comment on

I'm writing a content delivery system based on the Template Toolkit but with additional functionality added for configuration etc.

One feature that I am working on is to allow plugins to modify the program data as I move from one stage of the application to the next. This is in its early stages and I intend to make this as safe as possible by controlling program access as much as possible.

Currently, I am using 'require' and then 'import' to dynamically load my module and then run three predefined object methods. This is done within an eval block but I feel a little uncomfortable about that (as you can imagine :P). <bt>
Using 'safe' seems to be the answer to my problems as I can expose a single API object to the plugin compartment and control access (unless someone has a better idea?) but not having used it before I was wanting some advice.

Heres the current code where I'm using 'eval':

# --------------------------------------------------------
# Build the environment var. for the plugins
# --------------------------------------------------------

my $environment = {
    'parser_conf'    =>    $conf,
    'vars_conf'        =>    $vars
};

# Stage, environment hash, config object
runPlugin('2',$environment,$plugin_config);
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# ---------------------------------------------------------
# runPlugin
# ~~~~~~~~~
# Runs a plugin at a given stage of the content engine 
# phase. Expects the stage,
# the environment and the plugin configuration as 
# parameters.
# ---------------------------------------------------------

sub runPlugin
{
    my $setting = shift;
    my $environment = shift;
    my $plugin_config = shift;
    
    return unless defined $setting;
    return unless defined $environment;
    return unless defined $plugin_config;

    if(defined($plugin_config->setting($setting)))
    {
        # We have a winner
        my $module = $plugin_config->setting($setting);
        $module =~ s/\.(pm|PM)$//;
        eval{
            # Import - create object - run code
            my $mainmodule = "Plugins/Core/" .$module . ".pm";

            require $mainmodule; 
            import $mainmodule;

            my $obj = $module->new();
            $obj->run(
                $environment
            );
        
            $obj->closedown();
        };
        if($@)
        {
        # Log this or something         
        }
    }
}
[download]

Thanks!

In reply to Mileage with safe by simon.proctor

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