I'm working on a scheme to make remote access to
persistent Perl objects simple. I'm writing to ask
for advice of all kinds, including naming and
functionality.
UPSHOT of my approach
The class being exposed doesn't even know.
The client knows the classes are remote, but only has
to mention it in the initial use statement for the
somewhat magical RemoteObject class.
The client stays connected to the server until all of
its RemoteObjects to the server go out of scope.
I've provided server and client examples below. The
codes run using perl 5.6.1, POE 0.24, on Cygwin under
Windows 2000 and on Redhat Linux 7.1. They rely on
modules not shown.
Here's a server:
use OOPersistServer;
my $server = OOPersistServer->new(
Alias => "averages_service",
Port => "13241",
ExposedClasses => [
{ Package => "Averages",
DocAddress =>
"http://server.company.com/Averages.html";,
},
{ Package => "DiePair",
DocAddress =>
"http://server.company.com/DiePair.html";,
},
],
);
$server->start();
Averages.pm and DiePair.pm are small object oriented
modules.
[Averages takes a list of numbers and returns the
mean, median, or modes upon subsequent requests.
DiePair aggregates two Die objects (implemented in
Die.pm) providing a roll method and methods to check
the roll result.]
Both of these modules are teaching examples I wrote
before thinking of the current scheme. They have no
idea they are being accessed remotely.
Here's a client:
use RemoteObject 'localhost:13241'
=> [ qw(Averages DiePair) ];
my $averager = Averages->new( 3, 4, 7);
my @modes = $averager->mode();
print "modes: @modes\n";
print RemoteObject->send_documentation("DiePair") .
"\n";
my $dice = DiePair->new(6, 6);
$dice->roll();
my $total = $dice->total();
my $doubles = $dice->was_it_doubles();
print "roll: $total ";
if ($doubles) { print "it was doubles\n"; }
else { print "it wasn't doubles\n"; }
MORE DETAILS
The server wraps a POE::Component::Server::TCP.
Calling
start on the server object passes the request on as
$poe_kernel->run();.
I don't think clients can use POE directly. The
problem is that client scripts can't be made to handle
event callbacks. So, my client uses IO::Socket
directly.
The clients stay connected until their RemoteObject
goes out of scope (usually when the script dies).
MY QUESTIONS
Is anyone interested in this aggressive simplification
of client and server API's?
Would a server helper module like OOPersistServer be a
candidate to be a genuine POE::Component::Server?
If this were your code, how would you name the pieces
for CPAN?
Thanks,
Phil
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