=head1 NAME Catalyst::Manual::Cookbook - Cooking with Catalyst =head1 DESCRIPTION Yummy code like your mum used to bake! =head1 RECIPES =head2 Force debug screen You can force Catalyst to display the debug screen at the end of the request by placing a die() call in the _end action. __PACKAGE__->action( '!end' => sub { my ( $self, $c ) = @_; die "testing"; } ); =head2 Disable statistics Just add this line to your application class if you don't want those nifty statistics in your debug messages. sub Catalyst::Log::info { } =head2 Scaffolding Scaffolding is very simple with Catalyst. Just use Catalyst::Model::CDBI::CRUD as baseclass. # lib/MyApp/Model/CDBI.pm package MyApp::Model::CDBI; use strict; use base 'Catalyst::Model::CDBI::CRUD'; __PACKAGE__->config( dsn => 'dbi:SQLite:/tmp/myapp.db', relationships => 1 ); 1; # lib/MyApp.pm package MyApp; use Catalyst 'FormValidator'; __PACKAGE__->config( name => 'My Application', root => '/home/joeuser/myapp/root' ); __PACKAGE__->action( 'table' => sub { my ( $self, $c ) = @_; $c->form( optional => [ MyApp::Model::CDBI::Table->columns ] ); $c->forward('MyApp::Model::CDBI::Table'); } ); 1; Modify the $c->form() parameters to match your needs, and don't forget to copy the templates. ;) =head2 Serving static files and CSS as text/css If you want to serve static content (like images, txt or CSS) via Catalyst, then all you need is the plugin Catalyst::Plugin::Static as well as a small regex to set the MIME type for CSS to text/css. # lib/MyApp.pm package MyApp; use strict; use Catalyst qw/-Debug Static/; __PACKAGE__->action( '!default' => sub { my ( $self, $c ) = @_; $c->serve_static; }, '/^.*\.css$/' => sub { my ( $self, $c ) = @_; $c->serve_static('text/css'); }, ); =head2 Uploads with Catalyst To implement uploads in Catalyst you need to have a HTML form similiar to this:
It's very important not to forget enctype="multipart/form-data" in form, if it's not there, uploads just don't work. Catalyst Controller module 'upload' action: MyApp->action( 'upload' => sub { my ($self, $c) = @_; if ($c->req->parameters->{form_submit} eq 'yes') { my $filename = $c->req->parameters->{my_file}; if ($filename) { my $fh = $c->req->uploads->{$filename}->{fh}; open(NEW_FILE, ">/tmp/$filename") or die "Can't open file for writing: $!"; while ($fh->read(my $buf, 32768)) { print NEW_FILE $buf; } close(NEW_FILE); } } $c->stash->{template} = 'upload_form.tt'; $c->forward('MyApp::V::View'); }, ); If you want to upload bigger files than 1MB, then just add to your Controller module: $CGI::Simple::POST_MAX = 1048576000; =head2 Authentication with Catalyst::Plugin::Authentication::CDBI There are (at least) two ways to implement authentication with this plugin: 1) only checking username and password 2) checking username, password and the roles the user has For both variants you'll need the following code in your MyApp package: use Catalyst qw/Session::FastMmap Static Authentication::CDBI/; MyApp->config( authentication => { user_class => 'MyApp::M::MyApp::Users', user_field => 'email', password_field => 'password' }); 'user_class' is a Class::DBI class for your users table. 'user_field' tells which field is used for username lookup (might be email, first name, surname etc). 'password_field' is, well, password field in your table and by default password is stored in plain text. Authentication::CDBI looks for 'user' and 'password' fields in table, if they're not defined in the config. In PostgreSQL users table might be something like: CREATE TABLE users ( user_id serial, name varchar(100), surname varchar(100), password varchar(100), email varchar(100), primary key(user_id) ); We'll discuss the first variant for now: 1. user:password login / auth without roles To log in a user you might use a action like this: '?login' => sub { my ($self, $c) = @_; if ($c->req->params->{username}) { $c->session_login($c->req->params->{username}, $c->req->params->{password} ); if ($c->req->{user}) { $c->forward('?restricted_area'); } } }, $c->req->params->{username} and $c->req->params->{password} are html form parameters from a login form. If login succeeds, then $c->req->{user} contains the username of the authenticated user. If you want to remember the users login status inbetween further requests, then just use the $c->session_login method, Catalyst will create a session id, session cookie and automatically append session id to all urls. So all you have to do, is just check $c->req->{user} where needed. To log out user, just call $c->session_logout. Now lets take a look at the second variant: 2. user:password login / auth with roles To use roles you need to add to MyApp->config in the 'authentication' section following parameters: role_class => 'MyApp::M::MyApp::Roles', user_role_class => 'MyApp::M::MyApp::UserRoles', user_role_user_field => 'user_id', user_role_role_field => 'role_id', Corresponding tables in PostgreSQL could look like this: CREATE TABLE roles ( role_id serial, name varchar(100), primary key(role_id) ); CREATE TABLE user_roles ( user_role_id serial, user_id int, role_id int, primary key(user_role_id), foreign key(user_id) references users(user_id), foreign key(role_id) references roles(role_id) ); The 'roles' table is a list of role names and the 'user_role' table is used for the user -> role lookup. Now if a logged in user wants to see a location which is allowed only for people with 'admin' role then in you controller you can check it with: '?add' => sub { my ($self, $c) = @_; if ($c->roles(qw/admin/)) { $c->req->output("Your account has the role 'admin.'"); } else { $c->req->output("You're not allowed to be here"); } }, One thing you might need is to forward non-authenticated users to login form, if they try to access restricted areas. If you want to do this controller-wide (if you have one controller for admin section) then it's best to add user check to '!begin' action: '!begin' => sub { my ($self, $c) = @_; unless ($c->req->{user}) { $c->req->action(undef); ## notice this!! $c->forward('?login'); } }, Pay attention to $c->req->action(undef). This is needed, because of the way $c->forward works - forward to login gets called, but after that Catalyst executes anyway the action defined in the uri (eg. if you tried to watch /add, then first '!begin' forwards to '?login', but after that anyway '?add' is executed). So $c->req->action(undef) undefines any actions that were to be called and forwards user where we want him/her to be. And this is all you need to do, isn't Catalyst wonderful? =head1 AUTHOR Sebastian Riedel, C Danijel Milicevic C Viljo Marrandi C =head1 COPYRIGHT This program is free software, you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.