NAME

Functional::Iterator - A generic iterator

SYNOPSIS

A naive example is just to turn a list into an iterable:

use Functional::Iterator;

my $iterator = iterator(records => [1..10]);

while (my $rec = $iterator->next) {
  print "$rec\n";
}

A slightly more interesting example is to turn a paginated set of results from some web API into a seemingly unlimited stream of data. In one module you might write this:

sub fetch_popular_results {
    my @records;
    my $page = 0;

    my $client = REST::Consumer->new(host => 'somewhere-over-the-rainbow.com');

    my $generator = sub {
        if (!@records) {
            @records = $client->get(
                path => '/search/popular',
                params => [
                    page => $page++,
                    page_size => 100,
                ],
            );
        }
        return shift @records;
    };

    return iterator(generator => $generator);
}

And then elsewhere you might write this:

my $fetcher = fetcher();
while (my $record = $fetcher->next) {
    ...
}

CREATING AN ITERATOR

Iterators are set up either with a set of records, or with a generator. When a set of records is provided, calling ->next on the iterator will simply walk through the set from beginning to end, returning one value at a time. When a generator is provided, it will be called to produce values. Generators signal they are finished by returning undef.

An iterator may encapsulate other iterators. The outer iterator may get its iterators either as records, or by having a generator which produces iterators.

my $inner = 5;
my $limit = 10;

my $container = iterator(
    generator => sub {
        if ($inner--) {
            return iterator(records => [1..$limit--]);
        }
    },
);

while (my $number = $container->next) {
    print $number . "\n";
}

MUTATORS: CHANGE IT UP

Iterators may have a mutator as well. When a mutator is provided, calling ->next on the iterator will first select the next value (either by selecting the next item from a given list of records, or by asking the generator to produce one) and will then pass the value into the mutator. The caller of ->next gets the mutator's return value.

You can combine these qualities to slightly interesting effect:

use Functional::Iterator;

my $numbers = iterator(
    records => [1..10],
    mutator => sub { shift() + 100 },
);

my $letter = 'a';
my $letters = iterator(
    generator => sub {
        my $ret = $letter++;
        $ret = undef if $ret eq 'z';
        return $ret;
    }
);

my $numbers_and_letters = iterator(
    records => [$numbers, $letters],
);

while (my $rec = $numbers_and_letters->next) {
    print "$rec\n";
}

EXPORTS

• iterator (records => \@records)

• iterator (records => \@records, mutator => \&mutator)

• iterator (generator => \&generator)

• iterator (generator => \&generator, mutator => \&mutator)

  Helper function for creating iterator objects. If both a generator and records are provided, only the generator is considered.

METHODS

• ->next()

  Return the next value in this iterator.

• ->reset()

  Rewind this iterator, and any sub-iterators, back to the beginning of their records. ->reset is meaningless to iterators built around generators.

• ->new()

  If you really want to create your iterators like this, you certainly may:

  # see C<iterator()> for the full set of arguments you may pass to ->new
  my $iterator = Functional::Iterator->new(records => \@records);

BUGS AND LIMITATIONS

Please report any bugs or feature requests to this project's Github page: http://github.com/belden/perl-functional-iterator/issues.

PROJECT HOME

This project is housed on Github, at http://github.com/belden/perl-functional-iterator. You may submit pull requests via Github.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

(c) 2013 Belden Lyman E<lt>belden@cpan.orgE<gt>

This library is free software: you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself; either Perl version 5.8.8 or, at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.