I am kinda beginner in perl and I need know how can I check object class name.
My code is:
foreach my $y (keys %$x) {
print "$y\t$x->{$y}\n";
}
with output:
154176568 [object HTMLImageElement]
146292140 [object HTMLDocument]
153907016 [object HTMLImageElement]
I need to print just keys that are HTMLImageElement objects.
Now, question is:
(1) How can I check the class name
(2) How can I get/print class name
In Perl all classes magically extend the UNIVERSAL package. It has a method called isa() that you can use to do this:
foreach my $y (keys %$x) {
if( $x->{$y}->isa('HTMLImageElement') ) {
print "$y\t$x->{$y}\n";
}
}
Looking at the source for JE, it looks like JE::Object::Proxy is a subclass of JE::Object, and JE::Object has a stringification method (use overload fallback => 1, ... '""' => 'to_string' ...).
So when you do print "$y\t$x->{$y}\n";, this is printing the result of stringifying $x->{$y}.
You can stringify the object by putting it in double quotes, so "$x->{$y}". This expression will then have values such as you saw being printed, e.g. '[object HTMLImageElement]'.
If you want to pick up only HTMLImageElement objects, then you could check for these using an expression like
"$x->{$y}" eq '[object HTMLImageElement]'
If you especially want to extract the string 'HTMLImageElement' from the stringified value, you could do that using a regexp, e.g.
("$x->{$y}" =~ m{^\[object (.*)\]$}so)[0]
THOUGH, looking at the source for JE::Object::Proxy, JE::Object::Proxy has a method class which might perhaps return the name of the class that the object is a proxy for. So you might be able to get the class name using $x->{$y}->class, and then be able to test that directly as in $x->{$y}->class eq 'HTMLImageElement'.
If you want a string indicating the class name, use ref($object). This will return the reference type for a variable, which for perl objects, ends up being the package of the blessed object.
If you want to simply check if a variable is an instance of a certain class, use the isa() method. For instance:
if ($obj->isa('Animal::Dog')) {
push #dogs, $obj;
}
Related
I have inherited some Perl code which contains a line that is mysterious to me:
my $binary = A->current->config->settings('arg1', 'arg2')
Basically, I am not sure how to find the related code. "A" is NOT a variable in the local code so I thought this was a class hierarchy. However I checked the directory structure to see if the following path existed, but there was none:
A/current/config/settings.pm
Is A->current->config->settings guaranteed to be a nested class hierarchy, or could it be something else? For example could config actually be a property or method of a different object A->current?
Any assistance you could lend tracking this down would be greatly appreciated!
A is a class name, you should find it in A.pm. current should be a method of the class, defined under a sub current in A.pm. It returns an object whose config method is being called which returns an object again whose settings method is being called with arguments 'arg1' and 'arg2' (well, in fact, the object itself is the first argument).
In fact, any of the methods can return a class instead of an object, too.
Step through the code in the perl debugger and see where it takes you.
foo->bar is a method call, meaning that there is likely a subroutine called bar defined in the package referred to by foo (or a superclass), and gives you no information about whether there is a package bar or foo::bar.
Is A->current->config->settings guaranteed to be a nested class hierarchy
You're thinking of A::current::config::settings.
The following are method calls:
INVOCANT->name
INVOCANT->name(LIST)
That means that A->current->config->settings is a chain of method calls.
The only class named in that code is A.
could config actually be a property or method of a different object A->current?
It's the name of a method of the object or class returned by A->current.
How to find the Perl code referenced by this line?
my $binary = A->current->config->settings('arg1', 'arg2');
is short for
my $obj1 = A->current;
my $obj2 = $obj1->config;
my $binary = $obj2->settings('arg1', 'arg2');
Now that you have the objects available, you can find the class of which they are an instance using
say ref($obj) || "Not a reference";
or
use Scalar::Util qw( blessed );
say blessed($obj) // "Not an object";
As explained, you are dealing with a chain of method calls in the class named A, where at least the first one is a class method since it is invoked on the class (A) itself, not on an object.
An easy way to find that class is by using Class::Inspector
use Class::Inspector;
say "Filename: ", Class::Inspector->resolved_filename( 'A' );
which printed the full path to the class I used in my tests. Also see loaded_filename.
Another interesting way to interrogate a class is to add to it at runtime.
Create an object of A and add to it a method of your choice at runtime
my $objA = A->new();
eval q( sub A::get_info { print "$_\n" for (caller(0)) } );
if ($#) { print "Eval: $#" };
eval q( sub A::boom { croak "Stacktrace: " } );
if ($#) { print "Eval: $#" };
$objA->get_info();
$objA->boom();
These are simple examples but you can acquire practically any information from inside a method.
If A happens to not have a method called new (possible) work with methods in the given chain, starting with my $objA = A->current.
Or, you can directly add a subroutine to the package's symbol table
*{A::new_method} = sub { say "A new method" };
$any_obj_of_A->new_method();
which is now also available on all existing instances, as well as on new ones.
I have a module called News (original name, I know) with a method called get_fields, this method returns all the fields that belong to the module like this
sub get_fields {
my $self = shift;
return $self;
}
Now when I call it like this in a different module where I need to do stuff to the fields
my %fields = %{ $news->get_fields };
I discovered doing it like this prevented this issue
Type of argument to keys on reference must be unblessed hashref or
arrayref
when I iterate other fields like this
foreach my $key ( keys %fields ) {
%pairs->{$key} = %fields->{$key} if %fields->{$key};
}
in order to use the values of the fields, I get this warning
Using a hash as a reference is deprecated
which is pointing back to the foreach loop.
How can I avoid this error message without getting the unbless warning back?
I think you're getting mixed up between objects and hashes. get_fields will return $self - which whilst I can't tell for certain, looks like it'll be returning a blessed object.
Now, blessed objects are quite similar to hashes, but they're not the same. You can test the difference with the ref function.
So the question is more - why are you doing this? Why are you trying to cast an object reference into a hash? Because that's what you're doing with:
my %fields = %{ $news->get_fields };
Because pretty fundamentally - even if that worked, it would be a horrible thing to do. The point, purpose and reason for objects is encapsulation - e.g. things outside the module don't meddle with stuff inside.
So why not instead have get_fields return a list of fields, which you can then iterate on and make method calls? This would really be the 'right' way to do something like this.
sub get_fields {
my ( $self ) = #_;
return keys %$self;
}
Or if you really must, embed a method within your object that returns as hash - rather than an object reference - that you can then manipulate externally.
Generally - you don't refer to hashes with a % prefix, unless you're manipulating the whole hash.
To extract a single element from %pairs you should do:
foreach my $key ( keys %pairs ) {
print $pairs{$key},"\n";
}
If the contents of $pairs{$key} is a reference, then you can use the -> to indicate that you should dereference, e.g. $pairs -> {$key}.
I am new to Perl and currently learning Perl object oriented and came across writing a constructor.
It looks like when using new for the name of the subroutine the first parameter will be the package name.
Must the constructor be using the keyword new? Or is it because when we are calling the new subroutine using the packagename, then the first parameter to be passed in will be package name?
packagename->new;
and when the subroutine have other name it will be the first parameter will be the reference to an object? Or is it because when the subroutine is call via the reference to the object so that the first parameter to be passed in will be the reference to the object?
$objRef->subroutine;
NB: All examples below are simplified for instructional purposes.
On Methods
Yes, you are correct. The first argument to your new function, if invoked as a method, will be the thing you invoked it against.
There are two “flavors” of invoking a method, but the result is the same either way. One flavor relies upon an operator, the binary -> operator. The other flavor relies on ordering of arguments, the way bitransitive verbs work in English. Most people use the dative/bitransitive style only with built-ins — and perhaps with constructors, but seldom anything else.
Under most (but not quite all) circumstances, these first two are equivalent:
1. Dative Invocation of Methods
This is the positional one, the one that uses word-order to determine what’s going on.
use Some::Package;
my $obj1 = new Some::Package NAME => "fred";
Notice we use no method arrow there: there is no -> as written. This is what Perl itself uses with many of its own functions, like
printf STDERR "%-20s: %5d\n", $name, $number;
Which just about everyone prefers to the equivalent:
STDERR->printf("%-20s: %5d\n", $name, $number);
However, these days that sort of dative invocation is used almost exclusively for built-ins, because people keep getting things confused.
2. Arrow Invocation of Methods
The arrow invocation is for the most part clearer and cleaner, and less likely to get you tangled up in the weeds of Perl parsing oddities. Note I said less likely; I did not say that it was free of all infelicities. But let’s just pretend so for the purposes of this answer.
use Some::Package;
my $obj2 = Some::Package->new(NAME => "fred");
At run time, barring any fancy oddities or inheritance matters, the actual function call would be
Some::Package::new("Some::Package", "NAME", "fred");
For example, if you were in the Perl debugger and did a stack dump, it would have something like the previous line in its call chain.
Since invoking a method always prefixes the parameter list with invocant, all functions that will be invoked as methods must account for that “extra” first argument. This is very easily done:
package Some::Package;
sub new {
my($classname, #arguments) = #_;
my $obj = { #arguments };
bless $obj, $classname;
return $obj;
}
This is just an extremely simplified example of the new most frequent ways to call constructors, and what happens on the inside. In actual production code, the constructor would be much more careful.
Methods and Indirection
Sometimes you don’t know the class name or the method name at compile time, so you need to use a variable to hold one or the other, or both. Indirection in programming is something different from indirect objects in natural language. Indirection just means you have a variable that contains something else, so you use the variable to get at its contents.
print 3.14; # print a number directly
$var = 3.14; # or indirectly
print $var;
We can use variables to hold other things involved in method invocation that merely the method’s arguments.
3. Arrow Invocation with Indirected Method Name:
If you don’t know the method name, then you can put its name in a variable. Only try this with arrow invocation, not with dative invocation.
use Some::Package;
my $action = (rand(2) < 1) ? "new" : "old";
my $obj = Some::Package->$action(NAME => "fido");
Here the method name itself is unknown until run-time.
4. Arrow Invocation with Indirected Class Name:
Here we use a variable to contain the name of the class we want to use.
my $class = (rand(2) < 1)
? "Fancy::Class"
: "Simple::Class";
my $obj3 = $class->new(NAME => "fred");
Now we randomly pick one class or another.
You can actually use dative invocation this way, too:
my $obj3 = new $class NAME => "fred";
But that isn’t usually done with user methods. It does sometimes happen with built-ins, though.
my $fh = ($error_count == 0) ? *STDOUT : *STDERR;
printf $fh "Error count: %d.\n", $error_count;
That’s because trying to use an expression in the dative slot isn’t going to work in general without a block around it; it can otherwise only be a simple scalar variable, not even a single element from an array or hash.
printf { ($error_count == 0) ? *STDOUT : *STDERR } "Error count: %d.\n", $error_count;
Or more simply:
print { $fh{$filename} } "Some data.\n";
Which is pretty darned ugly.
Let the invoker beware
Note that this doesn’t work perfectly. A literal in the dative object slot works differently than a variable does there. For example, with literal filehandles:
print STDERR;
means
print STDERR $_;
but if you use indirect filehandles, like this:
print $fh;
That actually means
print STDOUT $fh;
which is unlikely to mean what you wanted, which was probably this:
print $fh $_;
aka
$fh->print($_);
Advanced Usage: Dual-Nature Methods
The thing about the method invocation arrow -> is that it is agnostic about whether its left-hand operand is a string representing a class name or a blessed reference representing an object instance.
Of course, nothing formally requires that $class contain a package name. It may be either, and if so, it is up to the method itself to do the right thing.
use Some::Class;
my $class = "Some::Class";
my $obj = $class->new(NAME => "Orlando");
my $invocant = (rand(2) < 1) ? $class : $obj;
$invocant->any_debug(1);
That requires a pretty fancy any_debug method, one that does something different depending on whether its invocant was blessed or not:
package Some::Class;
use Scalar::Util qw(blessed);
sub new {
my($classname, #arguments) = #_;
my $obj = { #arguments };
bless $obj, $classname;
return $obj;
}
sub any_debug {
my($invocant, $value) = #_;
if (blessed($invocant)) {
$invocant->obj_debug($value);
} else {
$invocant->class_debug($value);
}
}
sub obj_debug {
my($self, $value) = #_;
$self->{DEBUG} = $value;
}
my $Global_Debug;
sub class_debug {
my($classname, $value) = #_;
$Global_Debug = $value;
}
However, this is a rather advanced and subtle technique, one applicable in only a few uncommon situations. It is not recommended for most situations, as it can be confusing if not handled properly — and perhaps even if it is.
It is not first parameter to new, but indirect object syntax,
perl -MO=Deparse -e 'my $o = new X 1, 2'
which gets parsed as
my $o = 'X'->new(1, 2);
From perldoc,
Perl suports another method invocation syntax called "indirect object" notation. This syntax is called "indirect" because the method comes before the object it is being invoked on.
That being said, new is not some kind of reserved word for constructor invocation, but name of method/constructor itself, which in perl is not enforced (ie. DBI has connect constructor)
I have a library of objects in perl all having the same function_calls.
I am looking for how to create an approriate object from the library from a string.
my $object_name='myObject';#would actually be a hash lookup from user input with appropriate error checks
my $string = "return ${object_name}->new(\#params);";
my $object = eval $string;
$object->some_function();
Now I am having a problem, it works for some objects and doesn't for others? Is there a more reliable way of doing this. I have tried printing the string out before eval and it appears to be correct with the correct class name, also every object takes the same parameter, any Ideas, thanks.
The eval is not necessary since a string can be used as a package name, so the lines:
my $object_name = 'myObject';
my $object = $object_name->new(#params);
Will do what you want. If you want to make sure that myObject is actually a valid package name you could do:
my $object_name = 'myObject';
unless ($object_name->can('new')) {
die "bad object name: $object_name";
}
my $object = $object_name->new(#params);
How do I tell what type of value is in a Perl variable?
$x might be a scalar, a ref to an array or a ref to a hash (or maybe other things).
ref():
Perl provides the ref() function so that you can check the reference type before dereferencing a reference...
By using the ref() function you can protect program code that dereferences variables from producing errors when the wrong type of reference is used...
$x is always a scalar. The hint is the sigil $: any variable (or dereferencing of some other type) starting with $ is a scalar. (See perldoc perldata for more about data types.)
A reference is just a particular type of scalar.
The built-in function ref will tell you what kind of reference it is. On the other hand, if you have a blessed reference, ref will only tell you the package name the reference was blessed into, not the actual core type of the data (blessed references can be hashrefs, arrayrefs or other things). You can use Scalar::Util 's reftype will tell you what type of reference it is:
use Scalar::Util qw(reftype);
my $x = bless {}, 'My::Foo';
my $y = { };
print "type of x: " . ref($x) . "\n";
print "type of y: " . ref($y) . "\n";
print "base type of x: " . reftype($x) . "\n";
print "base type of y: " . reftype($y) . "\n";
...produces the output:
type of x: My::Foo
type of y: HASH
base type of x: HASH
base type of y: HASH
For more information about the other types of references (e.g. coderef, arrayref etc), see this question: How can I get Perl's ref() function to return REF, IO, and LVALUE? and perldoc perlref.
Note: You should not use ref to implement code branches with a blessed object (e.g. $ref($a) eq "My::Foo" ? say "is a Foo object" : say "foo not defined";) -- if you need to make any decisions based on the type of a variable, use isa (i.e if ($a->isa("My::Foo") { ... or if ($a->can("foo") { ...). Also see polymorphism.
A scalar always holds a single element. Whatever is in a scalar variable is always a scalar. A reference is a scalar value.
If you want to know if it is a reference, you can use ref. If you want to know the reference type,
you can use the reftype routine from Scalar::Util.
If you want to know if it is an object, you can use the blessed routine from Scalar::Util. You should never care what the blessed package is, though. UNIVERSAL has some methods to tell you about an object: if you want to check that it has the method you want to call, use can; if you want to see that it inherits from something, use isa; and if you want to see it the object handles a role, use DOES.
If you want to know if that scalar is actually just acting like a scalar but tied to a class, try tied. If you get an object, continue your checks.
If you want to know if it looks like a number, you can use looks_like_number from Scalar::Util. If it doesn't look like a number and it's not a reference, it's a string. However, all simple values can be strings.
If you need to do something more fancy, you can use a module such as Params::Validate.
I like polymorphism instead of manually checking for something:
use MooseX::Declare;
class Foo {
use MooseX::MultiMethods;
multi method foo (ArrayRef $arg){ say "arg is an array" }
multi method foo (HashRef $arg) { say "arg is a hash" }
multi method foo (Any $arg) { say "arg is something else" }
}
Foo->new->foo([]); # arg is an array
Foo->new->foo(40); # arg is something else
This is much more powerful than manual checking, as you can reuse your "checks" like you would any other type constraint. That means when you want to handle arrays, hashes, and even numbers less than 42, you just write a constraint for "even numbers less than 42" and add a new multimethod for that case. The "calling code" is not affected.
Your type library:
package MyApp::Types;
use MooseX::Types -declare => ['EvenNumberLessThan42'];
use MooseX::Types::Moose qw(Num);
subtype EvenNumberLessThan42, as Num, where { $_ < 42 && $_ % 2 == 0 };
Then make Foo support this (in that class definition):
class Foo {
use MyApp::Types qw(EvenNumberLessThan42);
multi method foo (EvenNumberLessThan42 $arg) { say "arg is an even number less than 42" }
}
Then Foo->new->foo(40) prints arg is an even number less than 42 instead of arg is something else.
Maintainable.
At some point I read a reasonably convincing argument on Perlmonks that testing the type of a scalar with ref or reftype is a bad idea. I don't recall who put the idea forward, or the link. Sorry.
The point was that in Perl there are many mechanisms that make it possible to make a given scalar act like just about anything you want. If you tie a filehandle so that it acts like a hash, the testing with reftype will tell you that you have a filehanle. It won't tell you that you need to use it like a hash.
So, the argument went, it is better to use duck typing to find out what a variable is.
Instead of:
sub foo {
my $var = shift;
my $type = reftype $var;
my $result;
if( $type eq 'HASH' ) {
$result = $var->{foo};
}
elsif( $type eq 'ARRAY' ) {
$result = $var->[3];
}
else {
$result = 'foo';
}
return $result;
}
You should do something like this:
sub foo {
my $var = shift;
my $type = reftype $var;
my $result;
eval {
$result = $var->{foo};
1; # guarantee a true result if code works.
}
or eval {
$result = $var->[3];
1;
}
or do {
$result = 'foo';
}
return $result;
}
For the most part I don't actually do this, but in some cases I have. I'm still making my mind up as to when this approach is appropriate. I thought I'd throw the concept out for further discussion. I'd love to see comments.
Update
I realized I should put forward my thoughts on this approach.
This method has the advantage of handling anything you throw at it.
It has the disadvantage of being cumbersome, and somewhat strange. Stumbling upon this in some code would make me issue a big fat 'WTF'.
I like the idea of testing whether a scalar acts like a hash-ref, rather that whether it is a hash ref.
I don't like this implementation.