Catalyst is an elegant web application framework, extremely flexible
yet extremely simple. It's similar to Ruby on Rails, Spring (Java), and
L<Maypole|Maypole>, upon which it was originally based. Its most
-important design philosphy is to provide easy access to all the tools
+important design philosophy is to provide easy access to all the tools
you need to develop web applications, with few restrictions on how you
need to use these tools. However, this does mean that it is always
possible to do things in a different way. Other web frameworks are
# perl -MCPAN -e 'install Catalyst::Runtime'
# perl -MCPAN -e 'install Catalyst::Devel'
+ # perl -MCPAN -e 'install Catalyst::View::TT'
=head3 Setup
From a style perspective it's usually considered bad form to make your
model "too smart" about things - it should worry about business logic
and leave the integration details to the controllers. If, however, you
-find that it does not make sense at all to use an auxillary controller
+find that it does not make sense at all to use an auxiliary controller
around the model, and the model's need to access C<$c> cannot be
sidestepped, there exists a power tool called L</ACCEPT_CONTEXT>.
found, and automatically call the actions it finds that match the
circumstances of the request.
-The URL (for example http://localhost:3000/foo/bar) consists of two
+The URL (for example C<http://localhost:3000/foo/bar>) consists of two
parts, the base, describing how to connect to the server
-(http://localhost:3000/ in this example) and the path, which the
-server uses to decide what to return (foo/bar). Please note that the
+(C<http://localhost:3000/> in this example) and the path, which the
+server uses to decide what to return (C<foo/bar>). Please note that the
trailing slash after the hostname[:port] always belongs to base and
not to the path. Catalyst uses only the path part when trying to find
actions to process.
it matches using the namespace 'thing' instead.
-=item * B<Application Wide Actions>
+=item * B<Application-Wide Actions>
MyApp::Controller::Root, as created by the catalyst.pl script, will
typically contain actions which are called for the top level of the
-application (e.g. http://localhost:3000/ ):
+application (e.g. C<http://localhost:3000/>):
package MyApp::Controller::Root;
use base 'Catalyst::Controller';
package MyApp::Controller::My::Controller;
sub foo : Local { }
-Matches any URL beginning with> http://localhost:3000/my/controller/foo. The namespace and
+Matches any URL beginning with> C<http://localhost:3000/my/controller/foo>. The namespace and
subroutine name together determine the path.
=item * Root-level (C<:Global>)
1;
-Matches http://localhost:3000/bar - that is, the action is mapped
+Matches C<http://localhost:3000/bar> - that is, the action is mapped
directly to the method name, ignoring the controller namespace.
C<:Global> always matches from the application root: it is simply
-shorthandfor C<:Path('/methodname')>. C<:Local> is shorthand for
+shorthand for C<:Path('/methodname')>. C<:Local> is shorthand for
C<:Path('methodname')>, which takes the controller namespace as described
above.
=item * Changing handler behaviour: eating arguments (C<:Args>)
-Args is not an action type per se, but an action modifier - it adds a
+C<:Args> is not an action type per se, but an action modifier - it adds a
match restriction to any action it's provided to, additionally
requiring as many path parts as are specified for the action to be
matched. For example, in MyApp::Controller::Foo,
to only match URLs starting /foo/bar/* - with one additional path
element required after 'bar'.
-NOTE that adding C<:Args(0)> and missing out :Args completely are B<not>
+NOTE that adding C<:Args(0)> and omitting C<:Args> are B<not>
the same thing.
C<:Args(0)> means that no arguments are taken. Thus, the URL and path must
match precisely.
-No :Args at all means that B<any number> of arguments are taken. Thus, any
+No C<:Args> at all means that B<any number> of arguments are taken. Thus, any
URL that B<starts with> the controller's path will match. Obviously, this means
you cannot chain from an action that does not specify args, as the next action
in the chain will be swallowed as an arg to the first!
C<Path> actions without a leading forward slash match a specified path
relative to their current namespace. This example matches URLs
-starting http://localhost:3000/my/controller/foo/bar :
+starting with C<http://localhost:3000/my/controller/foo/bar>:
package MyApp::Controller::My::Controller;
sub bar : Path('foo/bar') { }
package MyApp::Controller::My::Controller;
sub bar : Path('/foo/bar') { }
-This matches URLs beginning http://localhost:3000/foo/bar.
+This matches URLs beginning with C<http://localhost:3000/foo/bar>.
Empty C<Path> definitions match on the namespace only, exactly like
C<:Global>.
package MyApp::Controller::My::Controller;
sub bar : Path { }
-The above code matches http://localhost:3000/my/controller.
+The above code matches C<http://localhost:3000/my/controller>.
Actions with the C<:Local> attribute are similarly equivalent to
C<:Path('action_name')>:
sub foo : Path('foo') { }
-=item * Pattern-match (C<:Regex> and C<:LocalRegex>)
+=item * Pattern match (C<:Regex> and C<:LocalRegex>)
+
+B<Status: deprecated.> Use Chained methods or other techniques.
+If you really depend on this, install the standalone
+L<Catalyst::DispatchType::Regex> distribution.
package MyApp::Controller::My::Controller;
sub bar : Regex('^item(\d+)/order(\d+)$') { }
This matches any URL that matches the pattern in the action key, e.g.
-http://localhost:3000/item23/order42. The '' around the regexp is
+C<http://localhost:3000/item23/order42>. The '' around the regexp is
optional, but perltidy likes it. :)
C<:Regex> matches act globally, i.e. without reference to the namespace
from which they are called. So the above will B<not> match
-http://localhost:3000/my/controller/item23/order42 - use a
+C<http://localhost:3000/my/controller/item23/order42> - use a
C<:LocalRegex> action instead.
package MyApp::Controller::My::Controller;
C<:LocalRegex> actions act locally, i.e. the namespace is matched
first. The above example would match urls like
-http://localhost:3000/my/controller/widget23.
+C<http://localhost:3000/my/controller/widget23>.
If you omit the "C<^>" from either sort of regex, then it will match any depth
from the base path:
sub bar : LocalRegex('widget(\d+)$') { }
This differs from the previous example in that it will match
-http://localhost:3000/my/controller/foo/widget23 - and a number of
+C<http://localhost:3000/my/controller/foo/widget23> - and a number of
other paths.
For both C<:LocalRegex> and C<:Regex> actions, if you use capturing
comprehensive test scripts, L<Test::WWW::Mechanize::Catalyst> is an
invaluable tool.
-For more testing ideas, see L<Catalyst::Manual::Tutorial::Testing>.
+For more testing ideas, see L<Catalyst::Manual::Tutorial::08_Testing>.
Have fun!