construct a standard object oriented program

[benlaw]

hi , monks!
i 'd like to build up a class file, i try to search the related topic from web , camel book and black book~
in conclude , i found it's many style for building a Class

is it any standard format for building a class?

is "sub new{ " is 'must' declare for building a class?

[cjf]

Perl Object Oriented Meta-Tutorial provides several good sources of information on object oriented programming with Perl. If you're looking for a good book on the subject, check out Object Oriented Perl by TheDamian.

Update: There are a bunch more OO tutorials in the (you guessed it) Tutorials section as well :).

[rdfield]

The best place to start would be perlboot and perltoot.

rdfield

[chhe]

Basically the perl features specific to object-orientation are not many. The rest is a application of a collection of conventions, style and idioms, which is why from my point of view the perl approach is so exciting.

To define a class in perl from which objects can be created and against which functions can be called, you basically need a perl module with a constructor function, which can be named as you like - conventionally "new" -, you need to "bless" a datastructure of the module and return the "blessed" datastructure from the constructor. The returned "blessed" datastructure, can now be treated like a "object", in such that functions can be called upon it. The "methods" or functions of a blessed "Class" get the instance data of the object always a first parameter.

The rest is as said very a matter of style and idioms, also inheritance, which is not specifically supported by perl, but with a more general approach, through the @ISA mechanism, where when a function is not found the "objects" package it looks up the @ISA variable for other packages to lookup.

The fact that much of perls object-orientation is very much a matter of style and idioms is a powerful feature, because you are flexible in terms of design decisions: You make decisions very much depending in the context of your application needs. There are idioms for: different ways of representing an object, addressing privacy, automatically generating accessors methods, object destruction, functions being both class and instance methods, efficient ways of storing attribut data, debugging, loading objects at runtime, runtime dispatch of function calls etc.

Also there are modules, which support some of these idioms ready to use, like ObjectTemplate and others.

All this has been decribed, as my colleque commentors have already observed, in other places much better.

[orkysoft]

To define a class in perl from which objects can be created and against which functions can be called, you basically need a perl module with a constructor function,

No, you need a namespace -- defined with packagename;

I've defined a class (albeit a very, very small one) inside of a larger file once.

Lur: "But if this cape shrinks, consider your species extinct!"

[chhe]

Correct, that wasn't precise: you can have as many classes you want in a file - the reason for bless taking an optional additional parameter...., well i said basically....

Chris

[darksym]

Using sub new as a constructor isn't mandatory although it may make sense for purposes of uniformity. sub new {} could just as easily be sub creatething {} as described in the perl manual pages: perlobj, perlmod, perltoot. Recommended reading. If you want even more info, pickup a copy of the book "Programming Perl" (the irreverent Camel Book). This is a good starting point. Also, take a look at other's modules. Learning by example.

[Anonymous Monk]

... and since you want to build a class (or module, in Perl-ish), you definitely must start with h2xs. This will create automatically, the skeleton of your module and is a really time saver.

Regards,

[benlaw]

h2xs , oh what is it??
mm, i haven't hear before !

i try to execute the command... wor, it seems quite difficult for me ~ hehe , is there any example for h2xs? thx!

[jeffa]

"h2xs builds a Perl extension from C header files"

That's what 'man h2xs' says - you should read it for yourself, but in the meantime, try this command:

h2xs -A -X FooBar

And look inside the newly created directory (FooBar) for a pleasant surprise. ;)

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

[Anonymous Monk]

It really doesn't matter what you call it. I tend to give it a name in context with the name of the module. For instance, I am writing a wrapper around DBI.pm to handle all my database calls and I call the instantiating subroutine connect.

What is important is that you have a sub that blesses a hash. Objects are really hash references and blessing allows them to call subs from their module as well as the information stored within them.

To be specific, you need:

#...
my $self = bless {};
#...
return $self;
#

Note that 'return $self' is not required if bless is on the last line of your code and you don't assign the bless to a scalar.

Hope that helps!

[PrakashK]

What is important is that you have a sub that blesses a hash. Objects are really hash references ...

Objects need not be hash references. Rather, any reference whose referent has been bless()ed into a particular class (read: package). The reference may be an array reference, scalar reference or even a reference to a subroutine.

/prakash

[Anonymous Monk]

I wrote a simple OO tutorial a while ago, perhaps it can help you. look for it on http://japh.nu/index.cgi?base=tuts hth, -kane

[benlaw]

oh sorry i can't go there~