NAME

MooX::TaggedAttributes - Add a tag with an arbitrary value to a an attribute

VERSION

version 0.04

SYNOPSIS

# Create a Role used to apply the attributes
package Tags;
use Moo::Role;
use MooX::TaggedAttributes -tags => [ qw( t1 t2 ) ];

# Apply the role directly to a class
package C1;
use Tags;

has c1 => ( is => 'ro', t1 => 1 );

my $obj = C1->new;

# get the value of the tag t1, applied to attribute a1
$obj->_tags->{t1}{a1};

# Apply the tags to a role
package R1;
use Tag1;

has r1 => ( is => 'ro', t2 => 2 );

# Use that role in a class
package C2;
use R1;

has c2 => ( is => 'ro', t2 => sub { }  );

# get the value of the tag t2, applied to attribute c2
C2->new->_tags->{t2}{c2};

DESCRIPTION

This module attaches a tag-value pair to an attribute in a Moo class or role, and provides a interface to query which attributes have which tags, and what the values are.

Tagging Attributes

To define a set of tags, create a special tag role:

package T1;
use Moo::Role;
use MooX::TaggedAttributes -tags => [ 't1' ];

has a1 => ( is => 'ro', t1 => 'foo' );

If there's only one tag, it can be passed directly without being wrapped in an array:

package T2;
use Moo::Role;
use MooX::TaggedAttributes -tags => 't2';

has a2 => ( is => 'ro', t2 => 'bar' );

A tag role is a standard Moo::Role with added machinery to track attribute tags. As shown, attributes may be tagged in the tag role as well as in modules which consume it.

Tag roles may be consumed just as ordinary roles, but in order for role consumers to have the ability to assign tags to attributes, they need to be consumed with the Perl use statement, not with the with statement.

Consuming with the with statement will propagate attributes with existing tags, but won't provide the ability to tag new attributes.

This is correct:

package R2;
use Moo::Role;
use T1;

has r2 => ( is => 'ro', t1 => 'foo' );

package R3;
use Moo::Role;
use R3;

has r3 => ( is => 'ro', t1 => 'foo' );

The same goes for classes:

package C2;
use Moo;
use T1;

has c2 => ( is => 'ro', t1 => 'foo' );

Combining tag roles is as simple as use'ing them in the new role:

package T12;
use T1;
use T2;

package C2;
use Moo;
use T12;

has c2 => ( is => 'ro', t1 => 'foo', t2 => 'bar' );

Accessing tags

Classes and objects are provided a _tags method which returns a hash of hashes keyed off of the tags and attribute names. For example, for the following code:

package T;
use Moo::Role;
use MooX::TaggedAttributes -tags => [ qw( t1 t2 ) ];

package C;
use Moo;
use T;

has a => ( is => 'ro', t1 => 2 );
has b => ( is => 'ro', t2 => 'foo' );

The tag structure returned by either of the following

C->_tags
C->new->_tags

looks like

{ t1 => { a => 2 },
  t2 => { b => 'foo' },
}

BUGS AND LIMITATIONS

Changes to an object after instantiation are not tracked.

If a role with tagged attributes is applied to an object, the tags for those attributes are not visible.

BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature requests on the bugtracker website https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=MooX-TaggedAttributes or by email to bug-MooX-TaggedAttributes@rt.cpan.org.

When submitting a bug or request, please include a test-file or a patch to an existing test-file that illustrates the bug or desired feature.

SOURCE

The development version is on github at https://github.com/djerius/moox-taggedattributes and may be cloned from git://github.com/djerius/moox-taggedattributes.git

AUTHOR

Diab Jerius <djerius@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is Copyright (c) 2018 by Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.

This is free software, licensed under:

The GNU General Public License, Version 3, June 2007