NAME

Mojar::ClassShare - Attributes for both class and objects

SYNOPSIS

  package Somewhere::MyClass;
  use Mojar::ClassShare 'have';
  use Mojar::Config;

  have config => sub { Mojar::Config->load('/etc/myapp.conf') };
  $target_ip = Somewhere::MyClass->config->{target_ip};

DESCRIPTION

Provides attributes that can be used as class attributes or object attributes. When the invocant is the class name, the class's shared storage is used. When the invocant is an object, that object's individual storage is used.

The storage of each object and the class's share are separate from each other.

  have 'value';
  ...
  $value_to_use = $object->value // MyClass->value;  # using share as a default

(It is unusual for class defaults to be dynamic, so that example is just for illustration.)

CAVEATS

Sometimes, perhaps during debugging, you want to know where your class attributes are really stored. The answer is under a hashref that has the same name as the class, but actually resides in the namespace above. In the synopsis example, any class attributes are stored in a hashref called $MyClass in the Somewhere namespace. Personally I don't see this as a problem if I own that namespace, but be aware that this isn't an approach everyone is going to like.

I hope it is already clear, but the shared attributes are only accessible via the classname. When accessed via an object, the object's individual storage is used (so the behaviour is the same as Mojo::Base::attr).

The share is only shared within its perl interpreter. In any environment where there are multiple instances of perl (eg hypnotoad, apache, job queues) each process maintains its own class shares. If your class share is fairly static, that usually just means you need to intialise it each time an interpreter starts up. But if your objects update the class share, in a multi-process setup those updates won't be shared with objects in other processes.

SEE ALSO

This module is only useful if you want cheap class attributes. If you only want object attributes, please go to the upstream module Mojo::Base, from which this one is forked. If on the other hand you think you want more sophisticated class shares, CPAN has many modules with richer implementations.