1Moose::Manual::Classes(U3s)er Contributed Perl DocumentatMiooonse::Manual::Classes(3)
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6 Moose::Manual::Classes - Making your classes use Moose (and
7 subclassing)
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10 Using Moose is very simple, you just "use Moose":
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12 package Person;
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14 use Moose;
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16 That's it, you've made a class with Moose!
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18 There's actually a lot going on here under the hood, so let's step
19 through it.
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21 When you load Moose, a bunch of sugar functions are exported into your
22 class. These include things like "extends", "has", "with", and more.
23 These functions are what you use to define your class. For example, you
24 might define an attribute ...
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26 package Person;
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28 use Moose;
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30 has 'ssn' => ( is => 'rw' );
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32 Attributes are described in the Moose::Manual::Attributes
33 documentation.
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35 Loading Moose also enables "strict" and "warnings" pragmas in your
36 class.
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38 When you load Moose, your class will become a subclass of
39 Moose::Object. The Moose::Object class provides a default constructor
40 and destructor, as well as object construction helper methods. You can
41 read more about this in the Moose::Manual::Construction document.
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43 As a convenience, Moose creates a new class type for your class. See
44 the Moose::Manual::Types document to learn more about types.
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46 It also creates a Moose::Meta::Class object for your class. This
47 metaclass object is now available by calling a "meta" method on your
48 class, for example "Person->meta".
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50 The metaclass object provides an introspection API for your class. It
51 is also used by Moose itself under the hood to add attributes, define
52 parent classes, and so on. In fact, all of Moose's sugar does the real
53 work by calling methods on this metaclass object (and other meta API
54 objects).
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57 Moose provides a simple sugar function for declaring your parent
58 classes, "extends":
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60 package User;
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62 use Moose;
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64 extends 'Person';
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66 has 'username' => ( is => 'rw' );
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68 Note that each call to "extends" will reset your parents. For multiple
69 inheritance you must provide all the parents at once, "extends 'Foo',
70 'Bar'".
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72 You can use Moose to extend a non-Moose parent. However, when you do
73 this, you will inherit the parent class's constructor (assuming it is
74 also called "new"). In that case, you will have to take care of
75 initializing attributes manually, either in the parent's constructor,
76 or in your subclass, and you will lose a lot of Moose magic.
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79 Moose also allows you to remove its sugar functions from your class's
80 namespace. We recommend that you take advantage of this feature, since
81 it just makes your classes "cleaner". You can do this by simply adding
82 "no Moose" at the end of your module file.
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84 package Person;
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86 use Moose;
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88 has 'ssn' => ( is => 'rw' );
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90 no Moose;
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92 This deletes Moose's sugar functions from your class's namespace, so
93 that "Person->can('has')" will no longer return true.
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95 A more generic way to unimport not only Moose's exports but also those
96 from type libraries and other modules is to use namespace::clean or
97 namespace::autoclean.
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100 Moose has a feature called "immutabilization" that you can use to
101 greatly speed up your classes at runtime. However, using it does incur
102 a cost when your class is first being loaded. When you make your class
103 immutable you tell Moose that you will not be changing it in the
104 future. You will not be adding any more attributes, methods, roles,
105 etc.
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107 This allows Moose to generate code specific to your class. In
108 particular, it creates an "inline" constructor, making object
109 construction much faster.
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111 To make your class immutable you simply call "make_immutable" on your
112 class's metaclass object.
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114 __PACKAGE__->meta->make_immutable;
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116 Immutabilization and "new()"
117 If you override "new()" in your class, then the immutabilization code
118 will not be able to provide an optimized constructor for your class.
119 Instead, you should use a "BUILD()" method, which will be called from
120 the inlined constructor.
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122 Alternately, if you really need to provide a different "new()", you can
123 also provide your own immutabilization method. Doing so requires
124 extending the Moose metaclasses, and is well beyond the scope of this
125 manual.
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128 Dave Rolsky <autarch@urth.org>
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131 Copyright 2008-2009 by Infinity Interactive, Inc.
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133 <http://www.iinteractive.com>
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135 This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
136 under the same terms as Perl itself.
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140perl v5.12.2 2010-08-20 Moose::Manual::Classes(3)