Re^2: CGI::Application and object inheritance

[spork]

The code sample was condensed into generic form. In the real world the BAR set will be a group of common attributes and methods that will be used and extended be several FOOs. I believe this is a case of ISA, but OO use is new ground for me. Thank you for your help.

[donarb]

If you're going to be creating common methods for CGI::Application, you might want to instead create a subclass Bar which inherits from C::A. Then all of your other subclasses can inherit that functionality from Bar. I did this for a C::A I wrote. This main subclass handles sessions and authentication.

For more information on how to do this, see the C::A wiki:

http://twiki.med.yale.edu/twiki2/bin/view/CGIapp

You should also look at the C::A plugins, they add functionality without having to subclass.

[cees]

Just to clarify what donarb is stating, here is an example of how to better structure your code:

package Bar;

use base qw(CGI::Application);

sub useful_method {
  my $self = shift;

  # do something useful here
}

1;

package Foo;

use Base qw(Bar);
# By inheriting from Bar, we also inherit everything
# that Bar inherits, so you don't need to specifically
# mention CGI::Application in package Foo, since Bar
# deals with that for you

sub setup {
  my $self = shift;
  $self->run_modes(qw(runmode1 runmode2));
}

sub runmode1 {
  my $self = shift;

  my $results = $self->useful_method();

  ...
}

1;

So in the above example Bar would contain all of your useful methods and runmodes that all of your other application can share. Whereas Foo is the actual application that you load and run in your instance script