SPOPS logo
Home | Docs | Download | JIRA Issue Tracking

NAME

SPOPS::DBI -- Implement SPOPS class, serializing into a DBI database

SYNOPSIS

 use SPOPS::DBI;
 @ISA = qw( SPOPS::DBI );
 ...

DESCRIPTION

This SPOPS class is not meant to be used directly. Instead, you inherit certain methods from it while implementing your own. Your module should implement:

Of course, these methods can also do anything else you like. :-)

As you can see, all the methods are optional. Along with SPOPS::ClassFactory, you can create an entirely virtual class consisting only of configuration information. So you can actually create the implementation for a new object in two steps:

  1. Create the configuration file (or add to the existing one)

  2. Create the database table the class depends on.

Complete!

DATABASE HANDLE

This package requires access to a database handle. We do not keep a reference of the database handle with the object for complexity reasons (but you can actually implement this if you would like). Instead you either need to pass a database handle to a method using the db parameter or define a method in your object global_datasource_handle() which returns an appropriate database handle. (Note: the old global_db_handle() method is deprecated and will be removed eventually.)

The latter sounds more difficult than it is. And if you have many objects using the same handle it is definitely the way to go. For instance, your database handle class could look like:

 package My::Object::DBI;
 use strict;
 # These next two are optional but enable you to change databases for
 # lots of objects very quickly.
 use SPOPS::DBI;
 use SPOPS::DBI::Pg;
 @My::Object::DBI::ISA = qw( SPOPS::DBI::Pg SPOPS::DBI );
 use constant DBI_DSN  => 'DBI:Pg:dbname=postgres';
 use constant DBI_USER => 'postgres';
 use constant DBI_PASS => 'postgres';
 my ( $DB );
 sub global_datasource_handle {
   unless ( ref $DB ) {
     $DB = DBI->connect( DBI_DSN, DBI_USER, DBI_PASS,
                         { RaiseError => 1, LongReadLen => 65536, LongTruncOk => 0 } )
               || spops_error "Cannot connect! $DBI::errstr";
   }
   return $DB;
 }
 1;

And all your objects can use this method simply by putting the class in their 'isa' configuration key:

 $conf = {
    myobj => {
       isa => [ qw/ My::Object::DBI / ],
    },
 };

Now, your objects will have transparent access to a DBI data source.

CLASS METHODS

filter_fields( \%fields | \@fields )

Ensures that all fields are not private and are translated through the field map properly. If \%fields, we return a hashref with no private fields and keys translated to mapped fields. If \@fields -- return an arrayref with no private fields and fields translated to mapped fields.

Examples:

 # 'favorite_colour' is mapped to 'favorite_color'
 my @fields = qw( first_name last_name _current_balance favorite_colour );
 my $filtered = $class->filter_fields( \@fields );
 # $filtered = [ 'first_name', 'last_name', 'favorite_color' ]
 my %data = ( first_name       => 'Chris',
              last_name        => 'Winters',
              _current_balance => 100000000000,
              favorite_colour  => 'puce' );
 my $filtered = $class->filter_fields( \%data );
 # $filtered = { first_name       => 'Chris',
 #               last_name        => 'Winters',
 #               favorite_color   => 'puce' }

Returns: arrayref or hashref of filtered fields, depending on the input.

field_update()

This method is documented below in OBJECT METHODS, but it has a class method aspect to it in addition to the object method.

DATA ACCESS METHODS

The following methods access configuration information about the class but are specific to the DBI subclass. You can call all of them from either the class (or subclass) or an instantiated object.

base_table (Returns: $)

Just the table name, no owners or db names prepended.

table_name (Returns: $)

Fully-qualified table name

field (Returns: \%)

Hashref of fields/properties (field is key, value is true)

field_list (Returns: \@)

Arrayref of fields/propreties

no_insert (Returns: \%)

Hashref of fields not to insert (field is key, value is true)

no_update (Returns: \%)

Hashref of fields not to update (field is key, value is true)

skip_undef (Returns: \%)

Hashref of fields to skip update/insert if they are undefined (field is key, value is true)

field_alter (Returns: \%)

Hashref of data-formatting instructions that get used with fetch() and fetch_group() (field is key, instruction is value)

insert_alter (Returns: \%)

Hashref of data-formatting instructions that get used with save() on a new object. The field is the key, the value is a sprintf format that should contain one %s sequence into which the actual value of the object will be plugged.

For instance, your database may use a non-standard format for inserting dates. You can specify:

 insert_alter => { last_login =>
                        "to_date('%s','YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS')" },

So when the object value is set:

 $object->{last_login} = '2002-04-22 14:47:32';

What actually gets put into the database is:

 INSERT INTO table
 ( ... last_login ... )
 VALUES 
 ( ... to_date( '2002-04-22 14:47:32', 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS' ) ... )

Note that the resulting value is passed unquoted to the database.

If you need more complicated processing than this allows, you can override the method apply_insert_alter( \%params ) in your class.

NOTE: Fieldnames in the 'insert_alter' configuration must be in lower-case, even if the fields in your datasource are mixed- or upper-case.

OBJECT METHODS

id_clause( [ $id, [ $opt, \%params ] )

Returns a snippet of SQL suitable for identifying this object in the database.

This can be called either from the class or from a particular object. If called from a class, the $id value must be passed in. Examples:

 my $id = 35;
 my $sql = qq/
   DELETE FROM $table
    WHERE @{[ $class->id_clause( $id ) ]}
 /;
 print "SQL: $sql";
 >> SQL:
      DELETE FROM this_table
       WHERE this_table.this_id = 35
 $class->db_select( ... where => $class->id_clause( 15 ), ... )

If the system cannot determine the data type of the id field, it makes a best guess based on the package variable GUESS_ID_FIELD_TYPE. It defaults to SQL_INTEGER (as set by DBI), but you can set it dynamically as well:

 $SPOPS::DBI::GUESS_ID_FIELD_TYPE = SQL_VARCHAR;

Note that the default behavior is to create a fully-qualified ID field. If you do not wish to do this (for instance, if you need to use the ID field for a lookup into a link table), just pass 'noqualify' as the second argument. To use the example from above:

 my $id = 35;
 my $sql = qq/
   DELETE FROM $table
    WHERE @{[ $class->id_clause( $id, 'noqualify' ) ]}
 /;
 print "SQL: $sql";
 >> SQL:
      DELETE FROM this_table
       WHERE this_id = 35

id_field_select( $id, \%params )

Generates a list of fieldnames suitable for passing in the 'select' parameter to SPOPS::SQLInterface.

If you pass a true value for the 'noqualify' parameter, SPOPS will not prefix the fieldnames with the table name.

This method is aware of objects using multiple primary keys.

Returns: list of fields.

fetch( $id, \%params )

Fetches the information for an object of type class from the data store, creates an object with the data and returns the object. Any failures result in either an SPOPS::Exception or an SPOPS::Exception::DBI object being thrown, depending on the source of the error.

If $id is blank or begins with 'tmp', undef is returned. Classes using multiple primary key fields need to specify the ID as a string separated by a comma. For instance, if you had a class specified with:

 myclass => {
     class => 'My::Customer',
     id    => [ 'entno', 'custno' ],
     ...
 },

Then you would fetch a customer with:

 my $cust = My::Customer->fetch( "$entno,$custno" );

If you have security turned on for the object class, the system will first check if the currently-configured user is allowed to fetch the object. If the user has less that SEC_LEVEL_READ access, the fetch is denied and a SPOPS::Exception::Security object thrown.

Note that if the fetch is successful we store the access level of this object within the object itself. Check the temporary property {tmp_security_level} of any object and you will find it.

Parameters:

fetch_group( \%params )

Returns an arrayref of objects that meet the criteria you specify.

This is actually fairly powerful. Examples:

 # Get all the user objects and put them in a hash
 # indexed by the id
 my %uid = map { $_->id => $_ } @{ $R->user->fetch_group({ order => 'last_name' }) };
 # Get only those user objects for people who have
 # logged in today
 my $users = $R->user->fetch_group( {
               where => 'datediff( dd, last_login, get_date() ) = 0',
               order => 'last_name'
             } );
 foreach my $user ( @{ $users } ) {
   print "User: $user->{login_name} logged in today.\n";
 }

Note that you can also return objects that match the results of a join query:

 my $list = eval { $class->fetch_group({
                               order => 'item.this, item.that',
                               from => [ 'item', 'modifier' ],
                               where => 'modifier.property = ? AND ' .
                                        'item.item_id = modifier.item_id',
                               value => [ 'property value' ] } ) };

And you can use parameters found in fetch():

 my $list = eval { $class->fetch_group({ column_group => 'minimal' }) };

Parameters:

fetch_iterator \%params )

Uses the same parameters as fetch_group() but instead of returning an arrayref with all the objects, it returns an SPOPS::Iterator::DBI object. You can use this object to step through the objects one at a time, which can be an enormous resource savings if you are retrieving large groups of objects.

Example:

  my $iter = My::SPOPS->fetch_iterator({
                             where         => 'package = ?',
                             value         => [ 'base_theme' ],
                             order         => 'name' });
  while ( my $template = $iter->get_next ) {
      print "Item ", $iter->position, ": $template->{package} / $template->{name}";
      print " (", $iter->is_first, ") (", $iter->is_last, ")\n";
  }

All security restrictions are still upheld -- if a user cannot retrieve an object with fetch() or fetch_group(), the user cannot retrieve it with fetch_iterator() either.

Parameters: see fetch_group().

fetch_count( \%params )

Returns the number of objects that would have been returned from a query. Note that this INCLUDES SECURITY CHECKS. So running:

 my $query = { where => 'field = ?',
               value => 'broom' };
 my $just_count = $class->fetch_count( $query );
 $query->{order} = 'other_thingy';
 my $rows = $class->fetch_group( $query );
 print ( $just_count == scalar @{ $rows } )
       ? "Equal!"
       : "Not equal -- something's wrong!";

Should print "Equal!"

This method takes mostly the same parameters as fetch_group(), although ones like 'order' will not any functionality to the query but will add time.

Parameters not used: 'limit'

refetch( [ $fields | \@fields ], \%params )

Refetches the value of the specified field(s) from the data store and updates the object in memory. Returns the new value(s). A single field name can be specified as a simple scalar value and and multiple fields can be specified as an arrayref. Returns a scalar value for single fields and a list for multiple fields.

If the first parameter is empty, does a refetch for all fields in the object.

E.g.

  $new_val = $obj->refetch( 'field1' );
  ($new_val1, $new_val2) = $obj->refetch( [ qw/ field1 field2 / ] );

Parameters:

save( [ \%params ] )

Object method that saves this object to the data store. Returns the object if the save was successful. As with other methods, any failures trigger an exception

Example:

 my $obj = $class->new;
 $obj->{param1} = $value1;
 $obj->{param2} = $value2;
 eval { $obj->save };
 if ( $@ ) {
   print "Error inserting object: $@\n";
 }
 else {
   print "New object created with ID: $new_id\n";
 }

The object can generally tell whether it should be created in the data store or whether it should update the data store values. Currently it determines this by the presence of an ID value. If an ID value exists, this is probably an update; if it does not exist, it is probably a save.

You can give SPOPS hints otherwise. If you are controlling ID values yourself and an ID value exists in your object, you can do:

 $obj->save({ is_add => 1 });

to tell SPOPS to treat the request as a creation rather than an update.

One other thing to note if you are using SPOPS::Secure for security: SPOPS assumes that your application determines whether a user can create an object. That is, all requests to create an object are automatically approved. Once the object is created, the initial security logic kicks in and any further actions (fetch/save/remove) are controlled by SPOPS::Secure.

Note that if your database schema includes something like:

 CREATE TABLE my_table (
  my_id      int,
  created_on datetime default today(),
  table_legs tinyint default 4
 )

and your object had the following values:

 my_id      => 10,
 created_on => undef,
 table_legs => undef

The only thing your object would reflect after inserting is the ID, since the other values are filled in by the database. The save() method tries to take this into account and syncs the object up with what is in the database once the record has been successfully inserted. If you want to skip this step, either pass a positive value for the 'no_sync' key or set 'no_save_sync' to a positive value in the CONFIG of the implementing class.

SPOPS is generally smart about dealing with auto-generated field values on object creation as well. This is done for you in one of the SPOPS::DBI:: subclasses, or in one of the SPOPS::Key:: classes, but it is useful to mention it here.

You can also tell SPOPS to skip certain fields from inserting or updating. The configuration keys 'no_insert' and 'no_update' provided class-wide definitions for this -- frequently you will want to put your primary key field(s) in 'no_update' so they will not be accidentally changed. You can also provide a definition for this on a per-object basis by passing an arrayref with the relevant parameter:

 my $obj = $class->fetch( $id );
 $object->{foo} = 'bar';
 $object->{bar} = 'foo';
 $object->save({ no_update => [ 'foo' ] });
 my $new_obj = $class->fetch( $id );
 print $new_obj->{foo}; # Prints 'bar'

You can also pass empty array references for either 'no_insert' or 'no_update' to override information from the class configuration. (This changed with SPOPS 0.80, previous behavior was to add the values passed in with the method call to the class configuration instead of replacing them.)

You can also tell SPOPS not to insert or update fields when they are undefined using the 'skip_undef' configuration key. (Configuration is an arrayref which we transform for internal purposes to a hashref at class initialization.) This is very useful on inserts when you have defaults defined in your database -- since no value is inserted for the field, the database will fill in the default and SPOPS will re-sync after the insert so that your object is in the proper state. (Note that the value must be undef, not merely false.)

There are two phases where you can step in and generate or retrieve a generated value: pre_fetch_id() and post_fetch_id(). The first is called before the object is saved, the second is called after the object is saved.

Use pre_fetch_id() when you need to ask the database (or another resource) to create a value or command to use for the generated value. For instance the SPOPS::Key::Random or SPOPS::Key::UUID key generators have a pre_fetch_id() method which creates a (hopefully unique) key. The SPOPS::DBI::Oracle subclass creates a command which fetches the next value from a named sequence.

The method should return a value that gets put directly into the SQL INSERT statement. Most of the time you will not want SPOPS to quote the value for you so you do not need any other arguments. If you want the value to get quoted in the normal fashion, just pass along a second argument with a true value.

Use post_fetch_id() when the database generates a value for you to retrieve after the INSERT. SPOPS::DBI::Sybase fetches the value of @@IDENTITY, and SPOPS::DBI::MySQL gets the value of the auto-incremented field from the database handle.

apply_insert_alter( \%params )

This method is called when save() is applied to an unsaved object. It uses configuration information to alter how the value for a particular field gets passed to the database. (See entry under DATA ACCESS METHODS for insert_alter above.)

If you override this, your method should modify the parameters passed in. (Peek-a-boo logic, sorry.)

Parameters:

Here is a simple example where we modify the value for the field 'tochange' to use some 'CustomSQLFunction'. Note that we explicitly do not check whether other fields need to be altered since in the first step we call the method in the parent class.

 sub apply_insert_alter {
     my ( $self, $params ) = @_;
     $self->SUPER::apply_insert_alter( $params );
     for ( my $i = 0; $i < @{ $params->{value} }; $i++ ) {
          next unless ( $params->{field}[ $i ] eq 'tochange' );
          my ( $type, $insert_value ) = split /=/, $params->{value}[ $i ], 2;
          $params->{value}[ $i ] = qq/CustomSQLFunction( $type, "$insert_value" )/;
          $params->{no_quote}{ 'tochange' };
     }
 }

field_update( $fields, \%params )

There are two versions of this method: an object method and a class method.

Object method

Conditionally updates the value(s) of the specified field(s) in the data store and in the object if successful. If the $fields argument is a scalar or arrayref, the values used to update the fields in the data store are taken from the object. If the $fields argument is a hashref, then it specifies the fields and the new values. In this case, the values in the object are also updated if and only if the update to the data store was successful.

Examples:

  $obj->{field1} = $new_value1;
  $obj->field_update( 'field1' );
  $obj->{field1} = $new_value1;
  $obj->{field2} = $new_value2;
  $obj->field_update( [ qw/ field1 field2 / ] );
  $obj->field_update( { field1 => $new_value1,
                        field2 => $new_value2 } );
  $obj->field_update( { field1 => $new_value1,
                        field2 => $new_value2 },
                      { if_match => 1 } );
  $obj->field_update( { field1 => $new_value1,
                        field2 => $new_value2 },
                      { if_match => { field3 => $val3 } );
  $obj->field_update( { field1 => $new_value1,
                        field2 => $new_value2 },
                      { where => 'field3 > $val3' } );

Parameters:

Class method

You can also use this method to update multiple objects at once. This goes against the grain of SPOPS since you generally only make changes to one object at a time, but it can be very useful.

This differs from the object method in a few ways. First, the $fields argument must be a hashref. The method will throw an exception otherwise.

Second, you must specify a 'where' clause in the parameters. The method will throw an exception otherwise.

Note that this does not update any objects in the cache. (Since there is no cache implementation right now, this point is moot but still might be worth mentioning for enterprising souls who wish to code a cache.)

Returns: If the update successfully modifies rows in the database then the method returns the number of rows updated. Otherwise it returns false.

Example:

 # Update all objects updated on '2002-08-02'
 my $num_rows = $class->field_update( { status => 'Active' },
                                      { where => 'created_on = "2002-08-02"' } );
 print "Updated $num_rows rows";

Parameters:

remove( [ \%params ] )

Note that you can only remove a saved object (duh). Also tries to remove the object from the cache. The object will not actually be destroyed until it goes out of scope, so do not count on its DESTROY method being called exactly when this happens.

Returns 1 on success, throws exception on failure. Example:

 eval { $obj->remove };
 if ( $@ ) {
   print "Object not removed. Error: $@";
 }
 else {
   print "Object removed properly.";
 }

log_action( $action, $id )

Implemented by subclass.

This method is passed the action performed upon an object ('create', 'update', 'remove') and the ID. SPOPS::DBI comes with an empty method, but you can subclass it and do what you wish

LAZY LOADING

This class supports lazy loading, available in SPOPS 0.40 and later. All you need to do is define one or more 'column_group' entries in the configuration of your object and SPOPS will do the rest.

If you are interested: the method perform_lazy_load() does the actual fetch of the field value.

Important Note #1: If you define one or more 'column_group' entries in your object configuration, then lazy loading is active for this class. If you store additional information in your object then SPOPS will try to lazy-load it even if it is not a valid field. If you want to store information like this, prefix the key with a '_' and SPOPS will ignore it as a lazy loaded field.

For instance, say you are producing a list of objects and want to display the user name and email. Instead of looking up the information every time, you can create a temporary local cache. (Assume that the $object class uses lazy-loading.)

 my %user_cache = ();
 foreach my $object ( @{ $object_list } ) {
     unless ( $user_cache{ $object->{user_id} } ) {
         $user_cache{ $object->{user_id} } = $object->user;
     }
     $object->{_user_name}  = $user_cache->{ $object->{user_id} }->full_name();
     $object->{_user_email} = $user_cache->{ $object->{user_id} }->email();
 }

Note how we use the keys '_user_name' and '_user_email' here. If we used 'user_name' and 'user_email' then $object would try to lazy-load these value and throw an error when the column was not found in the table.

Important Note #2: If you use lazy loading, you must define a method global_datasource_handle() (see DATABASE HANDLE above) for your object -- otherwise the perform_lazy_load() method will not be able to get it.

TO DO

Consistent Field Handling

Since we use the {field_alter} directive to modify what is actually selected from the database and use the _fetch_assign_row() to map fieldnames to field positions, we need to have a generic way to map these two things to each other. (It is not that difficult, just making a note to deal with it later.)

BUGS

None known.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 2001-2004 intes.net, inc.. All rights reserved.

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

AUTHORS

Chris Winters <chris@cwinters.com>

See the SPOPS module for the full author list.

Generated from the SPOPS 0.87 source.

Home | Docs | Download | JIRA Issue Tracking

SourceForge Logo