NAME

Exporter::Tiny::Manual::QuickStart - the quickest way to get up and running with Exporter::Tiny

SYNOPSIS

package MyUtils;

use Exporter::Shiny qw( frobnicate );

sub frobnicate {
   ...;   # your code here
}

1;

Now people can use your module like this:

use MyUtils "frobnicate";

frobnicate(42);

Or like this:

use MyUtils "frobnicate" => { -as => "frob" };

frob(42);

DESCRIPTION

See the synopsis. Yes, it's that simple.

Next steps

Default exports

Note that the module in the synopsis doesn't export anything by default. If people load MyUtils like this:

use MyUtils;

Then they haven't imported any functions. You can specify a default set of functions to be exported like this:

package MyUtils;

use Exporter::Shiny qw( frobnicate );

our @EXPORT = qw( frobnicate );

sub frobnicate { ... }

1;

Or, if you want to be a superstar rock god:

package MyUtils;

use Exporter::Shiny our @EXPORT = qw( frobnicate );

sub frobnicate { ... }

1;

Tags

You can provide tags for people to use:

package MyUtils;

use Exporter::Shiny qw( frobnicate red green blue );

our %EXPORT_TAGS = (
   utils   => [qw/ frobnicate /],
   colours => [qw/ red green blue /],
);

sub frobnicate { ... }
sub red        { ... }
sub green      { ... }
sub blue       { ... }

1;

And people can now import your functions like this:

use MyUtils ":colours";

Or this:

use MyUtils "-colours";

Or take advantage of the fact that Perl magically quotes barewords preceded by a hyphen:

use MyUtils -colours;

Two tags are automatically defined for you: -default (which is just the same as @EXPORT) and -all (which is the union of @EXPORT and @EXPORT_OK). If you don't like them, then you can override them:

our %EXPORT_TAGS = (
   default => \@some_other_stuff,
   all     => \@more_stuff,
);

Generators

Exporting normally just works by copying a sub from your package into your caller's package. But sometimes it's useful instead to generate a custom sub to insert into your caller's package. This is pretty easy to do.

package MyUtils;

use Exporter::Shiny qw( frobnicate );

sub _generate_frobnicate {
   my ( $me, $name, $args, $globals ) = @_;
   my $caller = $globals->{into};
   
   return sub {
       ...;  # your code here
   };
}

1;

The parameter $me here is a string containing the package name which is being imported from; $caller is the destination package; $name is the name of the sub (in this case "frobnicate"); and $args is a custom argument for this function. (By convention, $args is normally a hashref.)

# The hashref { foo => 42 } is $args above.
#
use MyUtils "frobnicate" => { foo => 42 };

Avoiding Exporter::Shiny

Exporter::Shiny is a tiny shim around Exporter::Tiny. It should mostly do what you want, but you may sometimes prefer to use Exporter::Tiny directly.

The example in the synopsis could have been written as:

package MyUtils;

use parent "Exporter::Tiny";
our @EXPORT_OK = qw( frobnicate );

sub frobnicate {
   ...;   # your code here
}

1;

What Exporter::Shiny does is mostly just to set @EXPORT_OK for you and set up inheritance from the base class (Exporter::Tiny).

Exporter::Shiny also sets $INC{'MyUtils.pm'} for you, which in usually makes little difference, but is useful in some edge cases.

SEE ALSO

https://exportertiny.github.io/.

Exporter::Shiny, Exporter::Tiny.

For more advanced information, see Exporter::Tiny::Manual::Exporting.

AUTHOR

Toby Inkster <tobyink@cpan.org>.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

This software is copyright (c) 2013-2014, 2017, 2022-2023 by Toby Inkster.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES

THIS PACKAGE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

cpanm Exporter::Tiny

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Exporter::Tiny