http://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=14539 Bug ID: 14539 Summary: castToObject(), aka. make a Koha::Object from various input types Change sponsored?: --- Product: Koha Version: master Hardware: All OS: All Status: NEW Severity: enhancement Priority: P5 - low Component: Architecture, internals, and plumbing Assignee: gmcharlt@gmail.com Reporter: olli-antti.kivilahti@jns.fi QA Contact: testopia@bugs.koha-community.org Currently Koha is like an archeological dig site, we have different layers of dealing with various business objects. We started with DBI and numerous ways of passing an HASH around. There is no telling if it will be a List of column => values, or a reference to HASH, or a HASH or just any of the business object's (eg. Borrower's) unique identifiers (userid, cardnumber, borrowernumber). Then DBIx came to the rescue and now we are need to learn DBI and DBIx and SQL to do DB operatons in Koha. Migration to DBIx is on the way. Finally we have Koha::Object and subclasses, which include and use the DBIx, but those are not directly compatible, since Koha::Object is not a subclass of DBIx::Class making life occasionally miserable. Now we need to know 3 methods of DB accession. I am really frustrated with all of those different layers of history, and making things work nicely across all different programming patterns, I have had great success in using a casting system, where we take any value and try to make a Koha::Object-subclass out of it. So we try to cast a Scalar or a reference of Koha::Object-implementation or DBIx::ResultSet or HASH, to the desired Koha::Object-implementation. This is a nice validation/entry function in any subroutine dealing with business objects, making sure that we always have the "correct" implementation of the same business object. An example: #Does this look familiar? my $borrower = 1042; #A borrowernumber? my $user = '121A0321312'; #A cardnumber? or userid? my $borrower = {borrowernumber => 1043, cardnumber => '121A0321312', ...}; #HASH my $borrower = Koha::Borrowers->find({borrowernumber => 1024}); my $borrower = $schema->resultset('Borrower')->find({borrowernumber => 1024}); #So when I call my subroutine with the $borrower I got using some function, makeBorrowerHappy($borrower); #Bad things most often happen. #But if my makeBorrowerHappy()-function would cast its parameters to the #correct type, there would be only merriment and fun! sub makeBorrowerHappy { my ($borrower) = @_; $borrower = Koha::Borrowers::castToBorrower($borrower); ... #Do fun stuff! } #Whatever we throw at the subroutine, things just work (in theory)! Even better, if the $borrower already is a DBIx-derivative or Koha::Borrower, we don't even do anything, other than simple if statements. So minimally expensive, maximally productive. -- You are receiving this mail because: You are watching all bug changes.