NAME

SVN::Web::action - documentation for writing new SVN::Web actions

DESCRIPTION

This file contains no code. It provides documentation for writing new SVN::Web actions.

OVERVIEW

SVN::Web actions are Perl modules loaded by SVN::Web. They are expected to retrieve some information from the Subversion repository, and return that information ready for the user's browser, optionally via formatting by a Template::Toolkit template.

Action names are listed in the SVN::Web configuration file, config.yaml, in the actions: clause. Each entry specifies the class that implements the action, and any options that are set globally for that action.

  actions:
    ...
    new_action:
      class: Class::That::Implements::Action
      opts:
        option1: value1
        option2: value2
    ...

Each action is a class that must implement at least two methods, new() and run().

METHODS

new()

This is a traditional Perl constructor. The following boilerplate code will suffice.

  sub new {
      my $class = shift;
      my $self = bless {}, $class;
      %$self = @_;

      return $self;
  }

run()

The run method is where the action carries out its work.

Parameters

The method is passed a single parameter, the standard $self hash ref. This contains numerous useful keys.

$self->{opts}

The options for this action from config.yaml. Using the example from the OVERVIEW, this would lead to:

  $self->{opts} = { 'option1' => 'value1',
                    'option2' => 'value2',
                  };

$self->{cgi}

An instance of a CGI object corresponding to the current request. This is normally an object from either the CGI or CGI::Fast modules, although it is possible to specify another class with the cgi_class directive in config.yaml.

You can use this object to retrieve the values of any parameters passed to your action.

For example, if your action takes a rev parameter, indicating the repository revision to work on;

  my $rev = $self->{cgi}->param('rev');

$self->{path}

The path in the repository that was passed to the action.

$self->{navpaths}

A reference to an array of path components, one for each directory (and possible final file) in $self->{path}. Equivalent to [ split('/', $self->{path}) ]

$self->{config}

The config hash, as read by YAML from config.yaml. Directives from the config file are second level hash keys. For example, the actions configuration directive contains a list of valid actions.

  my @valid_actions = @{ $self->{config}->{actions} };

$self->{reposname}

The symbolic name of the repository being accessed.

$self->{repos}

A instance of the SVN::Repos class, corresponding to the repository being accessed. This repository has already been opened.

For example, to find the youngest (i.e., most recent) revision of the repository;

  my $yr = $self->{repos}->fs()->youngest_rev();

$self->{action}

The action that has been requested. It's possible for multiple action names to be mapped to a single class in the config file, and this lets you differentiate between them.

$self->{script}

The URL for the currently running script.

Return value

The return value from run() determines how the data from the action is displayed.

Using a template

If run() wants a template to be displayed containing formatted data from the method then the hash ref should contain two keys.

template

This is the name of the template to return. By convention the template and the action share the same name.

data

This is a hash ref. The hash keys become variables of the same name in the template.

The character set and MIME type can also be specified, in the charset and mimetype keys. If these values are not specified then they default to UTF-8 and text/html respectively.

E.g., for an action named my_action, using a template called my_action that looks like this:

  <p>The youngest interesting revision of [% file %] is [% rev %].</p>

then this code would be appropriate.

  # $rev and $file set earlier in the method
  return { template => 'my_action',
           data     => { rev  => $rev,
                         file => $file,
                       },
         };

Returning data with optional charset and MIME type

If the action does not want to use a template and just wants to return data, but retain control of the character set and MIME type, run() should return a hash ref. This should contain a key called body, the value of which will be sent directly to the browser.

The character set and MIME type can also be specified, in the charset and mimetype keys. If these values are not specified then they default to UTF-8 and text/html respectively.

E.g., for an action that generates a PNG image from data in the repository (perhaps using SVN::Churn);

  # $png contains the PNG image, created earlier in the method
  return { mimetype => 'image/png',
           body     => $png
         };

Returning HTML with default charset and MIME type

If the action just wants to return HTML in UTF-8, it can return a single scalar that contains the HTML to be sent to the browser.

  return "<p>hello, world</p>";

ERRORS AND EXCEPTIONS

If your action needs to fail for some reason -- perhaps the parameters passed to it are incorrect, or the user lacks the necessary permissions, then throw an exception.

Exceptions, along with examples, are described in SVN::Web::X.

cpanm SVN::Web

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install SVN::Web