Provided by: librest-application-perl_0.992-2_all bug

NAME

       REST::Application - A framework for building RESTful web-applications.

SYNOPSIS

           # MyRESTApp REST::Application instance / mod_perl handler
           package MyRESTApp;
           use Apache;
           use Apache::Constants qw(:common);

           sub handler {
               __PACKAGE__->new(request => $r)->run();
               return OK;
           }

           sub getMatchText { return Apache->uri }

           sub setup {
               my $self = shift;
               $self->resourceHooks(
                   qr{/rest/parts/(\d+)} => 'get_part',
                   # ... other handlers here ...
               );
           }

           sub get_part {
               my ($self, $part_num) = @_;
               # Business logic to retrieve part num
           }

           # Apache conf
           <Location /rest>
               perl-script .cgi
               PerlHandler MyRESTApp
           </Location>

DESCRIPTION

       This module acts as a base class for applications which implement a RESTful interface.
       When an HTTP request is received some dispatching logic in REST::Application is invoked,
       calling different handlers based on what the kind of HTTP request it was (i.e. GET, PUT,
       etc) and what resource it was trying to access.  This module won't ensure that your API is
       RESTful but hopefully it will aid in developing a REST API.

OVERVIEW

       The following list describes the basic way this module is intended to be used.  It does
       not capture everything the module can do.

       1. Subclass
               Subclass REST::Application, i.e. "use base 'REST::Application'".

       2. Overload "setup()"
               Overload the "setup()" method and set up some resource hooks with the
               "resourceHooks()" method.  Hooks are mappings of the form:

                           REGEX => handler

               where handler is either a method name, a code reference, an object which supports
               a method with the same name as the HTTP method (or "getResource" if no such
               method), or a reference to an array of the form: "[$objectRef, "methodName"]"
               ($objectRef can be a class name instead).

               The regular expressions are applied, by default, to the path info of the HTTP
               request.  Anything captured by parens in the regex will be passed into the handler
               as arguments.

               For example:

                   qr{/parts/(\d+)$} => "getPartByNumber",

               The above hook will call a method named "getPartByNumber" on the current object
               (i.e. $self, an instance of REST::Application) if the path info of the requested
               URI matches the above regular expression.  The first argument to the method will
               be the part number, since that's the first element captured in the regular
               expression.

       3. Write code.
               Write the code for the handler specified above.  So here we'd define the
               "getPartByNumber" method.

       4. Create a handler/loader.
               Create an Apache handler, for example:

                   use MyRESTApp;
                   sub handler {
                       my $r = shift;
                       my $app = MyRESTApp->new(request => $r);
                       $app->run();
                   }

               or a small CGI script with the following code:

                   #!/usr/bin/perl
                   use MyRESTApp;
                   MyRESTApp->new()->run();

               In the second case, for a CGI script, you'll probably need to do something special
               to get Apache to load up your script unless you give it a .cgi extension.  It
               would be unRESTful to allow your script to have a .cgi extension, so you should go
               the extra mile and configure Apache to run your script without it.  For example,
               it'd be bad to have your users go to:

                   http://www.foo.tld/parts.cgi/12345.html

       5. Call the "run()" method.
               When the "run()" method is called the path info is extracted from the HTTP
               request.  The regexes specified in step 2 are processed, in order, and if one
               matches then the handler is called.  If the regex had paren. matching then the
               matched elements are passed into the handler.  A handler is also passed a copy of
               the REST::Application object instance (except for the case when the handler is a
               method on the REST::Application object, in that case it'd be redundant).  So, when
               writing a subroutine handler you'd do:

                           sub rest_handler {
                               my ($rest, @capturedArgs) = @_;
                               ...
                           }

       6. Return a representation of the resource.
               The handler is processed and should return a string or a scalar reference to a
               string.  Optionally the handler should set any header information via the
               "header()" method on instance object pased in.

CALLING ORDER

       The REST::Application base class provides a good number of methods, each of which can be
       overloaded.  By default you only need to overload the "setup()" method but you may wish to
       overload others.  To help with this the following outline is the calling order of the
       various methods in the base class.  You can find detailed descriptions of each method in
       the METHODS section of this document.

       If a method is followed by the string NOOP then that means it does nothing by default and
       it exists only to be overloaded.

           new()
               setup() - NOOP
           run()
               preRun() - NOOP
               loadResource()
                   getMatchText()
                       getPathInfo()
                           query()
                               defaultQueryObject()
                   defaultResourceHandler() - NOOP
                   resourceHooks()
                   checkMatch()
                       _setLastRegexMatches()
                   _getHandlerFromHook()
                       resourceHooks()
                       defaultResourceHandler() - NOOP
                       getRequestMethod()
                           query()
                               defaultQueryObject()
                       bestContentType()
                           simpleContentNegotiation
                               getContentPrefs
                                   getAcceptHeader
                               scoreType()
                   callHandler()
                       getHandlerArgs
                           _getLastRegexMatches()
                           extraHandlerArgs()
                       preHandler() - NOOP
                       ... your handler called here ...
                       postHandler() - NOOP
               postRun() - NOOP
               getHeaders()
                   headerType()
                   query()
                       defaultQueryObject()
                   header()
               addRepresentation()

       The only methods not called as part of the new() or run() methods are the helper methods
       "resetHeader()" and "setRedirect()", both of which call the "header()" and "headerType()"
       methods.

       For example, if you wanted to have your code branch on the entire URI of the HTTP request
       rather than just the path info you'd merely overload "getMatchText()" to return the URI
       rather than the path info.

METHODS

       new(%args)

       This method creates a new REST::Application object and returns it.  The arguments passed
       in via %args, if any, are passed untouched to the "setup()" method.

       query([$newCGI])

       This accessor/mutator retrieves the current CGI query object or sets it if one is passed
       in.

       defaultQueryObject([$newCGI])

       This method retrieves/sets the default query object.  This method is called if "query()"
       is called for the first time and no query object has been set yet.

       resourceHooks([%hash])

       This method is used to set the resource hooks.  A REST::Application hook is a regex to
       handler mapping.  The hooks are passed in as a hash (or a reference to one) and the keys
       are treated as regular expressions while the values are treated as handlers should
       PATH_INFO match the regex that maps to that handler.

       Handlers can be code references, methods on the current object, methods on other objects,
       or class methods.  Also, handlers can be differ based on what the REQUEST_METHOD was (e.g.
       GET, PUT, POST, DELETE, etc).

       The handler's types are as follows:

       string  The handler is considered to be a method on the current REST::Application
               instance.

       code ref
               The code ref is considered to be the handler.

       object ref
               The object is considered to have a method the same name as the HTTP method.  That
               is, if the object is being called because of GET then "GET()" is called, if it is
               called because of a "DELETE" then "DELETE()" is called.  "getResource()" method
               will be used if "getRequestMethod()" returns false.

       array ref
               The array is expected to be two elements long, the first element is a class name
               or object instance.  The 2nd element is a method name on that class/instance.  IF
               the 2nd element is ommitted then the method name is assumed to be the same as the
               REQUEST_METHOD, e.g. "GET()", "PUT()", whatever.

       hash ref
               The current REQUEST_METHOD is used as a key to the hash, the value should be one
               the four above handler types.  In this way you can specify different handlers for
               each of the request types.  The request method can also be specified as '*', in
               which case that is used if a more specific match is not found.

               It is possible for the value of the handler to be another hash ref, rather than
               one of the four above types.  In this case it is assumed content-negotion is
               wanted.  The keys of this second hash are MIME types and the values are one of the
               four above types.  For example:

                   $self->resourceHooks(
                       qr{/parts/(\d+)} => {
                           GET => {
                               'text/json' => 'get_json',
                               'text/xml', => 'get_xml',
                               'text/xml' => 'get_html',
                               '*/*' => 'get_html',
                           },
                           '*' => sub { die "Bad Method!" },
                       }
                   );

       The return value of the handler is expected to be a string, which REST::Application will
       then send to the browser with the "sendRepresentation()" method.

       If no argument is supplied to "resourceHooks()" then the current set of hooks is returned.
       The returned hash referces is a tied IxHash, so the keys are kept sorted.

       loadResource([$path])

       This method will take the value of PATH_INFO, iterate through the path regex's set in
       "resourceHooks()" and if it finds a match call the associated handler and return the
       handler's value, which should be a scalar.  If $path is passed in then that is used
       instead of PATH_INFO.

       run()

       This method calls "loadResource()" with no arguments and then takes that output and sends
       it to the remote client.  Headers are sent with "sendHeaders()" and the representation is
       sent with "sendRepresentation()".

       If the environment variable REST_APP_RETURN_ONLY is set then output isn't sent to the
       client.  The return value of this method is the text output it sends (or would've sent).

       sendHeaders()

       This method returns the headers as a string.

       sendRepresentation($representation)

       This method just returns $representation.  It is provided solely for overloading purposes.

       headerType([$type])

       This accessor/mutator controls the type of header to be returned.  This method returns one
       of "header, redirect, or none."  If $type is passed in then that is used to set the header
       type.

       header([%args])

       This accessor/mutator controls the header values sent.  If called without arguments then
       it simply returns the current header values as a hash, where the keys are the header
       fields and the values are the header field values.

       If this method is called multiple times then the values of %args are additive.  So calling
       "$self->header(-type => 'text/html')" and "$self->header(-foo => 'bar')" results in both
       the content-type header being set and the "foo" header being set.

       resetHeader()

       This header causes the current header values to be reset.  The previous values are
       returned.

       defaultResourceHandler()

       This method is called by "loadResource()" if no regex in "resourceHooks()" matches the
       current PATH_INFO.  It returns undef by default, it exists for overloading.

       bestContentType(@types)

       Given a list of MIME types this function returns the best matching type considering the
       Accept header of the current request (as returned by "getAcceptHeader()").

       simpleContentNegotiation(@types)

       Given a list of MIME types this function returns the same list sorted from best match to
       least considering the Accept header as returned by "getAcceptHeader()".

       getContentPrefs()

       Returns the list of MIME types in the Accept header form most preferred to least
       preferred.  Quality weights are taken into account.

       getAcceptHeader()

       Returns the value of the Accept header as a single string.

       scoreType($type, @accept_types)

       Returns an integer, only good for sorting, for where $type fits among the @accept_types.
       This method takes wildcards into account.  So "text/plain" matches "text/*".  The integer
       returned is the position in @accept_types of the matching MIME type.  It assumped
       @accept_types is already sorted from best to worst.

       getLastMatchPath()

       Returns the last path passed to "checkMatch()" which successfully matched against.  Unless
       you're overloading things in funny ways the value returned will be the path that caused
       the current handler to be invoked.

       getLastMatchPattern()

       Similar to "getLastMatchPath()" except this is the pattern that was applied to the path.

       getRequestMethod()

       This method tries to be smart and allow tunneling of the other HTTP methods over GET or
       PUT.  You can tunnel three ways with the higher up taking precedence:

       1) Pass an X-HTTP-Method header 2) Pass the 'http_method' query parameter 3) Pass a
       parameter via POST

       Only POST and GET, being the most common, can be used to tunnel.  In an attempt to prevent
       people from being bad, GET can only be used to tunnel GET or HEAD.  POST can be used to
       tunnel anything.

AUTHORS

       Matthew O'Connor <matthew@canonical.org>

LICENSE

       This program is free software. It is subject to the same license as Perl itself.

SEE ALSO

       CGI, CGI::Application, Tie::IxHash, CGI::Application::Dispatch