NAME
MVC::Neaf [ni:f] stands for Not Even A Framework.
OVERVIEW
Neaf offers very simple rules to build very simple applications. For the lazy, by the lazy.
It has a lot of similarities to Dancer and Kelp.
Model is assumed to be a regular Perl module, and is totally out of scope.
View is assumed to have just one method, render(),
which receives a hashref and returns a pair of (content, content-type).
Controller is reduced to just one function, which gets a request object and is expected to return a hashref.
A pre-defined set of dash-prefixed control keys allows to control the framework's behaviour while all other keys are just sent to the view.
Request object will depend on the underlying web-server. The same app, verbatim, should be able to run as PSGI app, CGI script, or Apache handler. Request knows all you need to know about the outside world.
EXAMPLE
The following would produce a greeting message depending
on the ?name= parameter.
use strict;
use warnings;
use MVC::Neaf;
MVC::Neaf->route( "/" => sub {
my $req = shift;
return {
-template => \'Hello, [% name %]!',
-type => 'text/plain',
name => $req->param( name => qr/\w+/, "Stranger" ),
},
});
MVC::Neaf->run;
FEATURES
-
GET, POST, and HEAD requests; uploads; redirects; and cookies are supported. Not quite impressive, but it's 95% of what's needed 95% of the time.
-
Template::Toolkit view out of the box;
-
json/jsonp view out of the box (with sanitized callbacks);
-
can serve raw content (e.g. generated images);
-
can serve static files. No need for separate web server to test your CSS/images.
-
sanitized query parameters and cookies out of the box.
-
Easy to develop RESTful web-services.
NOT SO BORING FEATURES
-
CLI-based debugging via
perl <your_app.pl> --help|--list|--method GET -
Can gather performance statistics if needed;
-
Delayed and/or unspecified length replies supported;
-
Cookie-based sessions supported out of the box.
-
Form validation with resubmission ability. Validator::LIVR supported, but not requires.
-
Fancy error templates supported.
MORE EXAMPLES
The example/ directory has a number of them, including an app explaining
HTTP in a nutshell, jsonp call sample and some stupid 200-line wiki engine.
In fact, the current development model relies on these examples as an additional test suite, and no major feature is considered complete until half a page micro-app can be written to demonstrate it works.
PHILOSOPHY
-
Start out simple, then scale up.
-
Don't rely on side effects. Use explicit functions receiving arguments and returning a value.
-
Zeroconf: everything can be configured, nothing needs to.
-
It's not software unless you can run it.
-
Trust nobody. Validate the data.
-
Force UTF8 if possible. It's 21st century.
BUGS
Lots of them. Still under heavy development.
-
mod_perl handler is a mess (but it works somehow);
-
native form validator is a joke;
-
too few session mechanisms.
Bug reports, patches, and proposals are welcome.
CONTRIBUTING TO THIS PROJECT
Please see STYLE.md for the style guide. Please see CHECKLIST if you plan a new major version.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Eugene Ponizovsky had great influence over my understanding of MVC.
Alexander Kuklev gave some great early feedback and also drove me towards functional programming and pure functions.
Ideas were shamelessly stolen from PSGI, Dancer, and Catalyst.
LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT
Copyright 2016 Konstantin S. Uvarin aka KHEDIN
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of either: the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; or the Artistic License.
See http://dev.perl.org/licenses/ for more information.