NAME

Class::ObjectTemplate - Perl extension for an optimized template builder base class.

SYNOPSIS

package Foo;
use Class::ObjectTemplate;
require Exporter;
@ISA = qw(Class::ObjectTemplate Exporter);

attributes('one', 'two', 'three');

# initialize will be called by new()
sub initialize {
  my $self = shift;
  $self->three(1) unless defined $self->three();
}

use Foo;
$foo = Foo->new();

# store 27 in the 'one' attribute
$foo->one(27);

# check the value in the 'two' attribute
die "should be undefined" if defined $foo->two();

# set using the utility method
$foo->set_attribute('one',27);

# check using the utility method
$two = $foo->get_attribute('two');

# set more than one attribute using the named parameter style
$foo->set_attributes('one'=>27, 'two'=>42);

# or using array references
$foo->set_attributes(['one','two'],[27,42]);

# get more than one attribute
@list = $foo->get_attributes('one', 'two');

# get a list of all attributes known by an object
@attrs = $foo->get_attribute_names();

# check that initialize() is called properly
die "initialize didn't set three()" unless $foo->three();

DESCRIPTION

Class::ObjectTemplate is a utility class to assist in the building of other Object Oriented Perl classes.

It was described in detail in the O\'Reilly book, "Advanced Perl Programming" by Sriram Srinivasam.

EXPORT

attributes(@name_list)

This method creates a shared setter and getter methods for every name in the list. The method also creates the class constructor, new().

WARNING: This method must be invoked within the module for every class that inherits from Class::ObjectTemplate, even if that class defines no attributes. For a class defining no new attributes, it should invoke attributes() with no arguments.

AUTHOR

Original code by Sriram Srinivasam.

Fixes and CPAN module by Jason E. Stewart (jason@openinformatics.com)

SEE ALSO

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/advperl/

perl(1).

Class::ObjectTemplate::DB