/ 
Web-Library-0.06
River stage one • 8 direct dependents • 8 total dependents
/ Web::Library

NAME

Web::Library - Manager for wrappers around client-side libraries

SYNOPSIS

# in your Catalyst application:

my $library_manager = Web::Library->instance;

$library_manager->mount_library({ name => 'jQuery' });
$library_manager->mount_library(
    { name => 'Bootstrap', version => '2.3.0' });

__PACKAGE__->config(
    'Plugin::Static::Simple' => {
        include_path => [ $library_manager->include_paths ] },
    ...
);

# in an HTML template

<head>
    ...
    [% web_library.css_link_tags_for('Bootstrap', 'jQuery') %]
</head>
<body>
    ...
    [% web_library.script_tags_for('Bootstrap', 'jQuery') %]
</body>

DESCRIPTION

There are well-established ways for web applications to manage server-side dependencies, like Makefile.PL or cpanfile - but what about client-side dependencies?

So you develop and maintain a number of web applications, and all of them use some client-side libraries like jQuery or Twitter Bootstrap or Underscore.js. You have to copy the relevant JavaScript, CSS and image files to a directory containing static files for each web application. This involves quite a bit of copying around and version maintenance. Web::Library can help you.

The idea behind Web::Library and its related distributions is that client-side libraries are installed as shared files of standard CPAN distributions. Web::Library itself is a manager for those libraries. A web application that wishes to use one or more client-side libraries can tell Web::Library to include either the latest or a specific version of those libraries. These managed libraries can then be used as static files with web application frameworks. In the case of Catalyst you might use Catalyst::Plugin::Static::Simple as shown in the synopsis.

Web::Library is a singleton object, so you can add client-side libraries in different parts of your application. For example, you might have common librares that are included in all of your web applications, but then also want to manage application-specific libraries.

Only client-side libraries whose license permits redistribution can be managed this way. Forunately, most, if not all, popular client-side libraries have such permissive licenses.

METHODS

instance

Returns the singleton Web::Library object that manages all client-side libraries.

mount_library

Adds a specific version of a client-side library to the list of managed libraries. Takes a hashref of named parameters. Valid parameters are:

name

The name of the client-side library. The manager will try to load the Web::Library::$name class. For example, Web::Library::Bootstrap is a distribution wrapper for Twitter Bootstrap.

version

A distribution wrapper will contain various versions of the wrapped client-side library. Using this parameter you can specify the version you want. Refer to the relevant distribution's documentation to see which versions are available. This parameter is optional; if omitted, the latest version is used.

include_paths

Client-side library files are installed as shared files as described in File::ShareDir. The include_paths method returns the absolute paths to shared directories for all managed libraries.

Returns a list in list context and an array reference in scalar context.

reset

Clears all mounted libraries.

Web::Library can also help you with including a library's CSS and JavaScript files in the web page templates.

If you expose an instance of Web::Library to your templates, you can add the relevant <link> and <script> tags as shown in the synopsis.

This is convenient, but it's only intended for some basic default set of CSS and JavaScript files. For example, if the library provides responsive versions or other customized versions, you can still use them by writing the HTML tags manually. A list of which files are included for each version is found in the documentation of the wrapper distributions like Web::Library::Bootstrap.

css_assets_for

Takes a list of library names like those you give to mount_library() and returns a list of CSS files for the specific versions of the mounted libraries.

For example:

$manager->css_link_tags_for('Bootstrap', 'jQueryUI');

might return:

qw(/css/bootstrap.min.css /css/jquery-ui.min.css)
javascript_assets_for

Takes a list of library names like those you give to mount_library() and returns a list of JavaScript files for the specific versions of the mounted libraries.

For example:

$manager->javascript_assets_for('Bootstrap', 'jQueryUI');

might return:

qw(/js/bootstrap.min.js /js/jquery-ui.min.js)

Takes a list of library names like those you give to mount_library() and returns a string containing <link> tags for the CSS files for the specific versions of the mounted libraries.

For example:

$manager->css_link_tags_for('Bootstrap', 'jQueryUI');

might return:

<link href="/css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet">
<link href="/css/jquery-ui.min.css" rel="stylesheet">
script_tags_for

Takes a list of library names like those you give to mount_library() and returns a string containing <script> tags for the JavaScript files for the specific versions of the mounted libraries.

For example:

$manager->script_tags_for('Bootstrap', 'jQueryUI');

might return:

<script src="/js/bootstrap.min.js" type="text/javascript></script>
<script src="/js/jquery-ui.min.js" type="text/javascript></script>

WRITING YOUR OWN LIBRARY DISTRIBUTION

If you want to write a distribution wrapper for a client-side library, it will be easiest if you look at existing library distributions such as the ones mentioned below and follow their example.

Make sure that the library's license allows you to redistribute it and provide a link to the library's web site and include other relevant attribution.

Only add the files that are actually necessary - the bare minimum of CSS, JavaScript and image files.

SEE ALSO

Web::Library::jQuery
Web::Library::jQueryUI
Web::Library::Bootstrap
Web::Library::DataTables
Web::Library::UnderscoreJS

AUTHORS

The following person is the author of all the files provided in this distribution unless explicitly noted otherwise.

Marcel Gruenauer <marcel@cpan.org>, http://marcelgruenauer.com

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

The following copyright notice applies to all the files provided in this distribution, including binary files, unless explicitly noted otherwise.

This software is copyright (c) 2013 by Marcel Gruenauer.

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