NAME

Data::Pulp - Pulp your data into a consistent goop

VERSION

Version 0.01

SYNOPSIS

use Data::Pulp;

        my $pulper = pulper
            case { $_ eq 'apple' } then { 'APPLE' }
            case { $_ eq 'banana' }
            case { $_ eq 'cherry' } then { 'CHERRY' }
            case { ref eq 'SCALAR' } then { 'SCALAR' }
            empty { 'empty' }
            nil { 'nil' }
            case { m/xyzzy/ } then { 'Nothing happens.' }
            default { croak "Don't understand $_" }
        ;

        $pulper->pulp( 'apple' )        # APPLE
        $pulper->pulp( 'banana' )       # CHERRY
        $pulper->pulp( 'xyyxyzzyx' )    # Nothing happens.
        $pulper->pulp( undef )          # nil
        $pulper->pulp( '' )             # empty
        $pulper->pulp( '1' )            # Throw an exception: Don't understand 1

        # You can also operate on an array or hash

        my $set = $pulper->prepare( [ qw/apple banana cherry/, '', undef, qw/xyzzy xyyxyzzyx grape/ ] )

        $set->all       # APPLE, CHERRY, CHERRY, empty, nil, Nothing happens ...
        $set->first     # APPLE
        $set->last      # Throw an exception: Don't understand grape

DESCRIPTION

Data::Pulp is a tool for coercing and/or validating input data. Instead of doing this:

        if ( defined $value ) {
            if ( ref $value eq ... ) {
                ...
            }
            elsif ( $value =~ m/.../ ) {
                ...
            }
            ...
        }
        else {
        }

You can do something like this:

        my $pulper = pulper
            case { $_ eq ... }  then { ... }
            case { m/.../ }     then { ... }
            nil { ... # Do action if value is undefined }
        ;

        $pulper->pulp( $value )

A pulper can act transparently on a single value, ARRAY, or HASH:

        my $set = $pulper->prepare( $value ) # A single value list
        my $set = $pulper->prepare( [ $value, ... ] )
        my $set = $pulper->prepare( { key => $value, ... } ) # Throws away the keys, basically

So, given a subroutine:

        sub method {
            my $data = shift;
            # $data could be a single value, or an array, or even a hash
            my $set = $pulper->prepare( $data )
            my @data = $set->all # Get all the data coerced how you want
                                 # or throw an exception if something bad is encountered

            ...
        }

AUTHOR

Robert Krimen, "<rkrimen at cpan.org>"

BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature requests to "bug-data-pulp at rt.cpan.org", or through the web interface at <http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=Data-Pulp>. I will be notified, and then you'll automatically be notified of progress on your bug as I make changes.

SUPPORT

You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.

perldoc Data::Pulp

You can also look for information at:

• RT: CPAN's request tracker

  <http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=Data-Pulp>

• AnnoCPAN: Annotated CPAN documentation

  <http://annocpan.org/dist/Data-Pulp>

• CPAN Ratings

  <http://cpanratings.perl.org/d/Data-Pulp>

• Search CPAN

  <http://search.cpan.org/dist/Data-Pulp/>

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
COPYRIGHT & LICENSE

Copyright 2009 Robert Krimen, all rights reserved.

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