NAME

Aspect::Library::Singleton - A singleton aspect

SYNOPSIS

use Aspect;
use Aspect::Singleton;

aspect Singleton => 'Foo::new';

my $f1 = Foo->new;
my $f2 = Foo->new;

# Both $f1 and $f2 refer to the same object

DESCRIPTION

A reusable aspect that forces singleton behavior on a constructor. The constructor is defined by a pointcut spec: a string. regexp, or code ref.

It is slightly different from Class::Singleton (http://search.cpan.org/~abw/Class-Singleton/Singleton.pm):

  • No specific name requirement on the constructor for the external interface, or for the implementation (Class::Singleton requires clients use instance(), and that subclasses override _new_instance()). With aspects, you can change the cardinality of your objects without changing the clients, or the objects themselves.

  • No need to inherit from anything- use pointcuts to specify the constructors you want to memoize. Instead of pulling singleton behavior from a base class, you are pushing it in, using the aspect.

  • No package variable or method is added to the callers namespace

Note that this is just a special case of memoizing.

AUTHORS

Adam Kennedy <adamk@cpan.org>

Marcel Grünauer <marcel@cpan.org>

Ran Eilam <eilara@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2001 by Marcel Grünauer

Some parts copyright 2009 - 2011 Adam Kennedy.

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