Passing a data structure via a dynamically-built subroutine call

[Tanalis]

Monks,

I am currently working on a web-based portal-style application that must be capable of importing a number of services (modules) at run-time.

Each service provides different functionality, for example a hook into an existing system to allow data to be aggregated, or providing some completely new functionality.

The portal system under construction makes use of a fixed interface, implemented and extended by each service to allow the portal to dynamically determine each service's interface at run-time. For example, Service X might implement methods get_legacy_data and update_legacy_data, returning a description of these methods via a call to the required get_service_interface method.

For the majority of method calls, a simple list of parameters is passed, using the following code:

sub call_service {
   my $svc  = shift;
   my $cmd  = shift;
   my @args = @_;

   foreach ( @args ) { $_ = "\"$_\"" }
   my $arg = join ",", @args;
    
   return eval $svc . "::" . $cmd . "(" . $arg . ")";
}

My problem comes where I need to pass a data structure, rather than a flat list of elements, into some service, for example an array of arrays. The method above simply converts each array in the structure into a string, which obviously isn't the intended result.

Can anyone suggest a way of changing the sub above to allow more complex data structures to be passed?

Thanks in advance,