3 Catalyst::Delta - Overview of changes between versions of Catalyst
7 This is an overview of the user-visible changes to Catalyst between major
10 =head2 VERSION 5.90105
12 This version primarily fixed a regression in the way we preserved $c->state
13 which the previous version introduced. Now in the case when you forward to
14 an action, should that action throw an exception it sets state to 0 and is
15 sure that the return value is false. This is to meet expected behavior based
16 on the documentation. If you relied on the last update behavior you may not have
17 regressions but it was thought that we should make the code behave as documented
18 for more than 10 years.
20 We also changed how we compose the request, response and stats base class. We
21 now compose the base class with any configured traits once at the end of the
22 application setup, rather than for each request. This reduced request overhead
23 when you are composing lots of traits. It possible this may break some code that
24 was adding traits after the application setup was finalized. Please shout out if
25 this actually causes you trouble and we'll do the best to accomodate.
27 =head2 VERSION 5.90102 - 5.90103
29 A significant change is that we now preserve the value of $c->state from action
30 to following action. This gives you a new way to pass a value between actions
31 in a chain, for example. However any 'auto' actions always have $c->state
32 forced to be set to 0, which is the way its been for a long time, this way an
33 auto action is required to return 1 to pass the match. It also exists to maintain
34 compatibility with anyone that exits an auto action with a detach (which is not a
35 documented way to escape matching, but exists in the wild since it worked as a
36 side effect of the code for a long time).
38 Additionally, upon $c->detach we also force set state to 0.
40 Version 5.90102 contains a version of this change but its considered buggy, so
41 that is a version to avoid.
43 =head2 VERSION 5.90100
45 Support for type constraints in Args and CaptureArgs has been improved. You may
46 now inherit from a base controller that declares type constraints and use roles
47 that declare type constraints. See L<Catalyst::RouteMatching> for more.
49 You may now. also use a full type constraint namespace instead of importing type
50 constraints into your package namespace.
52 We changed the way the middleware stash works so that it no longer localizes
53 the PSGI env hashref. This was done to fix bugs where people set PSGI ENV hash
54 keys and found them to disappear in certain cases. It also means that now if
55 a sub applications sets stash variables, that stash will now bubble up to the
56 parent application. This may be a breaking change for you since previous
57 versions of this code did not allow that. A workaround is to explicitly delete
58 stash keys in your sub application before returning control to the parent
61 =head2 VERSION 5.90097
63 =head3 Defined how $c->uri_for adds a URI fragment.
65 We now have a specification for creating URIs with fragments (or HTML anchors).
66 Previously you could do this as a side effect of how we create URIs but this
67 side effect behavior was never documented or tested, and was broken when we
68 introduced default UTF-8 encoding. When creating URIs with fragments please
69 follow the new, supported specification:
71 $c->uri_for($action_or_path, \@captures_or_args, @args, \$query, \$fragment);
73 This will be a breaking change for some codebases, we recommend testing if
74 you are creating URLs with fragments.
76 B<NOTE> If you are using the alternative:
78 $c->uri_for('/foo/bar#baz')
80 construction, we do not attempt to encode this and it will make a URL with a
83 =head2 VERSION 5.90094
85 =head3 Multipart form POST with character set headers
87 When we did the UTF8 work, we punted on Form POSTs when the POST envelope was
88 multipart and each part had complex headers such as content-types, character
89 sets and so forth. In those cases instead of returning a possibly incorrect
90 value, we returned an object describing the part so that you could figure it
91 out manually. This turned out to be a bad workaround as people did not expect
92 to find that object. So we changed this to try much harder to get a correct
93 value. We still return an object if we fail but we try much harder now. If
94 you used to check for the object you might find that code is no longer needed
95 (although checking for it should not hurt or break anything either).
97 =head2 VERSION 5.90091
99 =head3 'case_sensitive' configuration
101 At one point in time we allowed you to set a 'case_sensitive' configuration value so
102 that you could find actions by their private names using mixed case. We highly
103 discourage that. If you are using this 'feature' you should be on notice that we
104 plan to remove the code around it in the near future.
106 =head2 VERSION 5.90090+
108 =head3 Type constraints on Args and CaptureArgs.
110 You may now use a type constraint (using L<Moose>, L<MooseX::Types> or preferably
111 L<Type::Tiny> in your Args or CaptureArgs action attributes. This can be used
112 to restrict the value of the Arg. For example:
114 sub myaction :Local Args(Int) { ... }
116 Would match '.../myaction/5' but not '.../myaction/string'.
118 When an action (or action chain) has Args (or CaptureArgs) that declare type constraints
119 your arguments to $c->uri_for(...) must match those constraints.
121 See L<Catalyst::RouteMatching> for more.
123 =head3 Move CatalystX::InjectComponent into core
125 L<Catalyst::Utils> has a new method 'inject_component' which works the same as the method of
126 the same name in L<CatalystX::InjectComponent>.
128 =head3 inject_components
130 New configuration key allows you to inject components directly into your application without
131 any subclasses. For example:
134 inject_components => {
135 'Controller::Err' => { from_component => 'Local::Controller::Errors' },
136 'Model::Zoo' => { from_component => 'Local::Model::Foo' },
137 'Model::Foo' => { from_component => 'Local::Model::Foo', roles => ['TestRole'] },
139 'Controller::Err' => { a => 100, b=>200, namespace=>'error' },
140 'Model::Zoo' => { a => 2 },
141 'Model::Foo' => { a => 100 },
144 Injected components are useful to reduce the amount of nearly empty boilerplate classes
145 you might have, particularly when first starting an application.
147 =head3 Component setup changes.
149 Previously you could not depend on an application scoped component doing setup_components
150 since components were setup 'in order'. Now all components are first registered and then
151 setup, so you can now reliably use any component doing setup_components.
153 =head2 VERSION 5.90080+
155 The biggest change in this release is that UTF8 encoding is now enabled by
156 default. So you no longer need any plugins (such as L<Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding>)
157 which you can just no go ahead and remove. You also don't need to set
158 the encoding configuration (__PACKAGE__->config(encoding=>'UTF-8')) anymore
159 as well (although its presence hurts nothing).
161 If this change causes you trouble, you can disable it:
163 __PACKAGE__->config(encoding=>undef);
165 For further information, please see L<Catalyst::UTF8>
167 But please report bugs. You will find that a number of common Views have been
168 updated for this release (such as L<Catalyst::View::TT>). In all cases that the
169 author is aware of these updates were to fix test cases only. You shouldn't
170 need to update unless you are installing fresh and want tests to pass.
172 L<Catalyst::Plugin::Compress> was updated to be compatible with this release.
173 You will need to upgrade if you are using this plugin. L<Catalyst::Upgrading>
176 A small change is that the configuration setting C<using_frontend_proxy>
177 was not doing the right thing if you started your application with C<psgi_app>
178 and did not apply the default middleware. This setting is now honored in
179 all the ways an application may be started. This could cause trouble if you
180 are using the configuration value and also adding the proxy middleware
181 manually with a custom application startup. The solution is that you only
182 need the configuration value set, or the middleware manually added (not both).
184 =head2 VERSION 5.90060+
186 =head3 Catalyst::Log object autoflush on by default
188 Starting in 5.90065, the Catalyst::Log object has 'autoflush' which is on
189 by default. This causes all messages to be written to the log immediately
190 instead of at the end of startup and then at the end of each request. In
191 order to access the old behavior, you must now call:
193 $c->log->autoflush(0);
195 =head3 Deprecate Catalyst::Utils::ensure_class_loaded
197 Going forward we recommend you use L<Module::Runtime>. In fact we will
198 be converting all uses of L<Class::Load> to L<Module::Runtime>. We will
199 also convert L<Catalyst::Utils\ensure_class_loaded> to be based on
200 L<Module::Runtime> to allow some time for you to update code, however at
201 some future point this method will be removed so you should stop
204 =head3 Support passing Body filehandles directly to your Plack server.
206 We changed the way we return body content (from response) to whatever
207 Plack handler you are using (Starman, FastCGI, etc.) We no longer
208 always use the streaming interface for the cases when the body is a
209 simple scalar, object or filehandle like. In those cases we now just
210 pass the simple response on to the plack handler. This might lead to
211 some minor differences in how streaming is handled. For example, you
212 might notice that streaming starts properly supporting chunked encoding when
213 on a server that supports that, or that previously missing headers
214 (possible content-length) might appear suddenly correct. Also, if you
215 are using middleware like L<Plack::Middleware::XSendfile> and are using
216 a filehandle that sets a readable path, your server might now correctly
217 handle the file (rather than as before where Catalyst would stream it
218 very likely very slowly).
220 In other words, some things might be meaninglessly different and some
221 things that were broken codewise but worked because of Catalyst being
222 incorrect might suddenly be really broken. The behavior is now more
223 correct in that Catalyst plays better with features that Plack offers
224 but if you are making heavy use of the streaming interface there could
225 be some differences so you should test carefully (this is probably not
226 the vast majority of people). In particular if you are developing
227 using one server but deploying using a different one, differences in
228 what those server do with streaming should be noted.
230 Please see note below about changes to filehandle support and existing
231 Plack middleware to aid in backwards compatibility.
233 =head3 Distinguish between body null versus undef.
235 We also now more carefully distinguish the different between a body set
236 to '' and a body that is undef. This might lead to situations where
237 again you'll get a content-length were you didn't get one before or
238 where a supporting server will start chunking output. If this is an
239 issue you can apply the middleware L<Plack::Middleware::BufferedStreaming>
240 or report specific problems to the dev team.
242 =head3 More Catalyst Middleware
244 We have started migrating code in Catalyst to equivalent Plack
245 Middleware when such exists and is correct to do so. For example we now use
246 L<Plack::Middleware::ContentLength> to determine content length of a response
247 when none is provided. This replaces similar code inlined with L<Catalyst>
248 The main advantages to doing this is 1) more similar Catalyst core that is
249 focused on the Catalyst special sauce, 2) Middleware is more broadly shared
250 so we benefit from better collaboration with developers outside Catalyst, 3)
251 In the future you'll be able to change or trim the middleware stack to get
252 additional performance when you don't need all the checks and constraints.
254 =head3 Deprecate Filehandle like objects that do read but not getline
256 We also deprecated setting the response body to an object that does 'read'
257 but not 'getline'. If you are using a custom IO-Handle like object for
258 response you should verify that 'getline' is supported in your interface.
259 Unless we here this case is a major issue for people, we will be removing support
260 in a near future release of Catalyst. When the code encounters this it
261 will issue a warning. You also may run into this issue with L<MogileFS::Client>
262 which does read but not getline. For now we will just warn when encountering
263 such an object and fallback to the previous behavior (where L<Catalyst::Engine>
264 itself unrolls the filehandle and performs blocking streams). However
265 this backwards compatibility will be removed in an upcoming release so you should either
266 rewrite your custom filehandle objects to support getline or start using the
267 middleware that adapts read for getline L<Plack::Middleware::AdaptFilehandleRead>.
269 =head3 Response->headers become read-only after finalizing
271 Once the response headers are finalized, trying to change them is not allowed
272 (in the past you could change them and this would lead to unexpected results).
274 =head3 Officially deprecate L<Catalyst::Engine::PSGI>
276 L<Catalyst::Engine::PSGI> is also officially no longer supported. We will
277 no long run test cases against this and can remove backwards compatibility code for it
278 as deemed necessary for the evolution of the platform. You should simply
279 discontinue use of this engine, as L<Catalyst> has been PSGI at the core for
282 =head3 Officially deprecate finding the PSGI $env anyplace other than Request
284 A few early releases of Cataplack had the PSGI $env in L<Catalyst::Engine>.
285 Code has been maintained here for backwards compatibility reasons. This is no
286 longer supported and will be removed in upcoming release, so you should update
287 your code and / or upgrade to a newer version of L<Catalyst>
289 =head3 Deprecate setting Response->body after using write/write_fh
291 Setting $c->res->body to a filehandle after using $c->res->write or
292 $c->res->write_fh is no longer considered allowed, since we can't send
293 the filehandle to the underlying Plack handler. For now we will continue
294 to support setting body to a simple value since this is possible, but at
295 some future release a choice to use streaming indicates that you will do
296 so for the rest of the request.
299 =head2 VERSION 5.90053
301 We are now clarifying the behavior of log, plugins and configuration during
302 the setup phase. Since Plugins might require a log during setup, setup_log
303 must run BEFORE setup_plugins. This has the unfortunate side effect that
304 anyone using the popular ConfigLoader plugin will not be able to supply
305 configuration to custom logs since the configuration is not yet finalized
306 when setup_log is run (when using ConfigLoader, which is a plugin and is
307 not loaded until later.)
309 As a workaround, you can supply custom log configuration directly into
316 my_custom_log_info => { %custom_args },
321 If you wish to configure the custom logger differently based on ENV, you can
330 Catalyst::Utils::merge_hashes(
331 +{ my_custom_log_info => { %base_custom_args } },
332 +{ do __PACKAGE__->path_to( $ENV{WHICH_CONF}."_conf.pl") },
338 Or create a standalone Configuration class that does the right thing.
340 Basically if you want to configure a logger via Catalyst global configuration
341 you can't use ConfigLoader because it will always be loaded too late to be of
342 any use. Patches and workaround options welcomed!
344 =head2 VERSION 5.9XXXX 'cataplack'
346 The Catalyst::Engine sub-classes have all been removed and deprecated,
347 to be replaced with Plack handlers.
349 Plack is an implementation of the L<PSGI> specification, which is
350 a standard interface between web servers and application frameworks.
352 This should be no different for developers, and you should not have to
353 migrate your applications unless you are using a custom engine already.
355 This change benefits Catalyst significantly by reducing the amount of
356 code inside the framework, and means that the framework gets upstream
357 bug fixes in L<Plack>, and automatically gains support for any web server
358 which a L<PSGI> compliant handler is written for.
360 It also allows you more flexibility with your application, and allows
361 the use of cross web framework 'middleware'.
363 Developers are recommended to read L<Catalyst::Upgrading> for notes about
364 upgrading, especially if you are using an unusual deployment method.
366 Documentation for how to take advantage of L<PSGI> can be found in
367 L<Catalyst::PSGI>, and information about deploying your application
368 has been moved to L<Catalyst::Manual::Deployment>.
370 =head3 Updated modules:
372 A number of modules have been updated to pass their tests or not
373 produce deprecation warnings with the latest version of Catalyst.
374 It is recommended that you upgrade any of these that you are using
375 after installing this version of Catalyst.
377 These extensions are:
381 =item L<Catalyst::Engine::HTTP::Prefork>
383 This is now deprecated, see L<Catalyst::Upgrading>.
385 =item L<Test::WWW::Mechanize::Catalyst>
387 Has been updated to not produce deprecation warnings, upgrade recommended.
389 =item Catalyst::ActionRole::ACL
391 Has been updated to fix failing tests (although older versions still
392 function perfectly with this version of Catalyst).
394 =item Catalyst::Plugin::Session::Store::DBIC
396 Has been updated to fix failing tests (although older versions still
397 function perfectly with this version of Catalyst).
399 =item Catalyst::Plugin::Authentication
401 Has been updated to fix failing tests (although older versions still
402 function perfectly with this version of Catalyst).
406 =head1 PREVIOUS VERSIONS
408 =head2 VERSION 5.8XXXX 'catamoose'
412 Please see L<Catalyst::Upgrading> for a full description of how changes in the
413 framework may affect your application.
415 Below is a brief list of features which have been deprecated in this release:
419 =item ::[MVC]:: style naming scheme has been deprecated and will warn
421 =item NEXT is deprecated for all applications and components, use MRO::Compat
423 =item Dispatcher methods which are an implementation detail made private, public versions now warn.
425 =item MyApp->plugin method is deprecated, use L<Catalyst::Model::Adaptor> instead.
427 =item __PACKAGE__->mk_accessors() is supported for backwards compatibility only, use Moose attributes instead in new code.
429 =item Use of Catalyst::Base now warns
439 =item Fix forwarding to Catalyst::Action objects.
441 =item Add the dispatch_type method
447 The development server restarter has been improved to be compatible with
448 immutable Moose classes, and also to optionally use
449 L<B::Hooks::OP::Check::StashChange> to handle more complex application layouts
452 =head3 $c->uri_for_action method.
454 Give a private path to the Catalyst action you want to create a URI for.
458 Log levels have been made additive.
460 =head3 L<Catalyst::Test>
464 =item Change to use L<Sub::Exporter>.
466 =item Support mocking multiple virtual hosts
468 =item New methods like action_ok and action_redirect to write more compact tests
472 =head3 Catalyst::Response
478 New print method which prints @data to the output stream, separated by $,.
479 This lets you pass the response object to functions that want to write to an
484 Added code method as an alias for C<< $res->status >>
488 =head3 Consequences of the Moose back end
494 Components are fully compatible with Moose, and all Moose features, such as
495 method modifiers, attributes, roles, BUILD and BUILDARGS methods are fully
496 supported and may be used in components and applications.
500 Many reusable extensions which would previously have been plugins or base
501 classes are better implemented as Moose roles.
505 L<MooseX::MethodAttributes::Role::AttrContainer::Inheritable> is used to contain action
506 attributes. This means that attributes are represented in the MOP, and
507 decouples action creation from attributes.
511 There is a reasonable API in Catalyst::Controller for working with
512 and registering actions, allowing a controller sub-class to replace
513 subroutine attributes for action declarations with an alternate
518 Refactored capturing of $app from L<Catalyst::Controller> into
519 L<Catalyst::Component::ApplicationAttribute> for easier reuse in other
524 Your application class is forced to become immutable at the end of compilation.
534 Don't ignore SIGCHLD while handling requests with the development server, so that
535 system() and other ways of creating child processes work as expected.
539 Fixes for FastCGI when used with IIS 6.0
543 Fix a bug in uri_for which could cause it to generate paths with multiple
548 Fix a bug in Catalyst::Stats, stopping garbage being inserted into
549 the stats if a user calls begin => but no end