Badger::Class Metaprogramming

Badger::Class Metaprogramming

package NewSkool::Constants;

use Badger::Class
    version  => 2.718,
    constant => {
        MESSAGE => 'Hello World!',
        VOLUME  => 11,
        TRUE    => 1,
        FALSE   => 0,
    },
    exports  => {
        all     => 'MESSAGE',
        any     => 'VOLUME',
        tags    => { truth => 'TRUE FALSE' },
        hooks   => { ... }
        fail    => sub { ... }
    };

• No use strict or use warnings required (thx Moose!)
• No need to subclass from Badger::Exporter explicitly.

Thus Spake Andy:

...and here's what it looks like using Badger::Class. We pass it three parameters when we use it (these are what we call import/export hooks). The version tells it to simply set a $VERSION package variable. The constant tells it to define some constants (just like saying use constant). The export hook is forward to the Badger::Exporter exports() method that we were just looking at. There's no need to use strict or use warnings thanks to a trick we borrowed from Moose. Also note that we don't need to explicitly subclass from Badger::Exporter because that is implicit in the fact that we declared some exports.

The obvious feature is that Badger::Class effectively helps you to avoid writing some of that messy "boilerplate" code that many modules typically start with. On a deeper level, it's a shift towards a more declarative style of programming. For example, we simply declare what we export and make the nuts and bolts of that process Somebody Else's Problem™. On an aesthetic level, it's grouping related functionality into one place and presenting it in a consistent fashion. The whole block becomes instantly recognisable as "all that startup crap" and can easily be skimmed (i.e. ignored). If your editor/IDE is smart enough, then you can collapse this down so that the whole thing only uses up a single line of your precious screen space. Furthermore, the indenting gives a visual clue to the structure of the data (and again, smart editors can collapse each of these blocks in expanding tree-view style). Skimpy++