NAME

SQL::Translator::Schema::Object - Base class SQL::Translator Schema objects.

SYNOPSIS

DESCSIPTION

Base class for Schema objects. Sub classes the Class::Base manpage and adds the following extra functionality.

Construction

Derived classes should declare their attributes using the _attributes method. They can then inherit the init method from here which will call accessors of the same name for any values given in the hash passed to new. Note that you will have to impliment the accessors your self and we expect perl style methods; call with no args to get and with arg to set.

e.g. If we setup our class as follows;

 package SQL::Translator::Schema::Table;
 use base qw/SQL::Translator::Schema::Object/;
 
 __PACKAGE__->_attributes( qw/schema name/ );

 sub name   { ... }
 sub schema { ... }

Then we can construct it with

 my $table  =  SQL::Translator::Schema::Table->new( 
     schema => $schema,
     name   => 'foo',
 );

and init will call $table->name("foo") and $table->schema($schema) to set it up. Any undefined args will be ignored.

Multiple calls to _attributes are cumulative and sub classes will inherit their parents attribute names.

This is currently experimental, but will hopefull go on to form an introspection API for the Schema objects.

Global Attributes

The following attributes are defined here, therefore all schema objects will have them.

extra

Get or set the objects ``extra'' attibutes (e.g., ``ZEROFILL'' for MySQL fields). Call with no args to get all the extra data. Call with a single name arg to get the value of the named extra attribute, returned as a scalar. Call with a hash or hashref to set extra attributes. Returns a hash or a hashref.

  $field->extra( qualifier => 'ZEROFILL' );
  
  $qualifier = $field->extra('qualifier');
  
  %extra = $field->extra;
  $extra = $field->extra;
  
=cut

    my $self = shift;
    @_ = %{$_[0]} if ref $_[0] eq "HASH";
    my $extra = $self->{'extra'} ||= {};

    if (@_==1) { 
        return exists($extra->{$_[0]}) ? $extra->{$_[0]} : undef ;
    }
    elsif (@_) {
        my %args = @_;
        while ( my ( $key, $value ) = each %args ) {
            $extra->{$key} = $value;
        }
    }
    
    return wantarray ? %$extra : $extra;
}

# ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sub equals {

equals

Determines if this object is the same as another.

  my $isIdentical = $object1->equals( $object2 );

TODO

BUGS

AUTHOR

Ken Y. Clark <kclark@cpan.org>, Mark Addison <mark.addison@itn.co.uk>

SQL::Translator::Schema::Object - Base class SQL::Translator Schema objects.