Provided by: libapp-cmd-perl_0.331-1_all bug

NAME

       App::Cmd::Tutorial - getting started with App::Cmd

VERSION

       version 0.331

DESCRIPTION

       App::Cmd is a set of tools designed to make it simple to write sophisticated command line
       programs.  It handles commands with multiple subcommands, generates usage text, validates
       options, and lets you write your program as easy-to-test classes.

       An App::Cmd-based application is made up of three main parts:  the script, the application
       class, and the command classes.

   The Script
       The script is the actual executable file run at the command line.  It can generally
       consist of just a few lines:

         #!/usr/bin/perl
         use YourApp;
         YourApp->run;

   The Application Class
       All the work of argument parsing, validation, and dispatch is taken care of by your
       application class.  The application class can also be pretty simple, and might look like
       this:

         package YourApp;
         use App::Cmd::Setup -app;
         1;

       When a new application instance is created, it loads all of the command classes it can
       find, looking for modules under the Command namespace under its own name.  In the above
       snippet, for example, YourApp will look for any module with a name starting with
       "YourApp::Command::".

   The Command Classes
       We can set up a simple command class like this:

         # ABSTRACT: set up YourApp
         package YourApp::Command::initialize;
         use YourApp -command;
         1;

       Now, a user can run this command, but he'll get an error:

         $ yourcmd initialize
         YourApp::Command::initialize does not implement mandatory method 'execute'

       Oops!  This dies because we haven't told the command class what it should do when
       executed.  This is easy, we just add some code:

         sub execute {
           my ($self, $opt, $args) = @_;

           print "Everything has been initialized.  (Not really.)\n";
         }

       Now it works:

         $ yourcmd initialize
         Everything has been initialized.  (Not really.)

   Default Commands
       By default applications made with App::Cmd know two commands: "commands" and "help".

       commands
           lists available commands.

             $yourcmd commands
             Available commands:

               commands: list the application's commands
                   help: display a command's help screen

                   init: set up YourApp

           Note that by default the commands receive a description from the "# ABSTRACT" comment
           in the respective command's module, or from the "=head1 NAME" Pod section.

       help
           allows one to query for details on command's specifics.

             $yourcmd help initialize
              yourcmd initialize [-z] [long options...]

                     -z --zero        ignore zeros

           Of course, it's possible to disable or change the default commands, see App::Cmd.

   Arguments and Options
       In this example

         $ yourcmd reset -zB --new-seed xyzxy foo.db bar.db

       "-zB" and "--new-seed xyzxy" are "options" and "foo.db" and "bar.db" are "arguments."

       With a properly configured command class, the above invocation results in nicely formatted
       data:

         $opt = {
           zero      => 1,
           no_backup => 1, #default value
           new_seed  => 'xyzzy',
         };

         $args = [ qw(foo.db bar.db) ];

       Arguments are processed by Getopt::Long::Descriptive (GLD).  To customize its argument
       processing, a command class can implement a few methods: "usage_desc" provides the usage
       format string; "opt_spec" provides the option specification list; "validate_args" is run
       after Getopt::Long::Descriptive, and is meant to validate the $args, which GLD ignores.
       See Getopt::Long for format specifications.

       The first two methods provide configuration passed to GLD's "describe_options" routine.
       To improve our command class, we might add the following code:

         sub usage_desc { "yourcmd %o [dbfile ...]" }

         sub opt_spec {
           return (
             [ "skip-refs|R",  "skip reference checks during init", ],
             [ "values|v=s@",  "starting values", { default => [ 0, 1, 3 ] } ],
           );
         }

         sub validate_args {
           my ($self, $opt, $args) = @_;

           # we need at least one argument beyond the options; die with that message
           # and the complete "usage" text describing switches, etc
           $self->usage_error("too few arguments") unless @$args;
         }

   Global Options
       There are several ways of making options available everywhere (globally). This recipe
       makes local options accessible in all commands.

       To add a "--help" option to all your commands create a base class like:

         package MyApp::Command;
         use App::Cmd::Setup -command;

         sub opt_spec {
           my ( $class, $app ) = @_;
           return (
             [ 'help' => "this usage screen" ],
             $class->options($app),
           )
         }

         sub validate_args {
           my ( $self, $opt, $args ) = @_;
           if ( $opt->{help} ) {
             my ($command) = $self->command_names;
             $self->app->execute_command(
               $self->app->prepare_command("help", $command)
             );
             exit;
           }
           $self->validate( $opt, $args );
         }

       Where "options" and "validate" are "inner" methods which your command subclasses implement
       to provide command-specific options and validation.

       Note: this is a new file, previously not mentioned in this tutorial and this tip does not
       recommend the use of global_opt_spec which offers an alternative way of specifying global
       options.

TIPS

       •   Delay using large modules using Class::Load, Module::Runtime or "require" in your
           commands to save memory and make startup faster. Since only one of these commands will
           be run anyway, there's no need to preload the requirements for all of them.

       •   Add a "description" method to your commands for more verbose output from the built-in
           help command.

             sub description {
               return "The initialize command prepares ...";
             }

       •   To let your users configure default values for options, put a sub like

             sub config {
               my $app = shift;
               $app->{config} ||= TheLovelyConfigModule->load_config_file();
             }

           in your main app file, and then do something like:

             package YourApp;
             sub opt_spec {
               my ( $class, $app ) = @_;
               my ( $name ) = $class->command_names;
               return (
                 [ 'blort=s' => "That special option",
                   { default => $app->config->{$name}{blort} || $fallback_default },
                 ],
               );
             }

           Or better yet, put this logic in a superclass and process the return value from an
           "inner" method:

             package YourApp::Command;
             sub opt_spec {
               my ( $class, $app ) = @_;
               return (
                 [ 'help' => "this usage screen" ],
                 $class->options($app),
               )
             }

       •   You need to activate "strict" and "warnings" as usual if you want them.  App::Cmd
           doesn't do that for you.

IGNORING THINGS

       Some people find that for whatever reason, they wish to put Modules in their
       "MyApp::Command::" namespace which are not commands, or not commands intended for use by
       "MyApp".

       Good examples include, but are not limited to, things like
       "MyApp::Command::frobrinate::Plugin::Quietly", where "::Quietly" is only useful for the
       "frobrinate" command.

       The default behaviour is to treat such packages as errors, as for the majority of use
       cases, things in "::Command" are expected to only be commands, and thus, anything that, by
       our heuristics, is not a command, is highly likely to be a mistake.

       And as all commands are loaded simultaneously, an error in any one of these commands will
       yield a fatal error.

       There are a few ways to specify that you are sure you want to do this, with varying ranges
       of scope and complexity.

   Ignoring a Single Module.
       This is the simplest approach, and most useful for one-offs.

         package YourApp::Command::foo::NotACommand;

         use YourApp -ignore;

         <whatever you want here>

       This will register this package's namespace with YourApp to be excluded from its plugin
       validation magic. It otherwise makes no changes to "::NotACommand"'s namespace, does
       nothing magical with @ISA, and doesn't bolt any hidden functions on.

       Its also probably good to notice that it is ignored only by "YourApp". If for whatever
       reason you have two different "App::Cmd" systems under which "::NotACommand" is visible,
       you'll need to set it ignored to both.

       This is probably a big big warning NOT to do that.

   Ignoring Multiple modules from the App level.
       If you really fancy it, you can override the "should_ignore" method provided by "App::Cmd"
       to tweak its ignore logic. The most useful example of this is as follows:

         sub should_ignore {
           my ( $self, $command_class ) = @_;
           return 1 if not $command_class->isa( 'App::Cmd::Command' );
           return;
         }

       This will prematurely mark for ignoring all packages that don't subclass
       "App::Cmd::Command", which causes non-commands ( or perhaps commands that are coded
       wrongly / broken ) to be silently skipped.

       Note that by overriding this method, you will lose the effect of any of the other ignore
       mechanisms completely. If you want to combine the original "should_ignore" method with
       your own logic, you'll want to steal "Moose"'s "around" method modifier.

         use Moose::Util;

         Moose::Util::add_method_modifier( __PACKAGE__, 'around', [
           should_ignore => sub {
             my $orig = shift;
             my $self = shift;
             return 1 if not $command_class->isa( 'App::Cmd::Command' );
             return $self->$orig( @_ );
         }]);

SEE ALSO

       CPAN modules using App::Cmd <http://deps.cpantesters.org/depended-on-
       by.pl?module=App%3A%3ACmd>

AUTHOR

       Ricardo Signes <rjbs@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

       This software is copyright (c) 2016 by Ricardo Signes.

       This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as
       the Perl 5 programming language system itself.