Leyland::Manual - Manual for the Leyland web application framework
version 0.001007
This section is just a copy of L<Leyland/"DESCRIPTION">.
Leyland is a Plack-based application framework for building truely RESTful, MVC-style web applications.
"Another application framework?" you ask? Well yes! You see, after several years of Catalyst development, I grew tired of Catalyst's bloat, and the fact that it made it very hard (pretty much impossible if you ask me) to create truely RESTful applications. I then moved for a short while to Dancer, which had a nice syntax for defining routes and had at least some REST properties, but I quickly found it didn't fit my needs as well, and that it also made it very difficult to write truely RESTful applications. I also really missed Catalyst's "context object" and some of its other features, and simply couldn't get used to Dancer's whole functional syntax you're supposed to use inside your routes. While there were quite a few other options on CPAN, I didn't like any of them, plus pretty much none of them were native Plack frameworks, which for me is a bit of a minus (can't blame them though as most of them predate Plack), so I decided to create my own framework, based on Plack and designed to my liking. This is the mess that I've created. You will find that it mostly resembles Catalyst, while providing a syntax mostly similar to Dancer, but with a lot of crazy ideas of its own.
- Build truely RESTful web applications - Leyland was designed from the ground up according to the Representational State Transfer style of software architecture. Leyland applications perform real HTTP negotiations, (can) provide different representations of the same resource easily, respond with proper HTTP status codes, throw real HTTP exceptions, etc.
- Automatic data (de)serialization - Leyland does by itself the boring task of serializing resources to representations in the format your client wants to receive, like JSON and XML. It will also deserialize JSON/XML requests to Perl data-structures automatically.
- Pure UTF-8 - Leyland applications are pure UTF-8. Anything your application receives is automatically UTF-8 decoded, and anything your application sends is automatically UTF-8 encoded. Leyland apps will not accept, nor provide, content in a different character set. If you want to use different/multiple encodings, then Leyland is not for you.
- Localize for the client, not the server - Pretty much every other application framework only concerns itself with localizing the application to the locale of the machine on which it is running. I find that this is rarely useful nor interesting to the application developer. Leyland localizes for the client, not the server. If the client wants to view your application (which may be a simple website) in Hebrew, and your application supports Hebrew, then you can easily provide him with Hebrew representations. Leyland uses Locale::Wolowitz for this purpose.
- Easy deployment and middleware support via Plack - Leyland doesn't support Plack, it is dependant on it. Leyland's entire session support, for example, depends on Plack's Session middleware. Use the full power of Plack in your Leyland application.
- Less code, better programs - One thing I really hated about Catalyst was that I had to create stupid pointless classes that don't do anything but wrap a base class, just so I can have a new view class or something. While not as lightweight as Dancer, Leyland does a lot of the boring work for you, so you can concentrate more on your application.
- Flexible, extensible, unbreakable - Well, it's not unbreakable, but Leyland was designed to be as flexible and as extensible as possible - where flexibility matters, and strict - where constistency and convention are appropriate. Leyland goes to great lengths to give you the ability to do things the way you want to, and more importantly - the way your end-users want to. Your applications listen to your users' preferences and automatically decide on a suitable course of action. Leyland is also Moose based, making it easy to extend and tweak its behavior.
- Doesn't have a pony - You don't really need a pony, do you?
This manual is your guide to creating Leyland-based web applications. Hopefully, it will provide you with all the knowledge you need to create Leyland applications and utilize its full potential.
The guide is divided into the following sections (order purely a suggestion, but you probably should read Leyland::Manual::Applications first):
- 1. Leyland::Manual::Applications - Describes Leyland application structure and how to create (more correctly initialize) and configure Leyland applications.
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- 2. Leyland::Manual::Controllers - Describes controllers, routes, resources, representations, etc.
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- 3. Leyland::Manual::Views - Describes view classes and their usage.
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- 4. Leyland::Manual::Models - Describes models and their usage.
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- 5. Leyland::Manual::StaticFiles - Describes how to serve static files from your application.
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- 6. Leyland::Manual::Localization - Describes how application localization is performed.
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- 7. Leyland::Manual::Logging - Describes how to use Leyland's logging facilities.
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- 8. Leyland::Manual::Exceptions - To err is human, to throw proper HTTP exceptions divine.
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- 9. Leyland::Manual::Deployment - Describes how to run/deploy/test Leyland applications.
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- 10. Leyland::Manual::Extending - Describes how to extend Leyland.
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- 11. Leyland::Manual::FAQ - Contains frequently asked questions and their answers.
Ido Perlmuter, <ido at ido50.net>
Please report any bugs or feature requests to bug-Leyland at rt.cpan.org, or through the web interface at http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=Leyland. I will be notified, and then you'll automatically be notified of progress on your bug as I make changes.
You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.
perldoc Leyland::Manual
You can also look for information at:
Copyright 2010-2011 Ido Perlmuter.
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.
