Module ( method ) alias ?

[exilepanda]

Hi Monks, I have a module set to manage Video files for our Knowledge Management system. The interface is something like this

use ManVideo;
my $mv = new ManVideo( DB => $dbhRef );
$mv -> newVideoRecord ( Trainer => "someone", Year => 2011, VideoType 
+=> "training" );
$mv -> save();

And now, my next task is almost the same, and yet identical , but this time is for audio. So I may use the same framework, by giving different DB handle. However, although I can completely use ManVideo::* to do the job, however this is odd to use the same interface to write my source code for Audio like this : $audio = newVideoRecord ( ... )

So, is there any simple (and safe) hack, so that I can create another module set, namely ManAudio, looks like :

my $aud = new ManAudio;
$aud -> newAudioRecord( ..., AudioType => "meeting" ) ;# implement by 
+ManVideo::newVideoRecord;

One thing that might be a little complex is that I might need to do some pre-process on the arguments. As shown in above code is AudioType=>"meeting". I have to change AudioType to VideoType before passing to newVideoRecord(). ( This return me a list of authorize staffs to view/listen )

Thank you very much in advance for any clues.

[Anonymous Monk]

call'em inheritance

package AudioRecord;
use parent qw' ManVideo ';
sub new {
   my $class = shift;
   ...
   my $obj = $class->SUPER::new( @_ );
   ...
   return $obj;
}

my $rec = AudioRecord->new( ... );

perlootut, Modern Perl

[exilepanda]

Thanks for answering. However seems work out a bit weird..

ModB.pm

package ModB;
use parent qw'ModA';

sub new {
    my $c = shift;
    return $c->SUPER::new ( @_ ) ;    
}
1;

ModA.pm

package ModA;
sub new { return bless {}, shift }
sub p { print @_ }
1;

main.pl

use ModB;
my $b = ModB->new();
$b -> p ( "World!" ) ;

It prints ModB=HASH(0x182a5e4)World!. Don't know what am I missed. Also, could you explain a little what is SUPER:: referring to? Is it refer to where parent declared? And how can I inherit other methods with other method name?

Thanks again!

[Anonymous Monk]

The first two lines do it all, all the others are only if you want to change something , like swap AudioType with VideoType ), Modern Perl and perlootut explain everything else, just use Ctrl+F to search

[NetWallah]

Subclass and ALias (or call):

package ManAudio;
use base ManVideo;

sub newAudioRecord {$_[0]->{VideoType}=$_[0]->{AudioType};
                    ManVideo::newVideoRecord(@_)}
                    # There is probably a way to use __SUPER__ .. (Aha
+ - Anonymonk has obliged)
# Too lazy/too late  to figure out the *Alias syntax ,
#   which would be an alternative way of calling subs in the other pac
+kage

*Untested*

[scorpio17]

A better approach would be to create a ManMedia base class, then derive both ManAudio and ManVideo from that. ManMedia should contain everything common to both. Video specific stuff goes into ManVideo, and audio specific stuff goes into ManAudio.