/ 
Catalyst-Controller-DBIC-API-1.000000
River stage one • 2 direct dependents • 3 total dependents
/ Catalyst::Controller::DBIC::API

VERSION

Version 1.000000

NAME

Catalyst::Controller::DBIC::API

SYNOPSIS

package MyApp::Controller::API::RPC::Artist;
use base qw/Catalyst::Controller::DBIC::API::RPC/;

__PACKAGE__->config
  ( action => { setup => { PathPart => 'artist', Chained => '/api/rpc/rpc_base' } }, # define parent chain action and partpath
    class => 'MyAppDB::Artist', # DBIC schema class
    create_requires => ['name', 'age'], # columns required to create
    create_allows => ['nickname'], # additional non-required columns that create allows
    update_allows => ['name', 'age', 'nickname'] # columns that update allows
    );

# Provides the following functional endpoints:
# /api/rpc/artist/create
# /api/rpc/artist/list
# /api/rpc/artist/id/[id]/delete
# /api/rpc/artist/id/[id]/update

DESCRIPTION

Easily provide common API endpoints based on your DBIx::Class schema classes. Module provides both RPC and REST interfaces to base functionality. Uses Catalyst::Action::Serialise and Catalyst::Action::Deserialise to serialise response and/or deserialise request.

GETTING STARTED

This document describes base functionlity such as list, create, delete, update and the setting of config attributes. Catalyst::Controller::API::RPC and Catalyst::Controller::API::REST describe details of provided endpoints to those base methods.

You will need to create a controller for each schema class you require API endpoints for. For example if your schema has Artist and Track, and you want to provide a RESTful interface to these, you should create MyApp::Controller::API::REST::Artist and MyApp::Controller::API::REST::Track which both subclass Catalyst::Controller::API::REST. Similarly if you wanted to provide an RPC style interface then subclass Catalyst::Controller::API::RPC. You then configure these individually as specified in "CONFIGURATION".

Also note that the test suite of this module has an example application used to run tests against. It maybe helpful to look at that until a better tutorial is written.

CONFIGURATION

Each of your controller classes needs to be configured to point at the relevant schema class, specify what can be updated and so on, as shown in the "SYNOPSIS".

class

Whatever you would pass to $c->model to get a resultset for this class. MyAppDB::Track for example.

create_requires

Arrayref listing columns required to be passed to create in order for the request to be valid.

create_allows

Arrayref listing columns additional to those specified in create_requires that are not required to create but which create does allow. Columns passed to create that are not listed in create_allows or create_requires will be ignored.

update_allows

Arrayref listing columns that update will allow. Columns passed to update that are not listed here will be ignored.

list_returns

Arrayref listing columns that "list" will return. Leave blank to return all columns.

object_stash_key

Object level methods such as delete and update stash the object in the stash. Specify the stash key you would like to use here. Defaults to 'object'.

rs_stash_key

List level methods such as list and create stash the class resultset in the stash. Specify the stash key you would like to use here. Defaults to 'class_rs'.

METHODS

Note: see the individual interface classes - Catalyst::Controller::API::RPC and Catalyst::Controller::API::REST - for details of the endpoints to these abstract methods.

setup

This action is the chain root of the controller. It must either be overridden or configured to provide a base pathpart to the action and also a parent action. For example, for class MyAppDB::Track you might have

  package MyApp::Controller::API::RPC::Track;
  use base qw/Catalyst::Controller::DBIC::API::RPC/;

  __PACKAGE__->config
    ( action => { setup => { PathPart => 'track', Chained => '/api/rpc/rpc_base' } }, 
	...
  );

  # or

  sub setup :Chained('/api/rpc_base') :CaptureArgs(0) :PathPart('track') {
	$self->NEXT::setup($c);
  }

This action will populate $c->stash->{$self->rs_stash_key} with $c->model($self->class) for other actions in the chain to use.

object

This action is the chain root for all object level actions (such as delete and update). Takes one argument which is passed to "find" in DBIx::Class::ResultSet, if an object is returned then it is set in $c->stash->{$self->object_stash_key}.

create

List level action chained from "setup". Checks $c->req->params for each column specified in the "create_requires" and "create_allows" parameters of the controller config. If all of the required columns are present then the object is created.

Does not populate the response with any additional information.

list

List level action chained from "setup". By default populates $c->stash->{response}->{list} with a list of hashrefs representing each object in the class resultset. If the </list_returns> config param is defined then the hashes will contain only those columns, otherwise all columns in the object will be returned.

If not all objects in the resultset are required then it's possible to pass conditions to the method as request parameters. "CGI::Expand" is used to expand the request parameters into a structure and then $c->req->params->{search} is used as the search condition.

For example, these request parameters:

?search.name=fred&search.cd.artist=luke

Would result in this search (where 'name' is a column of the schema class, 'cd' is a relation of the schema class and 'artist' is a column of the related class):

$rs->search({ name => 'fred', 'cd.artist' => 'luke' }, { join => ['cd'] })
=head1 AUTHOR

The "format_list" method is used to format the results, so override that as required.

format_list

Used by "list" to populate response based on class resultset. By default populates $c->stash->{response}->{list} with a list of hashrefs representing each object in the resultset. Can be overidden to format the list as required.

update

Object level action chained from "object". Checks $c->req->params for each column specified in the "update_allows" parameter of the controller config. If any of these columns are found in $c->req->params then the object set by "object" is updated with those columns.

Does not populate the response with any additional information.

delete

Object level action chained from "object". Will simply delete the object set by "object".

Does not populate the response with any additional information.

end

If the request was successful then $c->stash->{response}->{success} is set to 1, if not then it is set to 0 and $c->stash->{response}->{messages} set to an arrayref containing all error messages.

Then the contents of $c->stash->{response} are serialized using Catalyst::Action::Serialize.

EXTENDING

By default the create, delete and update actions will not return anything apart from the success parameter set in "end", often this is not ideal but the required behaviour varies from application to application. So normally it's sensible to write an intermediate class which your main controller classes subclass from.

AUTHOR

Luke Saunders <luke.saunders@gmail.com
>
=head1 CONTRIBUTORS

Zbigniew Lukasiak <zzbbyy@gmail.com>