File Coverage

blib/lib/Articulate.pm

Criterion	Covered	Total	%
statement	15	21	71.4
branch			n/a
condition			n/a
subroutine	5	6	83.3
pod	1	1	100.0
total	21	28	75.0

package Articulate;
use strict;
use warnings;

use Moo;
with 'MooX::Singleton';

use Articulate::Service;
use Module::Load ();
our $VERSION = '0.005';

=head1 NAME

Articulate - A lightweight Perl CMS Framework

=head1 WARNING

This is very much in alpha. Things will change. Feel free to build
things and have fun, but don't hook up anything business-critical just
yet!

=head1 SYNOPSIS

  # (in bin/app.pl)
  use Dancer;
  use Dancer::Plugin::Articulate;
  articulate_app->enable;
  dance;

B provides a content management service for your web app.
It's lightweight, i.e. it places minimal demands on your app while
maximising 'whipuptitude': it gives you a single interface in code to a
framework that's totally modular underneath, and it won't claim any URL
endpoints for itself.

You don't need to redesign your app around Articulate, it's a service
that you call on when you need it, and all the 'moving parts' can be
switched out if you want to do things your way.

It's written in Perl, the fast, reliable 'glue language' that's perfect
for agile web development projects, and currently runs on the L
and L web frameworks.

=head1 GETTING STARTED

Don't forget to install Articulate - remember, it's a library, not an
app.

  # From source:
  perl Makefile.PL
  make
  make test
  make install

Check out the examples in the C folder of the distribution.

To add Articulate to your own app, you'll need to:

=over

=item * add it to your C or similar (see example above) using either L or L.

=item * edit your C to configure the components you want (check each of the components for a description of their config options - or just borrow a config from one of the examples)

=item * write any custom code you want if you don't like what's there, and just swap it out in the config.

=item * polish off your front-end, all the backend is taken care of!

=back

Curious about how it all fits together? Read on...

=head1 DESCRIPTION

Articulate is a set of components that work together to provide a
content management service that will sit alongside an existing Dancer
app or form the basis of a new one.

If you want to see one in action, grab the source and run:

  # If you have Dancer and Dancer::Plugin::Articulate installed:
  cd examples/plain-speaking
  perl bin/app.pl -e dancer1

  # Or, if you have Dancer2 and Dancer2::Plugin::Articulate installed:
  cd examples/plain-speaking
  perl bin/app.psgi

You can see how it's configured by looking at

  examples/plain-speaking/config.yml

Notice that C doesn't directly load anything but the
Articulate plugin (which loads config into this module). Everything you
need is in C, and you can replace components with ones
you've written if your app needs to do different things.

=head2 Request/Response lifecycle summary

In a B, you parse user input and pick the parameters you want to
send to the B. Have a look at
L for some examples. The intention is
that routes are as 'thin' as possible: business logic should all be
done by some part of the service and not in the route handler. The
route handler maps endpoints (URLs) to service requests; structured
responses are passed back as return values and are picked up by the
B.

B pass B to B. A B contains a
B (like C) and B (like the B you want to
create it at and the B you want to place there). See
L for more details.

The B is responsible for handling requests for managed
content. L B to a service B,
asking each in turn if they are willing to handle the request (normally
the provider will dertermine this based on the request verb). A
provider typically checks a user has suitable permission, then
interacts with the content storage system.

B is controlled by L. It delegates to a
storage class which is configured for actions like C and
C.

Content is stored in a structure called an B (see
L), which has a C (see
L), the B (which could be a binary blob
like an image, plain text, markdown, XML, etc.) and the associated
B or B (which is a hashref).

Before items can be placed in storage, the service should take care to
run them through B. L delegates
this to validators, and if there are any applicable validators, they
will check if the content is valid. The content may also be
B, i.e. further metadata added, like the time at which the
request was made (consult L for details).

After items are retrieved from storage, there is the opportunity to
B them, for instance by including relevant content from
elsewhere which belongs in the response. See
L for details on this.

If at any time uncaught errors are thrown, including recognised
L objects, they are caught and handled by
L. L should therefore always
return an L object.

Once the request finds it back to the Route it will typically be
B immediately (see L), and the
resulting response passed back to the user.

=head2 Components

The following classes are persistent, configurable B of the
system:

=over

=item * L

=item * L

=item * L

=item * L

=item * L

=item * L

=item * L

=item * L

=item * L

=item * L

=item * L

=back

=head2 Data Classes

The following classes are used for passing request data between
components:

=over

=item * L

=item * L

=item * L

=item * L

=item * L

=item * L

=item * L

=item * L

=item * L

=back

=head2 Other modules of interest

=over

=item * L

=item * L

=item * L

=item * L

=item * L

=item * L

=back

=head2 Instantiation

Articulate provides a very handy way of creating (or B)
objects through your config. The following config, for instance,
assignes to the providers attribute (on some other object), an arrayref
of four objects, the first created without no arguments, two created
with arguments, and a final one created without arguments but using an
unusual constructor.

  providers:
    - MyProvider::Simple
    - class: MyProvider::Congfigurable
      args:
        verbose: 1
    - MyProvider::Congfigurable:
        lax: 1
        verbose: 1
    - class: MyProvider::Idiosyncratic
      constuctor: tada

For more details, see L.

=head2 Delegation

A key part of the flexibility of Articulate is that objects often
B functions to other objects (the B)

Typically, one class delegates to a series of providers, which are each
passed the same arguments in turn. L is a
good example of this. Sometimes the response from one provider will
halt the delegation - see L for an example
of this.

Occasionally, only one provider is possible, for instance
L. In this case there is a substitution
rather than a delegation.

=cut

=head1 METHOD

=head3 enable

Sets up the routes. This does not happen at construction so you can
control the point at which routes are declared.

=head1 ATTRIBUTES

=head3 enabled

Please do not set this directly, use C instead.

=head3 routes

The packages which provide routes for Articulate. See
L and L for more
details.

=head3 components

The different working pieces of the Articulate app. Components all have
access to each other indirectly and they provide features across
Articulate; see L for more details.

=cut

sub enable {
  my $self = shift;
  foreach my $route ( @{ $self->routes } ) {
    $route->app($self);
    $route->enable;
  }
  $self->enabled(1);
}

has enabled => (
  is      => 'rw',
  default => sub { 0 }
);

has routes => (
  is      => 'rw',
  default => sub { [] },
  coerce  => sub {
    Module::Load::load('Articulate::Syntax');
    Articulate::Syntax::instantiate_array(@_);
  },
  trigger => sub {
    my $self = shift;
    my $orig = shift;
    $_->app($self) foreach @$orig;
  },
);

has components => (
  is      => 'rw',
  default => sub { {} },
  coerce  => sub {
    my $orig = shift;
    Module::Load::load('Articulate::Syntax');
    Articulate::Syntax::instantiate_selection($orig);

  },
  trigger => sub {
    my $self = shift;
    my $orig = shift;
    $orig->{$_}->app($self) foreach keys %$orig;
  },
);

=head1 CONTRIBUTING

If you'd like to help build the core or the econsystem, you'll want to
look at the C file in the source distribution, which
gives more technical information about how you can contribute to and
work with Articulate.

=head1 BUGS

Bug reports are an important contrubution and should be reported to the
L. You
can also request new features this way. Pull Requests welcome!

=head1 COPYRIGHT

Articulate is Copyright 2014-2015 Daniel Perrett. You are free to use
it subject to the same terms as perl: see the LICENSE file included in
this distribution for what this means.

Currently Articulate is bundled with versions of other software whose
license information you can access from the LICENSE file.

=cut

1;