OOP + RDBMS == :D

[simeon2000]

in reply to How to structure applications using a RDBMS

My personal favorite DB application design model is OOP. I usually end up making an object with the same field names as the database table to represent each object.

pseudo:

package Project::User;

my @FIELDS = qw /name age sex passwd/;
sub new {
    my $type = shift;
    my $dar = shift or return undef; # data array ref, usually
                                     # a fetchrow_arrayref

    if (ref $dar = array) {
         # they already pulled the data, we're just holding
         # it for display or an update
    } elsif ($dar =~ /^\d+$/) {
         # if it's a unique ID, pull the data from the db
    } else {
         # it's just empty, we're empty
    }

    my %init = ();
    my @init{ @FIELDS } = @$dar;
    
}

sub pullFromDB {
    my $self = shift;
    my $uid = shift or return undef;
    # sql code to pull from DB
}

sub dbSync {
    my $self = shift;
    # db commit stuff here
}

sub assignArgs {
    my $self = shift;
    # utility function to assign data values to object properties
}

... ok that's a bit much to write out, but I hope it presents the basic ideas I've used. Usually the object is used like

$user = new Project::User($uid); or $user = new Project::User($sql->fetchrow_arrayref); It makes it very easy to operate on the front-end. Or perhaps it's just needlessly complex :P