe","John");
INSERT INTO orders (customer_id) VALUES( 1 );
INSERT INTO orders (customer_id) VALUES( 1 );
INSERT INTO orders (customer_id) VALUES( 1 );
If you did not use 'engine=InnoDB' or your database does not support
relationships, you can paste the following in the bottom of your
"MyApp/DB/Result/Orders.pm" to tell DBIx::Class how the example tables
relate:
# Created by DBIx::Class::Schema::Loader v0.04006 @ 2009-09-15 16:05:33
# DO NOT MODIFY THIS OR ANYTHING ABOVE! md5sum:znOKfDkdRzpL0KHWpfpJ+Q
__PACKAGE__->belongs_to(
"customer",
"MyApp1::DB::Result::Customer",
{ id => "customer" },
);
See documentation for DBIx::Class::Manual for more information on
configuring and using relationships in your model.
Further Reading
See CGI::Application::Structured::Tools for more information on
developer tools package.
See CGI::Application::Plugin::DBIC::Schema for more information on
accessing DBIx::Class from your CGI::Application::Structured modules.
See CGI::Application::Plugin::SuperForm for form building support that
is build into CGI::Application::Structured.
See DBIx::Class::Manual::Intro for more information on using the
powerful ORM included with CGI::Application::Structured.
See Template::Toolkit and CGI::Application::Plugin::TT for more
information on advanced templating.
See CGI::Application for lots of good ideas and examples that will work
with your CGI::Application::Structured app.
BUGS
There are no known bugs for this distribution.
Please report any bugs or feature requests through the web interface at
<https://rt.cpan.org>.
I will be notified, and then you'll automatically be notified of
progress on your bug as I make changes.
SUPPORT
I recommend joining the cgi-application mailing list.
AUTHOR
Gordon Van Amburg
CPAN ID: VANAMBURG
vanamburg at cpan.org
COPYRIGHT
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.
The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included
with this module.
perl v5.14.1 2011-03-28 CGI::Application::Structured(3)
