CGI::Application::Plugin::AutoRunmode::FileDelegate (3pm)

        # in file runmodes/my_run_mode.pl
                sub  {
                        my ($app, $delegate) = @_;
                                # do something here
                };

        # in file runmodes/another_run_mode.pl
                sub {
                                # do something else
                };


        package MyApp;
        use base 'CGI::Application';
        use CGI::Application::Plugin::AutoRunmode
                qw [ cgiapp_prerun];
        use CGI::Application::Plugin::AutoRunmode::FileDelegate();

                sub setup{
                        my ($self) = @_;
                        my $delegate = new CGI::Application::Plugin::AutoRunmode::FileDelegate
                                        ('/path/to/runmodes')
                        $self->param('::Plugin::AutoRunmode::delegate' => $delegate);
                }

         # you now have two run modes
         # "my_run_mode" and "another_run_mode"

Using this module, you can place the definition of your run modes for a CGI::Application into directory of files (as opposed to into a Perl module).

Each run mode is contained in its own file, named foo.pl for a run mode called foo. The run modes are lazily evaluated (on demand) for each request. In the case of mod_perl this means you can update them without restarting your web server. In the case of plain \s-1CGI\s0 it means a reduced startup cost if you have many run modes (because only the one that you need gets parsed and loaded, along with dependent modules).

Using more than one directory with runmodes

You can pass multiple directory paths to the constructor for the delegate:

my $delegate = new CGI::Application::Plugin::AutoRunmode::FileDelegate ('/path/to/runmodes', '/path/to/more_runmodes')

In this case, they will be searched in order. The first matching file becomes the run mode. In the case of errors with that file, the module will croak (and not continue the search in the remaining directories).

With all the namespace nesting going on the name of this module has reached an intolerable Java-esque length.

If you like the idea of moving everything outside of Perl modules into separate files, you should also have a look at CGI::Application::Plugin::TemplateRunner, which does a similar thing for \s-1HTML\s0 templates and the Perl code needed to provide them with data.

Thilo Planz, <[email protected]>

Copyright 2005 by Thilo Planz

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