NAME
Dancer::Plugin::SimpleCRUD - very simple CRUD
(create/read/update/delete)
DESCRIPTION
A plugin for Dancer web applications, to use a few lines of code to
create appropriate routes to support creating/editing/deleting/viewing
records within a database table. Uses CGI::FormBuilder to generate,
process and validate forms, Dancer::Plugin::Database for database
interaction and HTML::Table::FromDatabase to display lists of records.
Setting up forms and code to display and edit database records is a very
common requirement in web apps; this plugin tries to make something
basic trivially easy to set up and use.
SYNOPSIS
# In your Dancer app,
use Dancer::Plugin::SimpleCRUD;
# Simple example:
simple_crud(
record_title => 'Widget',
prefix => '/widgets',
db_table => 'widgets',
editable => 1,
);
# The above would create a route to handle C</widgets>, listing all widgets,
# with options to add/edit entries (linking to C</widgets/add> and
# C</widgets/edit/:id> respectively) where a form to add a new entry or edit
# an existing entry will be created.
# All fields in the database table would be editable.
# A more in-depth synopsis, using all options (of course, usually you'd only
# need to use a few of the options where you need to change the default
# behaviour):
simple_crud(
record_title => 'Team',
prefix => '/teams',
db_table => 'team',
labels => { # More human-friendly labels for some columns
venue_id => 'Home Venue',
name => 'Team Name',
},
validation => { # validate values entered for some columns
division => qr/\d+/,
},
input_types => { # overriding form input type for some columns
supersecret => 'password',
lotsoftext' => 'textarea',
},
key_column => 'id', # id is default anyway
editable_columns => [ qw( venue_id name division ) ],
display_columns => [ qw( id venue_id name division ) ],
deleteable => 1,
editable => 1,
sortable => 1,
paginate => 300,
template => 'simple_crud.tt',
query_auto_focus => 1,
downloadable => 1,
foreign_keys => {
columnname => {
table => 'venues',
key_column => 'id',
label_column => 'name',
},
},
);
USAGE
This plugin provides a `simple_crud' keyword, which takes a hash of
options as described below, and sets up the appropriate routes to
present add/edit/delete options.
OPTIONS
The options you can pass to simple_crud are:
`record_title' (required)
What we're editing, for instance, if you're editing widgets, use
'Widget'. Will be used in form titles (for instance "Add a ...",
"Edit ..."), and button labels.
`prefix' (required)
The prefix for the routes which will be created. Given a prefix of
`/widgets', then you can go to `/widgets/new' to create a new
Widget, and `/widgets/42' to edit the widget with the ID (see
keu_column) 42.
`db_table' (required)
The name of the database table.
`key_column' (optional, default: 'id')
Specify which column in the table is the primary key. If not given,
defaults to id.
`db_connection_name' (optional)
We use Dancer::Plugin::Database to obtain database connections. This
option allows you to specify the name of a connection defined in the
config file to use. See the documentation for
Dancer::Plugin::Database for how multiple database configurations
work. If this is not supplied or is empty, the default database
connection details in your config file will be used - this is often
what you want, so unless your app is dealing with multiple DBs, you
probably won't need to worry about this option.
`labels' (optional)
A hashref of field_name => 'Label', if you want to provide more
user-friendly labels for some or all fields. As we're using
CGI::FormBuilder, it will do a reasonable job of figuring these out
for itself usually anyway - for instance, a field named `first_name'
will be shown as `First Name'.
`input_types' (optional)
A hashref of field_name => input type, if you want to override the
default type of input which would be selected by CGI::FormBuilder or
by our DWIMmery (by default, password fields will be used for field
names like 'password', 'passwd' etc, and text area inputs will be
used for columns with type 'TEXT').
Valid values include anything allowed by HTML, e.g. `text',
`select', `textarea', `radio', `checkbox', `password', `hidden'.
Example:
input_types => {
first_name => 'text',
secret => 'password',
gender => 'radio',
}
`validation' (optional)
A hashref of field_name => validation criteria which should be
passed to CGI::FormBuilder.
Example:
validation => {
email_address => 'EMAIL',
age => '/^\d+$/',
}
`message' (optional)
A hashref of field_name => messages to show if validation failed.
Default is "Invalid entry".
Example:
message => {
age => 'Please enter your age in years',
email => 'That is not a valid email address',
},
`jsmessage' (optional)
A hashref of field_name => message to show when Javascript
validation fails.
Default message is "- Invalid entry for the "$fieldname" field". See
above for example.
`acceptable_values' (optional)
A hashref of arrayrefs to declare that certain fields can take only
a set of acceptable values.
Example:
acceptable_values => {
gender => ['Male', 'Female'],
status => [qw(Alive Dead Zombie Unknown)],
}
`editable_columns' (optional)
Specify an arrayref of fields which the user can edit. By default,
this is all columns in the database table, with the exception of the
key column.
<not_editable_columns> (optional)
Specify an arrayref of fields which should not be editable.
`required' (optional)
Specify an arrayref of fields which must be completed. If this is
not provided, DWIMmery based on whether the field is set to allow
null values in the database will be used - i.e. if that column can
contain null, then it doesn't have to be completed, otherwise, it
does.
`deletable'
Specify whether to support deleting records. If set to a true value,
a route will be created for `/prefix/delete/:id' to delete the
record with the ID given, and the edit form will have a "Delete
$record_title" button.
`editable'
Specify whether to support editing records. Defaults to true. If set
to a false value, it will not be possible to add or edit rows in the
table.
`sortable'
Specify whether to support sorting the table. Defaults to false. If
set to a true value, column headers will become clickable, allowing
the user to sort the output by each column, and with
ascending/descending order.
`paginate'
Specify whether to show results in pages (with next/previous
buttons). Defaults to undef, meaning all records are shown on one
page (not useful for large tables). When defined as a number, only
this number of results will be shown.
`display_columns'
Specify an arrayref of columns that should show up in the list.
Defaults to all.
`template'
Specify a template that will be applied to all output. This template
must have a "simple_crud" placeholder defined or you won't get any
output. This template must be located in your "views" directory.
Any global layout will be applied automatically because this option
causes the module to use the `template' keyword. If you don't use
this option, the `template' keyword is not used, which implies that
any `before_template_render' and `after_template_render' hooks won't
be called.
`query_auto_focus'
Specify whether to automatically set input focus to the query input
field. Defaults to true. If set to a false value, focus will not be
set. The focus is set using a simple inlined javascript.
`downloadable'
Specify whether to support downloading the results. Defaults to
false. If set to a true value, The results show on the HTML page can
be downloaded as CSV/TSV/JSON/XML. The download links will appear at
the top of the page.
item `foreign_keys'
A hashref to specify columns in the table which are foreign keys;
for each one, the value should be a hashref containing the keys
`table', `key_column' and `label_column'.
DWIMmery
This module tries to do what you'd expect it to do, so you can rock up
your web app with as little code and effort as possible, whilst still
giving you control to override its decisions wherever you need to.
Field types
CGI::FormBuilder is excellent at working out what kind of field to use
by itself, but we give it a little help where needed. For instance, if a
field looks like it's supposed to contain a password, we'll have it
rendered as a password entry box, rather than a standard text box.
If the column in the database is an ENUM, we'll limit the choices
available for this field to the choices defined by the ENUM list.
(Unless you've provided a set of acceptable values for this field using
the `acceptable_values' option to `simple_crud', in which case what you
say goes.)
Hooks
add_edit_row
Fires right before a row is added/edited; receives a hashref of column
=> value which can be modified if you want to massage the data first.
For instance, if you were dealing with a users table, you might want to
take the password entered and hash it, perhaps.
AUTHOR
David Precious, `<davidp@preshweb.co.uk>'
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Alberto Simões (ambs)
WK
Johnathan Barber
saberworks
jasonjayr
Paul Johnson (pjcj)
BUGS
Please report any bugs or feature requests to
`bug-dancer-plugin-simplecrud at rt.cpan.org', or through the web
interface at
http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=Dancer-Plugin-SimpleCRUD.
I will be notified, and then you'll automatically be notified of
progress on your bug as I make changes.
CONTRIBUTING
This module is developed on Github:
http://github.com/bigpresh/Dancer-Plugin-SimpleCRUD
Bug reports, ideas, suggestions, patches/pull requests all welcome.
Even just a quick "Hey, this is great, thanks" or "This is no good to me
because..." is greatly appreciated. It's always good to know if people
are using your code, and what they think.
SUPPORT
You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.
perldoc Dancer::Plugin::SimpleCRUD
You may find help with this module on the main Dancer IRC channel or
mailing list - see http://www.perldancer.org/
You can also look for information at:
* RT: CPAN's request tracker
http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=Dancer-Plugin-SimpleCRUD
* AnnoCPAN: Annotated CPAN documentation
http://annocpan.org/dist/Dancer-Plugin-SimpleCRUD
* CPAN Ratings
http://cpanratings.perl.org/d/Dancer-Plugin-SimpleCRUD
* Search CPAN
http://search.cpan.org/dist/Dancer-Plugin-SimpleCRUD/
LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT
Copyright 2010-12 David Precious.
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.