Class::Method::Modifiers - provides Moose-like method modifiers

    package Child;
    use parent 'Parent';
    use Class::Method::Modifiers;

    sub new_method { }

    before 'old_method' => sub {
        carp "old_method is deprecated, use new_method";
    };

    around 'other_method' => sub {
        my $orig = shift;
        my $ret = $orig->(@_);
        return $ret =~ /\d/ ? $ret : lc $ret;
    };

    after 'private', 'protected' => sub {
        debug "finished calling a dangerous method";
    };

Method modifiers are a convenient feature from the CLOS (Common Lisp Object System) world.

In its most basic form, a method modifier is just a method that calls $self->SUPER::foo(@_). I for one have trouble remembering that exact invocation, so my classes seldom re-dispatch to their base classes. Very bad!

Class::Method::Modifiers provides three modifiers: before, around, and after. before and after are run just before and after the method they modify, but can not really affect that original method. around is run in place of the original method, with a hook to easily call that original method. See the MODIFIERS section for more details on how the particular modifiers work.

One clear benefit of using Class::Method::Modifiers is that you can define multiple modifiers in a single namespace. These separate modifiers don't need to know about each other. This makes top-down design easy. Have a base class that provides the skeleton methods of each operation, and have plugins modify those methods to flesh out the specifics.

Parent classes need not know about Class::Method::Modifiers. This means you should be able to modify methods in any subclass. See Term::VT102::ZeroBased for an example of subclassing with CMM.

In short, Class::Method::Modifiers solves the problem of making sure you call $self->SUPER::foo(@_), and provides a cleaner interface for it.

As of version 1.00, Class::Method::Modifiers is faster in some cases than Moose. See benchmark/method_modifiers.pl in the Moose distribution.

before is called before the method it is modifying. Its return value is totally ignored. It receives the same @_ as the the method it is modifying would have received. You can modify the @_ the original method will receive by changing $_[0] and friends (or by changing anything inside a reference). This is a feature!

after is called after the method it is modifying. Its return value is totally ignored. It receives the same @_ as the the method it is modifying received, mostly. The original method can modify @_ (such as by changing $_[0] or references) and after will see the modified version. If you don't like this behavior, specify both a before and after, and copy the @_ during before for after to use.

around is called instead of the method it is modifying. The method you're overriding is passed in as the first argument (called $orig by convention). Watch out for contextual return values of $orig.

You can use around to:

Pass $orig a different @_

    around 'method' => sub {
        my $orig = shift;
        my $self = shift;
        $orig->($self, reverse @_);
    };

Munge the return value of $orig

    around 'method' => sub {
        my $orig = shift;
        ucfirst $orig->(@_);
    };

Avoid calling $orig -- conditionally

    around 'method' => sub {
        my $orig = shift;
        return $orig->(@_) if time() % 2;
        return "no dice, captain";
    };

All three normal modifiers; before, after, and around; are exported into your namespace by default. You may use Class::Method::Modifiers () to avoid thrashing your namespace. I may steal more features from Moose, namely super, override, inner, augment, and whatever the Moose folks come up with next.

Note that the syntax and semantics for these modifiers is directly borrowed from Moose (the implementations, however, are not).

Class::Trigger shares a few similarities with Class::Method::Modifiers, and they even have some overlap in purpose -- both can be used to implement highly pluggable applications. The difference is that Class::Trigger provides a mechanism for easily letting parent classes to invoke hooks defined by other code. Class::Method::Modifiers provides a way of overriding/augmenting methods safely, and the parent class need not know about it.

It is erroneous to modify a method that doesn't exist in your class's inheritance hierarchy. If this occurs, an exception will be thrown when the modifier is defined.

It doesn't yet play well with caller. There are some todo tests for this. Don't get your hopes up though!

This module was bumped to 1.00 following a complete reimplementation, to indicate breaking backwards compatibility. The "guard" modifier was removed, and the internals are completely different.

The new version is a few times faster with half the code. It's now even faster than Moose.

Any code that just used modifiers should not change in behavior, except to become more correct. And, of course, faster. :)

Class::Method::Modifiers::Fast Moose, Class::Trigger, Class::MOP::Method::Wrapped, MRO::Compat, CLOS

Shawn M Moore, sartak@gmail.com

Thanks to Stevan Little for Moose, I would never have known about method modifiers otherwise.

Thanks to Matt Trout and Stevan Little for their advice.

Copyright 2007-2009 Shawn M Moore.

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