Provided by: libdbix-searchbuilder-perl_1.67-1_all bug

NAME

       DBIx::SearchBuilder::Record - Superclass for records loaded by SearchBuilder

SYNOPSIS

         package MyRecord;
         use base qw/DBIx::SearchBuilder::Record/;

         sub _Init {
             my $self       = shift;
             my $DBIxHandle =
               shift;    # A DBIx::SearchBuilder::Handle::foo object for your database

             $self->_Handle($DBIxHandle);
             $self->Table("Users");
         }

         # Tell Record what the primary keys are
         sub _PrimaryKeys {
             return ['id'];
         }

         # Preferred and most efficient way to specify fields attributes in a derived
         # class, used by the autoloader to construct Attrib and SetAttrib methods.

         # read: calling $Object->Foo will return the value of this record's Foo column
         # write: calling $Object->SetFoo with a single value will set Foo's value in
         #        both the loaded object and the database
         sub _ClassAccessible {
             {
                 Tofu => { 'read' => 1, 'write' => 1 },
                 Maz  => { 'auto' => 1, },
                 Roo => { 'read' => 1, 'auto' => 1, 'public' => 1, },
             };
         }

         # A subroutine to check a user's password without returning the current value
         # For security purposes, we didn't expose the Password method above
         sub IsPassword {
             my $self = shift;
             my $try  = shift;

             # note two __s in __Value.  Subclasses may muck with _Value, but
             # they should never touch __Value

             if ( $try eq $self->__Value('Password') ) {
                 return (1);
             }
             else {
                 return (undef);
             }
         }

         # Override DBIx::SearchBuilder::Create to do some checking on create
         sub Create {
             my $self   = shift;
             my %fields = (
                 UserId   => undef,
                 Password => 'default',    #Set a default password
                 @_
             );

             # Make sure a userid is specified
             unless ( $fields{'UserId'} ) {
                 die "No userid specified.";
             }

             # Get DBIx::SearchBuilder::Record->Create to do the real work
             return (
                 $self->SUPER::Create(
                     UserId   => $fields{'UserId'},
                     Password => $fields{'Password'},
                     Created  => time
                 )
             );
         }

DESCRIPTION

       DBIx::SearchBuilder::Record is designed to work with DBIx::SearchBuilder.

   What is it trying to do.
       DBIx::SearchBuilder::Record abstracts the agony of writing the common and generally simple
       SQL statements needed to serialize and De-serialize an object to the database.  In a
       traditional system, you would define various methods on your object 'create', 'find',
       'modify', and 'delete' being the most common.  In each method you would have a SQL
       statement like:

         select * from table where value='blah';

       If you wanted to control what data a user could modify, you would have to do some special
       magic to make accessors do the right thing. Etc.  The problem with this approach is that
       in a majority of the cases, the SQL is incredibly simple and the code from one
       method/object to the next was basically the same.

       <trumpets>

       Enter, DBIx::SearchBuilder::Record.

       With::Record, you can in the simple case, remove all of that code and replace it by
       defining two methods and inheriting some code.  Its pretty simple, and incredibly
       powerful.  For more complex cases, you can, gasp, do more complicated things by overriding
       certain methods.  Lets stick with the simple case for now.

       The two methods in question are '_Init' and '_ClassAccessible', all they really do are
       define some values and send you on your way.  As you might have guessed the '_' suggests
       that these are private methods, they are.  They will get called by your record objects
       constructor.

       '_Init'
           Defines what table we are talking about, and set a variable to store the database
           handle.

       '_ClassAccessible
           Defines what operations may be performed on various data selected from the database.
           For example you can define fields to be mutable, or immutable, there are a few other
           options but I don't understand what they do at this time.

       And really, that's it.  So lets have some sample code.

   An Annotated Example
       The example code below makes the following assumptions:

       •   The database is 'postgres',

       •   The host is 'reason',

       •   The login name is 'mhat',

       •   The database is called 'example',

       •   The table is called 'simple',

       •   The table looks like so:

                 id     integer     not NULL,   primary_key(id),
                 foo    varchar(10),
                 bar    varchar(10)

       First, let's define our record class in a new module named "Simple.pm".

         000: package Simple;
         001: use DBIx::SearchBuilder::Record;
         002: @ISA = (DBIx::SearchBuilder::Record);

       This should be pretty obvious, name the package, import ::Record and then define ourself
       as a subclass of ::Record.

         003:
         004: sub _Init {
         005:   my $this   = shift;
         006:   my $handle = shift;
         007:
         008:   $this->_Handle($handle);
         009:   $this->Table("Simple");
         010:
         011:   return ($this);
         012: }

       Here we set our handle and table name, while its not obvious so far, we'll see later that
       $handle (line: 006) gets passed via ::Record::new when a new instance is created.  That's
       actually an important concept, the DB handle is not bound to a single object but rather,
       its shared across objects.

         013:
         014: sub _ClassAccessible {
         015:   {
         016:     Foo => { 'read'  => 1 },
         017:     Bar => { 'read'  => 1, 'write' => 1  },
         018:     Id  => { 'read'  => 1 }
         019:   };
         020: }

       What's happening might be obvious, but just in case this method is going to return a
       reference to a hash. That hash is where our columns are defined, as well as what type of
       operations are acceptable.

         021:
         022: 1;

       Like all perl modules, this needs to end with a true value.

       Now, on to the code that will actually *do* something with this object.  This code would
       be placed in your Perl script.

         000: use DBIx::SearchBuilder::Handle;
         001: use Simple;

       Use two packages, the first is where I get the DB handle from, the latter is the object I
       just created.

         002:
         003: my $handle = DBIx::SearchBuilder::Handle->new();
         004:    $handle->Connect( 'Driver'   => 'Pg',
         005:                    'Database' => 'test',
         006:                    'Host'     => 'reason',
         007:                    'User'     => 'mhat',
         008:                    'Password' => '');

       Creates a new DBIx::SearchBuilder::Handle, and then connects to the database using that
       handle.  Pretty straight forward, the password '' is what I use when there is no password.
       I could probably leave it blank, but I find it to be more clear to define it.

         009:
         010: my $s = Simple->new($handle);
         011:
         012: $s->LoadById(1);

       LoadById is one of four 'LoadBy' methods,  as the name suggests it searches for an row in
       the database that has id='0'.  ::SearchBuilder has, what I think is a bug, in that it
       current requires there to be an id field. More reasonably it also assumes that the id
       field is unique. LoadById($id) will do undefined things if there is >1 row with the same
       id.

       In addition to LoadById, we also have:

       LoadByCol
           Takes two arguments, a column name and a value.  Again, it will do undefined things if
           you use non-unique things.

       LoadByCols
           Takes a hash of columns=>values and returns the *first* to match.  First is probably
           lossy across databases vendors.

       LoadFromHash
           Populates this record with data from a DBIx::SearchBuilder.  I'm currently assuming
           that DBIx::SearchBuilder is what we use in cases where we expect > 1 record.  More on
           this later.

       Now that we have a populated object, we should do something with it! ::Record
       automagically generates accessos and mutators for us, so all we need to do is call the
       methods.  Accessors are named <Field>(), and Mutators are named Set<Field>($).  On to the
       example, just appending this to the code from the last example.

         013:
         014: print "ID  : ", $s->Id(),  "\n";
         015: print "Foo : ", $s->Foo(), "\n";
         016: print "Bar : ", $s->Bar(), "\n";

       That's all you have to to get the data, now to change the data!

         017:
         018: $s->SetBar('NewBar');

       Pretty simple! That's really all there is to it.  Set<Field>($) returns a boolean and a
       string describing the problem.  Lets look at an example of what will happen if we try to
       set a 'Id' which we previously defined as read only.

         019: my ($res, $str) = $s->SetId('2');
         020: if (! $res) {
         021:   ## Print the error!
         022:   print "$str\n";
         023: }

       The output will be:

         >> Immutable field

       Currently Set<Field> updates the data in the database as soon as you call it.  In the
       future I hope to extend ::Record to better support transactional operations, such that
       updates will only happen when "you" say so.

       Finally, adding a removing records from the database.  ::Record provides a Create method
       which simply takes a hash of key=>value pairs.  The keys exactly   map to database fields.

         023: ## Get a new record object.
         024: $s1 = Simple->new($handle);
         025: $s1->Create('Id'  => 4,
         026:             'Foo' => 'Foooooo',
         027:             'Bar' => 'Barrrrr');

       Poof! A new row in the database has been created!  Now lets delete the object!

         028:
         029: $s1 = undef;
         030: $s1 = Simple->new($handle);
         031: $s1->LoadById(4);
         032: $s1->Delete();

       And its gone.

       For simple use, that's more or less all there is to it.  In the future, I hope to exapand
       this HowTo to discuss using container classes,  overloading, and what ever else I think
       of.

METHOD NAMING

       Each method has a lower case alias; '_' is used to separate words.  For example, the
       method "_PrimaryKeys" has the alias "_primary_keys".

METHODS

   new
       Instantiate a new record object.

   id
       Returns this row's primary key.

   primary_keys
   PrimaryKeys
       Return a hash of the values of our primary keys for this function.

   _Accessible KEY MODE
       Private method.

       Returns undef unless "KEY" is accessible in "MODE" otherwise returns "MODE" value

   _PrimaryKeys
       Return our primary keys. (Subclasses should override this, but our default is that we have
       one primary key, named 'id'.)

   _ClassAccessible
       An older way to specify fields attributes in a derived class.  (The current preferred
       method is by overriding "Schema"; if you do this and don't override "_ClassAccessible",
       the module will generate an appropriate "_ClassAccessible" based on your "Schema".)

       Here's an example declaration:

         sub _ClassAccessible {
           {
                Tofu  => { 'read'=>1, 'write'=>1 },
                Maz   => { 'auto'=>1, },
                Roo   => { 'read'=>1, 'auto'=>1, 'public'=>1, },
           };
         }

   ReadableAttributes
       Returns an array of the attributes of this class defined as "read" => 1 in this class'
       _ClassAccessible datastructure

   WritableAttributes
       Returns an array of the attributes of this class defined as "write" => 1 in this class'
       _ClassAccessible datastructure

   __Value
       Takes a field name and returns that field's value. Subclasses should never override
       __Value.

   _Value
       _Value takes a single column name and returns that column's value for this row.
       Subclasses can override _Value to insert custom access control.

   _Set
       _Set takes a single column name and a single unquoted value.  It updates both the in-
       memory value of this column and the in-database copy.  Subclasses can override _Set to
       insert custom access control.

   _Canonicalize PARAMHASH
       This routine massages an input value (VALUE) for FIELD into something that's going to be
       acceptable.

       Takes

       FIELD
       VALUE
       FUNCTION

       Takes:

       FIELD
       VALUE
       FUNCTION

       Returns a replacement VALUE.

   _Validate FIELD VALUE
       Validate that VALUE will be an acceptable value for FIELD.

       Currently, this routine does nothing whatsoever.

       If it succeeds (which is always the case right now), returns true. Otherwise returns
       false.

   TruncateValue  KEY VALUE
       Truncate a value that's about to be set so that it will fit inside the database' s idea of
       how big the column is.

       (Actually, it looks at SearchBuilder's concept of the database, not directly into the db).

   _Object
       _Object takes a single column name and an array reference.  It creates new object instance
       of class specified in _ClassAccessable structure and calls LoadById on recently created
       object with the current column value as argument. It uses the array reference as the
       object constructor's arguments.  Subclasses can override _Object to insert custom access
       control or define default constructor arguments.

       Note that if you are using a "Schema" with a "REFERENCES" field, this is unnecessary: the
       method to access the column's value will automatically turn it into the appropriate
       object.

   Load
       Takes a single argument, $id. Calls LoadById to retrieve the row whose primary key is $id

   LoadByCol
       Takes two arguments, a column and a value. The column can be any table column which
       contains unique values.  Behavior when using a non-unique value is undefined

   LoadByCols
       Takes a hash of columns and values. Loads the first record that matches all keys.

       The hash's keys are the columns to look at.

       The hash's values are either: scalar values to look for OR has references which contain
       'operator' and 'value'

   LoadById
       Loads a record by its primary key. Your record class must define a single primary key
       column.

   LoadByPrimaryKeys
       Like LoadById with basic support for compound primary keys.

   LoadFromHash
       Takes a hashref, such as created by DBIx::SearchBuilder and populates this record's loaded
       values hash.

   _LoadFromSQL QUERYSTRING @BIND_VALUES
       Load a record as the result of an SQL statement

   Create
       Takes an array of key-value pairs and drops any keys that aren't known as columns for this
       recordtype

   Delete
       Delete this record from the database. On failure return a Class::ReturnValue with the
       error. On success, return 1;

   Table
       Returns or sets the name of the current Table

   _Handle
       Returns or sets the current DBIx::SearchBuilder::Handle object

AUTHOR

       Jesse Vincent, <jesse@fsck.com>

       Enhancements by Ivan Kohler, <ivan-rt@420.am>

       Docs by Matt Knopp <mhat@netlag.com>

SEE ALSO

       DBIx::SearchBuilder