USE

The accessor keyword tells your ORM to use an alternate name for the dual use get/set accessor for a field. This is useful if you want to use the field's name for some other method. I do this for date beautification, among other things. So, as in the example below, I might have a field like this:

    field birth_day {
        is date;
        label `Birth Day`;
        html_form_type text;
        accessor birth_date_acc;
    }

Then in the model stub for this table I can add a method called birth_date. Anyone calling it gets the formatting of my choosing:

    sub birth_date {
        my $row = shift;

        my $value = $row->birth_date_acc( @_ );

        return beautify_date( $value );
    }

Note that I carefully dispatch to the real accessor first, then pretty up the date.

EXAMPLE

To see an example, build:

    bigtop -c example.bigtop all

From the newly created Kids subdirectory, look in lib/Kids/Model/GEN/child.pm for a special add_columns statement for birth_day.