Can't locate object method- Issue

[perl_noobie]

Hi, I'm new to OO perl and encountering the "Can't locate object method" issue. I have 2 classes with 2 subclasses under each of them - Person - Baby - Adult - Employee - IT - Finance I'm creating an obj for the Employee Subclass and based on the age of the employee, i'm loading a subclass from person. But i'm not able to call any method from the Person subclass. Posted my code below. Can someone please help? PS: Please note that each package is an individual file

 
package Person;
use strict;
use warnings;

sub new {
    my $class = shift;
    my $self1 = {
    NAME => "erere",
    AGE => 233,
    @_,
    };
    
    my $pkg;
    my $age = $self1->{AGE};
    if ($age < 20) {
    $pkg = "Person::Baby";
    } else {
    $pkg = "Person::Adult";
    }
    
        eval "require $pkg";
    my $function_name = $pkg . "::new";
    my $func_ref      = \&$function_name;
    my $self          = $func_ref->($class, %$self1);
    return bless $self, $pkg;

}

sub sayHello {
    print "Hello from some Person\n";
}

1;

package Person::Adult;

use strict;
use warnings;

use Exporter;
use base ("Person");

use vars qw(@EXPORT @EXPORT_OK %EXPORT_TAGS);
@EXPORT = qw(
        sayHi
);


sub new {
    my $class = shift;
    my $self = {
    NAME => "erere",
    AGE => 233,
    @_,
    };
    
    bless($self, "Adult");
    
    return $self;
}

sub sayHi {
    my $self = shift;
    print "######## Adult says Hi !!!!!!!\n";
    return;
}

1;

package Person::Baby;
use strict;
use warnings;

use vars qw(@EXPORT @EXPORT_OK %EXPORT_TAGS);
@EXPORT = qw(
        sayHi
);


use base ("Person");

use Exporter;

sub new {
    my $class = shift;
    my $self = {
    NAME => "erere",
    AGE => 233,
    @_,
    };
    
    bless($self, "Baby");
    
    return $self;
}

sub sayHi {
    my $self = shift;
    print "######## Baby says Hi !!!!!!!\n";
}
1;


package Employee;
use strict;
use warnings;

use base ("Person");

sub new {
    my $class = shift;
    my $self1 = {
    NAME => "nghnh",
    AGE => 23,
    @_,
    };
    
    my $pkg;
    my $dept = $self1->{DEPT};
    if ($dept =~ /IT/i) {
    $pkg = "Employee::IT";
    } else {
    $pkg = "Employee::Finance";
    }
    
    eval "require $pkg";
    my $function_name = $pkg . "::new";
    my $func_ref      = \&$function_name;
    my $self          = $func_ref->($class, %$self1);
    return bless $self, $pkg;

}

1;


package Employee::IT;
use strict;
use warnings;

use base ("Employee", "Person");

sub new {
    my $class = shift;
    my $self = {
    NAME => "erere",
    DEPT => "IT",
    AGE => 23,
    @_,
    };
    
    bless($self, "IT");
    
        
    my $age = $self->{AGE};
    if ($age < 20) {
    eval "require Person::Baby";
    import Person::Baby;
    } else {
    eval "require Person::Adult";
    import Person::Adult;
    }

    return $self;
}


1;


package Employee::Finance;
use strict;
use warnings;

use base ("Employee", "Person");

sub new {
    my $class = shift;
    my $self = {
    NAME => "erere",
    DEPT => "Finance",
    AGE => 23,
    @_,
    };
    
    bless($self, "Finance");
    
        
    my $age = $self->{AGE};
    if ($age < 20) {
    eval "require Person::Baby";
    import Person::Baby;
    } else {
    eval "require Person::Adult";
    import Person::Adult;
    }

    return $self;
}

1;

below is my test code

use Employee;

my $qq = Employee->new(
    NAME => "rtrtr",
    AGE => 54,
    DEPT => "IT",
);
$qq->sayHello();

$qq->sayHi();

my $qw = Employee->new(
    NAME => "rtrtr",
    AGE => 25,
    DEPT => "FINANCE",
);
$qw->sayHi();

I'm getting an error "Can't locate object method "sayHi" via package "Employee::IT""

[tobyink]

This is wrong in just so many ways.

1. Firstly, just scrap all the import/export stuff. It will not do what you want it to do. Exporting and object-oriented programming have nothing to with each other.

   There are many people who claim that you ought never do both of them in the same package. I personally wouldn't go that far, but in your example there's really no need for any exporting, and I'd suggest that you lay off trying to combine exporting and OO until you're more comfortable with OO concepts.

2. Secondly, a related issue: this eval "require Person::Baby"; import Person::Baby; stuff ain't gonna work. You appear to be wanting to set up something like per-object inheritance. Not gonna happen. Inheritance in Perl happens on a per-class basis; not per-object. However, you may be able to accomplish what you want using run-time application of roles to objects. (See Role::Tiny, Moo::Role, Moose::Role, etc.)

3. Thirdly, you're blessing most of your objects incorrectly. As an example, you have a package called "Person::Adult", but then bless objects into a package called just "Adult".

4. I don't know how to continue. But there is plenty of other weird stuff you're doing. Please find a tutorial on OO Perl. You won't find any mention of all this import/export stuff. Pick up a copy of chromatic's book Modern Perl; IIRC is has some good stuff on OO programming. The Kindle edition costs but a few beans; the printed edition slightly more; but chromatic makes the HTML and PDF versions available online for free, so you can't say fairer than that, can you?

Anyway, here's how I'd do it using Moo and Moo::Role...

Read more... (4 kB)

Lastly, 19 year olds generally don't appreciate being referred to as babies.

Update: if you wanted to split the packages out into separate files, then you'd need to make sure they're all loaded...

Read more... (2 kB)

[perl_noobie]

Thanks for the implementation idea. Though the sample script that you have given works well if maintained in a single file, I tried splitting each package in a new file and this does not work as expected. Can someone help resolve this?

[tobyink]

See my recent update.

[Loops]

The Employee class is a subclass of Person which does not export a sayHi() method. If you make Employee a subclass of Person::Adult, the sayHi() method will be found. Alternatively you could just add a sayHi() method to Person.

[perl_noobie]

Employee is already a subclass of Person (by virtue of use base ("Person") in Employee module), and the actual subclass of Person( Adult or Baby) is imported via dynamic check condition. Can you pls point out in the code what changes is to be made?

[Corion]

You want to use

use Exporter 'import';

... if you really want to export methods into other parts of base classes.

Honestly, I do not think that mixing multiple inheritance, reblessing and exporting of subroutines in the way you are doing it will lead to a sane object/class structure. Maybe you can tell us more about the problem you are trying to solve with this conoction?

[choroba]

Importing (require) does not establish inheritance.

[Loops]

On top of everything said by those more experienced monks above, you need to be careful when blessing an object that it actually matches one of your package names...

    bless($self, "Adult");

should be...

    bless($self, "Person::Adult");

or even simple code that is not relying on your dynamic typing will fail:

my $a = Person::Adult->new(NAME => 'the hard way');
$a->sayHi();

[Anonymous Monk]

FWIW, baby/adult should not be subclass, but one of these $person->isBaby, $person->isAdult