MooseX::FileAttribute - sugar for classes that have file or directory attributes

Instead of has, use has_file or has_directory to create attributes that hold a file or directory:

   package Class;
   use Moose;
   use MooseX::FileAttribute;

   has_file 'foo' => (
       documentation => 'path to the foo file',
       must_exist    => 1,
       required      => 1,
   );

   has_directory 'bar' => (
       required => 1,
   );

   sub BUILD {
       use autodie 'mkdir';
       mkdir $self->bar unless -d $self->bar;
   }

Then use the class like you'd use any Moose class:

   my $c = Class->new( foo => '/quux/bar/foo', bar => '/quux/bar/' );
   my $fh = $c->foo->openr; # string initarg promoted to Path::Class::File attribute
   while( my $line = <$fh> ) { ... }

I write a lot of classes that take files or directories on the command-line. This results in a lot of boilerplate, usually:

   package Class;
   use Moose;
   use MooseX::Types::Path::Class qw(File);

   has 'foo' => (
       is       => 'ro',
       isa      => File,
       coerce   => 1,
       required => 1,
   );

This module lets you save yourself some typing in this case:

   has_file 'foo' => ( required => 1 );

These are exactly equivalent. has_directory does the same thing that has_file does, but with a Dir constraint.

This module also defines two additional type constraints to ensure that the specified file or directory exists and is a file or directory. You can use these constraints instead of the defaults by passing must_exist => 1 to the has_* function.

The ExistingFile constraint will accept named pipes, ttys, directories, etc., as files, as long as what's named exists on disk. The ExistingDir constraint is more strict, only allowing directories.

http://github.com/jrockway/moosex-fileattribute

Jonathan Rockway <jrockway@cpan.org>

Copyright (c) 2009 Jonathan Rockway.

This module is Free software. You can redistribute it under the same terms as Perl itself.