1Catalyst::DispatchType:U:sCehraiCnoendt(r3i)buted Perl DCoactuamleynstta:t:iDoinspatchType::Chained(3)
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6 Catalyst::DispatchType::Chained - Path Part DispatchType
7
9 Path part matching, allowing several actions to sequentially take care
10 of processing a request:
11 # root action - captures one argument after it
13 sub foo_setup : Chained('/') PathPart('foo') CaptureArgs(1) {
14 my ( $self, $c, $foo_arg ) = @_;
15 ...
16 }
17 # child action endpoint - takes one argument
19 sub bar : Chained('foo_setup') Args(1) {
20 my ( $self, $c, $bar_arg ) = @_;
21 ...
22 }
23
25 Dispatch type managing default behaviour. For more information on
26 dispatch types, see:
27 · Catalyst::Manual::Intro for how they affect application authors
29 · Catalyst::DispatchType for implementation information.
31
33 $self->list($c)
34 Debug output for Path Part dispatch points
35 $self->match( $c, $path )
37 Calls "recurse_match" to see if a chain matches the $path.
38 $self->recurse_match( $c, $parent, \@path_parts )
40 Recursive search for a matching chain.
41 $self->register( $c, $action )
43 Calls register_path for every Path attribute for the given $action.
44 $self->uri_for_action($action, $captures)
46 Get the URI part for the action, using $captures to fill the capturing
47 parts.
48 $c->expand_action($action)
50 Return a list of actions that represents a chained action. See
51 Catalyst::Dispatcher for more info. You probably want to use the
52 expand_action it provides rather than this directly.
53
55 Introduction
56 The "Chained" attribute allows you to chain public path parts together
57 by their private names. A chain part's path can be specified with
58 "PathPart" and can be declared to expect an arbitrary number of
59 arguments. The endpoint of the chain specifies how many arguments it
60 gets through the "Args" attribute. :Args(0) would be none at all,
61 ":Args" without an integer would be unlimited. The path parts that
62 aren't endpoints are using "CaptureArgs" to specify how many parameters
63 they expect to receive. As an example setup:
64 package MyApp::Controller::Greeting;
66 use base qw/ Catalyst::Controller /;
67 # this is the beginning of our chain
69 sub hello : PathPart('hello') Chained('/') CaptureArgs(1) {
70 my ( $self, $c, $integer ) = @_;
71 $c->stash->{ message } = "Hello ";
72 $c->stash->{ arg_sum } = $integer;
73 }
74 # this is our endpoint, because it has no :CaptureArgs
76 sub world : PathPart('world') Chained('hello') Args(1) {
77 my ( $self, $c, $integer ) = @_;
78 $c->stash->{ message } .= "World!";
79 $c->stash->{ arg_sum } += $integer;
80 $c->response->body( join "<br/>\n" =>
82 $c->stash->{ message }, $c->stash->{ arg_sum } );
83 }
84 The debug output provides a separate table for chained actions, showing
86 the whole chain as it would match and the actions it contains. Here's
87 an example of the startup output with our actions above:
88 ...
90 [debug] Loaded Path Part actions:
91 .-----------------------+------------------------------.
92 | Path Spec | Private |
93 +-----------------------+------------------------------+
94 | /hello/*/world/* | /greeting/hello (1) |
95 | | => /greeting/world |
96 '-----------------------+------------------------------'
97 ...
98 As you can see, Catalyst only deals with chains as whole paths and
100 builds one for each endpoint, which are the actions with ":Chained" but
101 without ":CaptureArgs".
102 Let's assume this application gets a request at the path
104 "/hello/23/world/12". What happens then? First, Catalyst will dispatch
105 to the "hello" action and pass the value 23 as an argument to it after
106 the context. It does so because we have previously used :CaptureArgs(1)
107 to declare that it has one path part after itself as its argument. We
108 told Catalyst that this is the beginning of the chain by specifying
109 ":Chained('/')". Also note that instead of saying ":PathPart('hello')"
110 we could also just have said ":PathPart", as it defaults to the name of
111 the action.
112 After "hello" has run, Catalyst goes on to dispatch to the "world"
114 action. This is the last action to be called: Catalyst knows this is an
115 endpoint because we did not specify a ":CaptureArgs" attribute.
116 Nevertheless we specify that this action expects an argument, but at
117 this point we're using :Args(1) to do that. We could also have said
118 ":Args" or left it out altogether, which would mean this action would
119 get all arguments that are there. This action's ":Chained" attribute
120 says "hello" and tells Catalyst that the "hello" action in the current
121 controller is its parent.
122 With this we have built a chain consisting of two public path parts.
124 "hello" captures one part of the path as its argument, and also
125 specifies the path root as its parent. So this part is "/hello/$arg".
126 The next part is the endpoint "world", expecting one argument. It sums
127 up to the path part "world/$arg". This leads to a complete chain of
128 "/hello/$arg/world/$arg" which is matched against the requested paths.
129 This example application would, if run and called by e.g.
131 "/hello/23/world/12", set the stash value "message" to "Hello" and the
132 value "arg_sum" to "23". The "world" action would then append "World!"
133 to "message" and add 12 to the stash's "arg_sum" value. For the sake
134 of simplicity no view is shown. Instead we just put the values of the
135 stash into our body. So the output would look like:
136 Hello World!
138 35
139 And our test server would have given us this debugging output for the
141 request:
142 ...
144 [debug] "GET" request for "hello/23/world/12" from "127.0.0.1"
145 [debug] Path is "/greeting/world"
146 [debug] Arguments are "12"
147 [info] Request took 0.164113s (6.093/s)
148 .------------------------------------------+-----------.
149 | Action | Time |
150 +------------------------------------------+-----------+
151 | /greeting/hello | 0.000029s |
152 | /greeting/world | 0.000024s |
153 '------------------------------------------+-----------'
154 ...
155 What would be common uses of this dispatch technique? It gives the
157 possibility to split up logic that contains steps that each depend on
158 each other. An example would be, for example, a wiki path like
159 "/wiki/FooBarPage/rev/23/view". This chain can be easily built with
160 these actions:
161 sub wiki : PathPart('wiki') Chained('/') CaptureArgs(1) {
163 my ( $self, $c, $page_name ) = @_;
164 # load the page named $page_name and put the object
165 # into the stash
166 }
167 sub rev : PathPart('rev') Chained('wiki') CaptureArgs(1) {
169 my ( $self, $c, $revision_id ) = @_;
170 # use the page object in the stash to get at its
171 # revision with number $revision_id
172 }
173 sub view : PathPart Chained('rev') Args(0) {
175 my ( $self, $c ) = @_;
176 # display the revision in our stash. Another option
177 # would be to forward a compatible object to the action
178 # that displays the default wiki pages, unless we want
179 # a different interface here, for example restore
180 # functionality.
181 }
182 It would now be possible to add other endpoints, for example "restore"
184 to restore this specific revision as the current state.
185 You don't have to put all the chained actions in one controller. The
187 specification of the parent through ":Chained" also takes an absolute
188 action path as its argument. Just specify it with a leading "/".
189 If you want, for example, to have actions for the public paths
191 "/foo/12/edit" and "/foo/12", just specify two actions with
192 ":PathPart('foo')" and ":Chained('/')". The handler for the former path
193 needs a :CaptureArgs(1) attribute and a endpoint with
194 ":PathPart('edit')" and ":Chained('foo')". For the latter path give the
195 action just a :Args(1) to mark it as endpoint. This sums up to this
196 debugging output:
197 ...
199 [debug] Loaded Path Part actions:
200 .-----------------------+------------------------------.
201 | Path Spec | Private |
202 +-----------------------+------------------------------+
203 | /foo/* | /controller/foo_view |
204 | /foo/*/edit | /controller/foo_load (1) |
205 | | => /controller/edit |
206 '-----------------------+------------------------------'
207 ...
208 Here's a more detailed specification of the attributes belonging to
210 ":Chained":
211 Attributes
213 PathPart
214 Sets the name of this part of the chain. If it is specified
215 without arguments, it takes the name of the action as default.
216 So basically "sub foo :PathPart" and "sub foo :PathPart('foo')"
217 are identical. This can also contain slashes to bind to a
218 deeper level. An action with "sub bar :PathPart('foo/bar')
219 :Chained('/')" would bind to "/foo/bar/...". If you don't
220 specify ":PathPart" it has the same effect as using
221 ":PathPart", it would default to the action name.
222 PathPrefix
224 Sets PathPart to the path_prefix of the current controller.
225 Chained Has to be specified for every child in the chain. Possible
227 values are absolute and relative private action paths or a
228 single slash "/" to tell Catalyst that this is the root of a
229 chain. The attribute ":Chained" without arguments also defaults
230 to the "/" behavior. Relative action paths may use "../" to
231 refer to actions in parent controllers.
232 Because you can specify an absolute path to the parent action,
234 it doesn't matter to Catalyst where that parent is located. So,
235 if your design requests it, you can redispatch a chain through
236 any controller or namespace you want.
237 Another interesting possibility gives ":Chained('.')", which
239 chains itself to an action with the path of the current
240 controller's namespace. For example:
241 # in MyApp::Controller::Foo
243 sub bar : Chained CaptureArgs(1) { ... }
244 # in MyApp::Controller::Foo::Bar
246 sub baz : Chained('.') Args(1) { ... }
247 This builds up a chain like "/bar/*/baz/*". The specification
249 of "." as the argument to Chained here chains the "baz" action
250 to an action with the path of the current controller namespace,
251 namely "/foo/bar". That action chains directly to "/", so the
252 "/bar/*/baz/*" chain comes out as the end product.
253 ChainedParent
255 Chains an action to another action with the same name in the
256 parent controller. For Example:
257 # in MyApp::Controller::Foo
259 sub bar : Chained CaptureArgs(1) { ... }
260 # in MyApp::Controller::Foo::Moo
262 sub bar : ChainedParent Args(1) { ... }
263 This builds a chain like "/bar/*/bar/*".
265 CaptureArgs
267 Must be specified for every part of the chain that is not an
268 endpoint. With this attribute Catalyst knows how many of the
269 following parts of the path (separated by "/") this action
270 wants to capture as its arguments. If it doesn't expect any,
271 just specify :CaptureArgs(0). The captures get passed to the
272 action's @_ right after the context, but you can also find them
273 as array references in "$c->request->captures->[$level]". The
274 $level is the level of the action in the chain that captured
275 the parts of the path.
276 An action that is part of a chain (that is, one that has a
278 ":Chained" attribute) but has no ":CaptureArgs" attribute is
279 treated by Catalyst as a chain end.
280 Args By default, endpoints receive the rest of the arguments in the
282 path. You can tell Catalyst through ":Args" explicitly how many
283 arguments your endpoint expects, just like you can with
284 ":CaptureArgs". Note that this also affects whether this chain
285 is invoked on a request. A chain with an endpoint specifying
286 one argument will only match if exactly one argument exists in
287 the path.
288 You can specify an exact number of arguments like :Args(3),
290 including 0. If you just say ":Args" without any arguments, it
291 is the same as leaving it out altogether: The chain is matched
292 regardless of the number of path parts after the endpoint.
293 Just as with ":CaptureArgs", the arguments get passed to the
295 action in @_ after the context object. They can also be reached
296 through "$c->request->arguments".
297 Auto actions, dispatching and forwarding
299 Note that the list of "auto" actions called depends on the private path
300 of the endpoint of the chain, not on the chained actions way. The
301 "auto" actions will be run before the chain dispatching begins. In
302 every other aspect, "auto" actions behave as documented.
303 The "forward"ing to other actions does just what you would expect. But
305 if you "detach" out of a chain, the rest of the chain will not get
306 called after the "detach".
307
309 Catalyst Contributors, see Catalyst.pm
310
312 This library is free software. You can redistribute it and/or modify it
313 under the same terms as Perl itself.
314perl v5.12.1 2010-03-27Catalyst::DispatchType::Chained(3)