Catalyst 5.8, the Perl MVC Framework: Build scalable and extendable web applications using the Agile MVC framework

244 Pages·2010·3.93 MB·English

by  Antano Solar John

Catalyst 5.8
The Perl MVC Framework
Build scalable and extendable web applications using
the Agile MVC framework
Antano Solar John
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Catalyst 5.8
The Perl MVC Framework
Copyright © 2009 Packt Publishing
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First published: June 2010
Production Reference: 1220610
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
32 Lincoln Road
Olton
Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 978-1-847199-24-9
www.packtpub.com

Cover Image by Vinayak Chittar ([email protected])
Credits
Author Editorial Team Leader
Antano Solar John Aanchal Kumar
Reviewer Project Team Leader
Robert Sedlacek Priya Mukherji
Acquisition Editor Project Coordinator
Douglas Paterson Leena Purkait
Development Editor Proofreader
Dhiraj Chandiramani Lynda Sliwoski
Technical Editor Graphics
Smita Solanki Geetanjali Sawant
Indexer Production Coordinator
Monica Ajmera Mehta Aparna S. Bhagat
Cover Work
Aparna S. Bhagat
About the Author
Antano Solar John is a tech evangelist who is passionate about using technology
to revolutionize the learning experience! He authored his first book on MODx with
Packt in 2008 which was also the first book ever written on this platform.
Antano has contributed massively to the open source community in terms of
documentation, code, and support on various platforms based on PHP, Perl, Lisp,
Python, Ruby, and so on. His contribution to the open source world has allowed
him to meet and model from a variety of people who have learned to code and think
naturally! His writing skills benefit from this advantage thereby bringing structure
and clarity to the learner.
Antano's first technical publication titled "Help AI Help You-Swiss Knife of
Communication" was on Communication and Machine Learning using Neuro
Linguistic Programming (NLP) concepts such as Meta Modelling and Deep
Structures, which was critically acclaimed by communication and technology
experts. He has also been recently certified as a licensed NLP practitioner by
its cofounder Richard Bandler. Other papers by Antano include "802.11 MAC
Enhancements-Breaking Barriers of Wireless Speed" that was published in the
IEEE Journal, "Learning to Develop in the Open Source World", and so on.
Owing to his experience as a consultant and trainer, Antano has designed course
structure and content for corporate learners at different levels on subjects such as
Object Oriented Perl, Unix System Fundamentals, Shell basic, Ruby on Rails, and so
on. In association with MaFoi Ranstad, Antano entirely designed and implemented a
structured course for transitioning web designers into developers through a one-day
blended learning program called "Learn".
Antano has been keenly focusing on Accelerated Learning. He has conducted
workshops at various reputed colleges and corporate events on how to learn quickly
and effectively-technology languages and platforms using strategies that he has
developed. His experience with NLP, which is the science of Modelling Excellence
has helped him with this effort.
As part of his consultant assignments he has worked on Catalyst from its early
stages. He has been a consultant and a trainer providing IT solutions and sessions on
VoIP, networks, and software platforms, and languages. Currently, he is the Chief
Technology Officer (CTO) at NuVeda Learning. In his present role, he is responsible
for accelerated learning solutions which leverages technology for speed and scale.
Antano's other interests include Music, Dance, Martial Arts, and Chess. He used
to play Chess professionally as a child. Antano used to run a successful gaming
business when gaming as a business was almost unheard of. He has also won the
yahoo hack award twice in India consequently, once for developing a Collaborative
Browsing Mechanism using lines of code shorter than this biography without any
server or proxy and then yet again for developing a Hybrid Search Engine from
scratch in 24 hours that uses Machine and Social Intelligence to identify, search,
and distill information in contexts you expect!
I first like to thank the Catalyst Community without whom this book
could have never been possible. I also convey my gratitude to the
original author Jonathan, other members of the community like Matt
S. Trout, Jess Robinson along with all those who taught me Catalyst!

Special appreciation to the reviewer Robert Sedlacek and the
Packt team (Leena Purkait , Dhiraj Chandiramani, and Smita
Solanki) for continually providing valuable inputs to improve
the reading experience.
About the Reviewer
Robert Sedlacek started programming at the age of 17 while working as
computer hardware technician. He started out with Perl, took a four-year break into
other platforms and has been developing in Perl ever since. Today he is working
as a general Perl contractor but also specializes in web application development
with Catalyst.
Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Introduction to Catalyst 7
Catalyst application architecture 8
Extensibility 9
Reusability 10
Flexibility 10
Reliability 11
Installing Catalyst 11
CPAN 12
Testing the installation 13
Where to go for help? 13
Summary 14
Chapter 2: Creating a Catalyst Application 17
Creating the application skeleton 17
Latest helper scripts 23
Files in the MyApp directory 23
Files in the lib directory 24
Files in the root directory 24
Files in the script directory 25
Files in the t directory 25
Handling URL requests 26
Adding a View 28
More on Controller methods 32
Some technical details 35
Adding a database 35
Installing SQLite 36
Creating a database schema 36
Table of Contents
Creating a database model for Catalyst 37
Using the Model 37
Summary 39
Chapter 3: Building a Real Application 41
Environment setup 41
Database design 42
Understanding the interface to the database 44
TTSite 48
Creating the index page 50
Creating a "Not Found" page 51
Viewing people 52
Basic CRUD 55
Forms 56
Finishing up 60
Summary 65
Chapter 4: Expanding the Application 67
Configuration files 67
Configuring the address book 69
Sessions 70
Adding sessions to the address book 71
Sessions in the database 73
Using components from outside Catalyst 75
Searching and paging 79
Authentication and authorization 87
Authentication 87
Authorization 89
Adding authentication and authorization to the address book 91
Summary 101
Chapter 5: Building a More Advanced Application 103
The application 103
Background 106
Creating the database 106
Populating the database 110
Extracting the data 114
Chained resultsets 118
Custom resultsets 120
Putting the data on the Web 120
Summary 139
[ ii ]
Table of Contents
Chapter 6: Building Your Own Model 141
Creating a database model from scratch 141
Extending a DBIx::Class model 143
Custom methods without raw SQL 145
Calling database functions 145
Implementing a Filesystem model 146
Tweaking the model 150
Request context inside the model 151
Maintainable models 152
Other components 154
Summary 154
Chapter 7: Hot Web Topics 155
REST 155
Getting some REST 157
REST Controller 157
REST authentication 158
Adding an entity 159
REST easy 165
AJAX 165
Getting started 166
Jemplate 166
Implementing AJAX 168
RSS 173
Summary 175
Chapter 8: Moose 177
Moose introduction 177
OO in Perl 177
OO in Moose 178
Properties 179
Class method 179
Instantiating objects 180
Inheritance 180
Moose in Catalyst 181
Controller 182
CatalystX declare 182
CatalystX 185
Roles 185
Types 186
Model 187
Immutable 188
Summary 188
[ iii ]