NAME

       Nagios::Object - Creates perl objects to represent Nagios objects

DESCRIPTION

       This module contains the code for creating perl objects to represent any of the Nagios objects.  All of
       the perl classes are auto-generated at compile-time, so it's pretty trivial to add new attributes or even
       entire objects.  The following is a list of currently supported classes:

        Nagios::TimePeriod
        Nagios::Command
        Nagios::Contact
        Nagios::ContactGroup
        Nagios::Host
        Nagios::Service
        Nagios::HostGroup
        Nagios::ServiceEscalation
        Nagios::HostDependency
        Nagios::HostEscalation
        Nagios::HostGroupEscalation
        Nagios::ServiceDependency
        -- next two are for status.dat in Nagios 2.x
        Nagios::Info
        Nagios::Program

EXAMPLE

        use Nagios::Object;
        my $generic_host = Nagios::Host->new(
           register                     => 0,
           parents                      => undef,
           check_command                => $some_command,
           max_check_attempts           => 3,
           checks_enabled               => 1,
           event_handler                => $some_command,
           event_handler_enabled        => 0,
           low_flap_threshold          => 0,
           high_flap_threshold         => 0,
           flap_detection_enabled       => 0,
           process_perf_data            => 1,
           retain_status_information    => 1,
           retain_nonstatus_information => 1,
           notification_interval        => $timeperiod,
           notification_options         => [qw(d u r)],
           notifications_enabled        => 1,
           stalking_options             => [qw(o d u)]
        );

        # this will automatically 'use' $generic_host
        my $localhost = $generic_host->new(
           host_name => "localhost",
           alias     => "Loopback",
           address   => "127.0.0.1"
        );

        my $hostname = $localhost->host_name();
        printf "max check attempts for $hostname is %s.\n",
            $localhost->max_check_attempts;

        $localhost->set_event_handler(
            Nagios::Command->new(
                command_name => "new_event_handler",
                command_line => "/bin/true"
            )
        );

METHODS

       new()
           Create a new object of one of the types listed above.

           Calling new() on an existing object will use the LHS object as the template for the object being
           created.   This is mainly useful for creating objects without involving Nagios::Object::Config (like
           in the test suite).

            Nagios::Host->new( ... );

       dump()
           Output a Nagios define { } block from an object.  This is still EXPERIMENTAL, but may eventually be
           robust enough to use for a configuration GUI.   Passing in a single true argument will tell it to
           flatten the object inheritance on dump.

            print $object->dump();
            print $object->dump(1); # flatten

       name()
           This method is common to all classes created by this module.  It should always return the textual
           name for an object.  It is used internally by the Nagios::Object modules to allow polymorphism (which
           is what makes this module so compact).  This is the only way to retrieve the name of a template,
           since they are identified by their "name" field.

            my $svc_desc = $service->name;
            my $hostname = $host->name;

           Which is just short for:

            my $svc_desc = $service->service_description;
            my $hostname = $service->host_name;

       register()
           Returns true/undef to indicate whether the calling object is registerable or not.

            if ( $object->register ) { print $object->name, " is registerable." }

       has_attribute()
           Returns true/undef to indicate whether the calling object has the attribute specified as the only
           argument.

            # check to see if $object has attribute "command_line"
            die if ( !$object->has_attribute("command_line") );

       list_attributes()
           Returns a list of valid attributes for the calling object.

            my @host_attributes = $host->list_attributes();

       attribute_type()
           Returns the type of data expected by the object's set_ method for the given attribute.  For some
           fields like notification_options, it may return "char_flag."

           For "name" attributes, it will simply return whatever %setup_data contains.

           This method needs some TLC ...

            my $type = $host->attribute_type("notification_period");

       attribute_is_list()
           Returns true if the attribute is supposed to be a list (ARRAYREF).

            if ( $object->attribute_is_list("members") ) {
               $object->set_members( [$member] );
            } else {
               $object->set_members( $member );
            }

AUTHOR

       Al Tobey <tobeya@cpan.org>

       Thank you to the fine people of #perl on freenode.net for helping me with some hairy code and silly
       optimizations.

WARNINGS

       See AUTHOR.