NAME
    CGI::ParamComposite - Convert .-delimited CGI parameters to Perl
    classes/objects

SYNOPSIS
      use CGI;
      use CGI::ParamComposite;
      my $q = CGI->new();
      my $c = CGI::ParamComposite->new( populate => 0 , cgi => $q );

      #Dumper([$composite->roots()]) returns (minor formatting):
      $VAR1 = [
         bless( {}, 'CGI::ParamComposite' )
      ];

      my $c = CGI::ParamComposite->new( populate => 1 , cgi => $q , package => 'market');

      #Dumper([$composite->roots()]) returns (minor formatting):
      $VAR1 = [
        bless( {
          'food' => bless( {
            'market::food::meat' => [
              'pork',
              'beef',
              'fish'
            ],
            'market::food::vegetable' => [
              'tomato',
              'spinach'
            ]
          }, 'market::food' )
        }, 'market' )
      ];

      #either way, these calls now work:
      my($market) = $composite->roots();
      ref($market);                                       #returns "market"
      ref($market->food);                                 #returns "market::food"
      join(', ', map {ref($_)} $market->food->children(); #returns "market::food::meat, market::food::vegetable"

DESCRIPTION
    I needed this for a fairly large single-CGI script application that I
    was working on. It was a script that had been actively, organically
    growing for 4+ years, and was getting very difficult to track the
    undocumented 50+ CGI parameters that were being passed, some of them
    dynamically generated, and almost all with very short names.

    I wanted a way to organize the parameters, to make it easier to set up
    some simple guidelines for how to maintain parameters, and how to make
    sure they were accessable in a consistent manner. I decided to use a
    hierarchical, dot-delimited convention similar to what you seen in some
    programming languages. Now if I see a parameter like:

    /my.cgi?gbrowse.param.navigation.instructions=1

    I can pretty quickly guess, after not looking at the code for
    days/weeks/months, that this value is somehow affecting the instructions
    on the Gbrowse navigation page. In my opinion, this is superior to:

    /my.cgi?ins=0

    which had the same effect in an earlier version of the code (negated
    logic :o).

SEE ALSO
    CGI, Symbol

AUTHOR
    Allen Day, <allenday@ucla.edu>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
    Copyright (C) 2004 by Allen Day

    This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
    under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.8.3 or, at
    your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.