Hi Alex Maybe you could give us a bit more info on the `html_contents` and `fancy_scripts` tables, because my inclination would be just to have a simple `contents` table.
This table would have three fields: (`id,`content_type`, `blob`) where: * `content_type` is "HTML", "CGI" or "Module" (or rather, ids pointing to the `target_type` table); * `blob` is a base64 encoding of a structure containing both the data (HTML, CGI or module) and any metadata such as URL parameters, class attributes etc. I would then be using DBIx::Class to access the table and have methods on the Schema to decode and make use of `blob` appropriately depending on the `content_type`. Perhaps it would be easier to have two fields (`metadata`, `data`) instead of `blob` but you get the idea. Let me know if that's clear as mud, or I've missed the point altogether:) Andrew On Fri, Apr 10, 2015 at 6:04 PM, Alex Becker <asb.c...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi! > > This is not directly a Perl question, but since Perl is the only language > I code in, I hope you could help me out. > > I have a database for a very simple Perl-based Web CMS. > The CMS knows only 2 types of content: a HTML web site or a Perl module > executing some fancy CGI script. > > So let's assume I have 3 tables: > a) html_contents > b) fancy_scripts > c) navigation > > HTML contents is trivial. It's an excel-sheet-like table with a title and > the HTML code. > > Fancy scripts work the same, except that it's maybe the URL to the CGI > script, or a class name. > > Navigation however can hold 2 kinds of content: a reference to a row in > the HTML contents table or a reference to one of those fancy scripts. > > How do I do that? > My current approach is the following: > > Make the navigation table have 3 columns: > <id, target_type, target_id> > > target_type is an identifier for the kind of thing I reference. In the > example, it could be fancy_script or content. > > But now I get a bad feeling because I can't really make the column > target_it a foreign key that really is a reference to one of those tables > (scripts or HTML). > I usually always do it that way. I even normalize the target_type so that > I have an extra table for target_types with a target type ID and an ident. > > Is there a standard approach for this kind of database table construct? > A coding recommendation? > Or am I doing it completely wrong? > > Best regards, > Alex > -- Andrew Solomon Mentor@Geekuni http://geekuni.com/ http://www.linkedin.com/in/asolomon
