NAME

MooseX::Final - mark a class as "final" (cannot be inherited from)

SYNOPSIS

package Example::Phone {
  use Moose;
  use MooseX::Final;
  has number => (is => 'ro', required => 1);
  sub call { ... }
  sub BUILD {
    assert_final( my $self = shift );
    ...;   # do other stuff here if required
  }
}

package Example::Phone::Mobile {
  use Moose;
  extends "Example::Phone";
  sub send_sms { ... }
}

my $friend = Example::Phone::Mobile->new(number => 123);  # dies

DESCRIPTION

This package allows you to mark a class as being "final". A final class is at the top of the inheritance hierarchy. It cannot be inherited from. You almost certainly don't want this. Why prevent people from inheriting from your class? There's no good reason.

Nevertheless, if you have a bad reason, you can use this module to do it. Despite the name, this module should work fine with Moose, Moo, Mouse, Class::Tiny, and any other class builder that properly supports the concept of BUILD methods.

This is not 100% foolproof. Subclasses can probably work around it without a massive amount of difficulty. But if you're trying to subclass a class that has indicated it should be final, perhaps you should think of another way of achieving your aims. (Hint: delegation.)

Note that the exception is thrown when you try to instantiate the subclass, not when you try to define the subclass.

Functions

assert_final($object)

Dies if $object isn't an instance of the calling class, and does not respect inheritance when checking.

Call this in your BUILD method.

(Technically, this doesn't check caller, but instead figures out which class to be testing against at import time.)

Alternative Invocation Style

The BUILD method in the "SYNOPSIS" could have been written as:

sub BUILD {
  &assert_final;
  my $self = shift;
  ...;   # do other stuff here if required
}

Note the ampersand before the function call and the lack of parentheses afterwards. This syntax may be less familiar to new Perl users, but is slightly more efficient because the Perl interpreter can avoid setting up a new @_ array when it calls the function. See perlsub for details.

BUGS

Please report any bugs to http://rt.cpan.org/Dist/Display.html?Queue=MooseX-Final.

SEE ALSO

Moose, Moo, Class::Tiny.

AUTHOR

Toby Inkster <tobyink@cpan.org>.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

This software is copyright (c) 2017-2018 by Toby Inkster.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES

THIS PACKAGE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.