NAME

DBIx::Class::Candy - Sugar for your favorite ORM, DBIx::Class

VERSION

version 0.001003

SYNOPSIS

package MyApp::Schema::Result::Artist;

use DBIx::Class::Candy;

table 'artists';

column id => {
  data_type => 'int',
  is_auto_increment => 1,
};

column name => {
  data_type => 'varchar',
  size => 25,
  is_nullable => 1,
};

primary_key 'id';

has_many albums => 'A::Schema::Result::Album', 'artist_id';

1;

DESCRIPTION

DBIx::Class::Candy is a simple sugar layer for definition of DBIx::Class results. Note that it may later be expanded to add sugar for more DBIx::Class related things. By default DBIx::Class::Candy:

  • turns on strict and warnings

  • sets your parent class

  • exports a bunch of the package methods that you normally use to define your DBIx::Class results

  • makes a few aliases to make some of the original method names a shorter or more clear

It assumes a DBIx::Class::Core-like API, but you can tailor it to suit your needs.

HERE BE DRAGONS

Part of the goal of this module is to fix some warts of the original API for defining DBIx::Class results. Given that we would like to get a few eyeballs on it before we finalize it. If you are writing code that you will not touch again for years, do not use this till this warning is removed.

IMPORT OPTIONS

-base

use DBIx::Class::Candy -base => 'MyApp::Schema::Result';

The first thing you can do to customize your usage of DBIx::Class::Candy is change the parent class. Do that by using the -base import option.

-components

use DBIx::Class::Candy -components => ['FilterColumn'];

DBIx::Class::Candy allows you to set which components you are using at import time so that the components can define their own sugar to export as well. See DBIx::Class::Candy::Exports for details on how that works.

-perl5

use DBIx::Class::Candy -perl5 => v10;

I love the new features in Perl 5.10 and 5.12, so I felt that it would be nice to remove the boiler plate of doing use feature ':5.10' and add it to my sugar importer. Feel free not to use this.

IMPORTED SUBROUTINES

Most of the imported subroutines are the same as what you get when you use the normal interface for result definition: they have the same names and take the same arguments. In general write the code the way you normally would, leaving out the __PACKAGE__-> part. The following are methods that are exported with the same name and arguments:

belongs_to
has_many
has_one
inflate_colum
many_to_many
might_have
remove_column
remove_columns
resultset_attributes
resultset_class
sequence
source_name
table

There are some exceptions though, which brings us to:

IMPORTED ALIASES

These are merely renamed versions of the functions you know and love. The idea is to make your result classes a tiny bit prettier by aliasing some methods. If you know your DBIx::Class API you noticed that in the "SYNOPSIS" I used column instead of add_columns and primary_key instead of set_primary_key. The old versions work, this is just nicer. A list of aliases are as follows:

column            => 'add_columns',
primary_key       => 'set_primary_key',
unique_constraint => 'add_unique_constraint',
relationship      => 'add_relationship',

AUTHOR

Arthur Axel "fREW" Schmidt <frioux+cpan@gmail.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2010 by Arthur Axel "fREW" Schmidt.

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