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[gitmo/Moose.git] / lib / Moose / Manual / Delegation.pod

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=head1 NAME

Moose::Manual::Attribute - Attribute Delegation

=head1 WHAT IS DELEGATION?

Moose's delegation feature lets you create "shadow" methods that do
nothing more than call some other method on an attribute. This is
quite handy since it lets you simplify a complex set of "has-a"
relationships and present a single unified API from one class.

This means that consumers of a class don't need to know about all the
objects it contains, and it simplifies their code.

Delegations are defined as a mapping between one or more methods
provided by the "real" class (the delegatee), and a set of
corresponding methods in the delegating class. The delegating class
can re-use the method names provided by the delegatee, or provide its
own names.

Delegation is also a great way to wrap an existing class, especially a
non-Moose class or one that is somehow hard (or impossible) to
subclass.

=head1 DEFINING A MAPPING

Moose offers a number of options for defining a delegation's mapping,
ranging from simple to complex.

The simplest form is to simply specify a list of methods:

  package Website;

  use Moose;

  has 'uri' => (
      is      => 'ro',
      isa     => 'URI',
      handles => [qw( host path )],
  );

With this definition, we can call C<< $website->host >> and it "just
works". Under the hood, Moose will call C<< $website->uri->host >> for
you.

We can also define a mapping as a hash reference. This allows you to
rename methods as part of the mapping:

  package Website;

  use Moose;

  has 'uri' => (
      is      => 'ro',
      isa     => 'URI',
      handles => {
          hostname => 'host',
          path     => 'path',
      },
  );

In this example, we've created a C<< $website->hostname >> method,
rather than using C<URI.pm>'s name, C<host>.

These two mapping forms are the ones you will use most often. The
remainder are a bit more complex, and less common.

  has 'uri' => (
      is      => 'ro',
      isa     => 'URI',
      handles => qr/^(?:host|path|query.*)/,
  );

This is similar to the array version, except it uses the regex to
match against all the methods provided by the delegatee. In order for
this to work, you must provide an C<isa> parameter for the attribute,
and it must be a class. Moose uses this to introspect the delegatee
class and determine what methods it provides.

You can use a role name as the value of C<handles>:

  has 'uri' => (
      is      => 'ro',
      isa     => 'URI',
      handles => 'HasURI',
  );

Moose will introspect the role to determine what methods it provides
and create a mapping for each of those methods.

Finally, you can also provide a sub reference to I<generate> a
mapping. You probably won't need this version often (if ever). See the
L<Moose> docs for more details on exactly how this works.

=head1 MISSING ATTRIBUTES

It is perfectly valid to delegate methods to an attribute which is not
required, or can be undefined. In that case, Moose will throw a
runtime error when a delegated method is called.

=head1 AUTHOR

Dave Rolsky E<lt>autarch@urth.orgE<gt>

=head1 COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright 2008 by Infinity Interactive, Inc.

L<http://www.iinteractive.com>

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

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