Just a Theory

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Posts about MVC

DesignScene Has Landed

I know I’ve been fairly quiet lately, though for good reasons. One is that I did some of my more recent blogging on the PGXN Blog, though even there it has been a while. The main reason for my silence has been my focus on coding DesignScene, a new app for the iPad that I developed with my friend and partner Roger Wong.

Some history. Early last year I started learning Objective-C to implement an iPhone application. I’d had a great idea for a simple app to replace SMS, and so set about learning the ropes, and got relatively far in the development of the UI. (Fortunately, borange and atebits released Textie and I was able to kill that project.) As I worked, I started tweeting things about working with Objective-C and cocoa (both completely new experiences for me), and Roger, whom I’ve known since he and Strongrrl were in art school together in the early 90s, and who’d had an idea of his own, took notice and DMed me about a partnership.

Roger envisioned an application in which he could absorb himself in all the images and feeds he normally explored as part of his everyday work of gathering inspiration as a graphic designer. His initial mockup looked great, and I was immediately drawn to the idea of an app with carefully curated content in a beautiful interface to serve a specific (and design-savvy) niche. We agreed to meet at iPad Dev Camp in April to see if the idea had any legs, and whether we could work well together.

Roger’s Original Mockup

iPad Dev Camp was a great success for us. Jayant Sai was especially helpful, hanging out in the “newbie room” and pointing out that Roger could work on stuff in Interface Builder while I hacked code. It made it much easier to figure out how we could collaborate (though in fairness Roger has had to wait for me to learn and code a lot of stuff). Bill Dudney was there too, and helped us work out some of the details of animating the browser view. Good stuff. By the time it was over, we had a prototype of the UI nicely working, and even won an honorable mention at the hackathon.

Since then, we’ve had times when I’ve been able to give development more or less time. I spent six weeks over the summer developing the back end in my spare time from my day jobs. The code there regularly harvests from all the feeds we’ve selected, finds good images, extracts summaries, and provides a single, clean feed for DesignScene to consume. This allows the app to sync very quickly, which we felt was important for optimizing the user experience.

And as I worked on the iPad app itself, I’ve learned a lot about real MVC design patterns and development, which is quite different from the stuff we web app developers tend to call MVC. And in the last few months the app really came together, as we started pulling in actual content and applying the fit and finish. And now it’s here, in the App Store. I’m so thrilled with how it turned out, so happy to be using it. Hell, it’s one of the few apps I’ve ever developed that I actually enjoy using on a day-to-day basis. You will too; go get it!

Oh, and just dig the awesome trailer Roger put together. It’s such a joy to work with someone who knows Photoshop and After Effects like I know Perl and SQL.

Since we launched on Tuesday, we’ve been fortunate to receive some really terrific coverage:

And we’re not sitting still. I’m working through a short list of burrs and spurs that need to be polished off, and then moving on to some other great features we have planned. Stay tuned!

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Testing the Tutorial App

Yet another entry in my ongoing attempt to rewrite the Catalyst tutorial in my own coding style.

So far, I’ve been following the original tutorial pretty closely. But now I want to skip ahead a bit to chapter 8: testing. I skip because, really, we should be writing tests from the very beginning. They shouldn’t be an afterthought stuck in the penultimate chapter of a tutorial. So let’s write some tests. You can follow along in the Part 5 tag in the GitHub repository.

Oops, A Missing Dependency

Oh, wait! I forgot to tell the build system that we now depend on Catalyst::View::TD and DBIx::Connector. So add these two lines to Makefile.PL:

requires 'Catalyst::View::TD' => '0.11';
requires 'DBIx::Connector' => '0.30';

Okay, now we can write some tests.

STFU

Well, no, actually, let’s start by running the tests we have:

perl Makefile.PL
make test

You should see some output after this — lots of stuff, actually — ending something like this:

[debug] Loaded Path actions:
.-------------------------------------+--------------------------------------.
| Path                                | Private                              |
+-------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| /                                   | /index                               |
| /                                   | /default                             |
| /books                              | /books/index                         |
| /books/list                         | /books/list                          |
'-------------------------------------+--------------------------------------'

[info] MyApp powered by Catalyst 5.80013
t/view_HTML.t ......... ok   
All tests successful.
Files=5, Tests=8,  3 wallclock secs ( 0.04 usr  0.02 sys +  2.19 cusr  0.25 csys =  2.50 CPU)
Result: PASS

I don’t know about you, but having all that debugging crap just drives me nuts while I’m running tests. It’s helpful while doing development, but mainly just gets in the way of the tests. So let’s get rid of them. Open up lib/MyApp.pm and change the use Catalyst statement to:

use Catalyst (qw(
    ConfigLoader
    Static::Simple
    StackTrace
), $ENV{HARNESS_ACTIVE} ? () : '-Debug');

Essentially, we’re just turning on the debugging output only if the test harness is not active. Now when we run the tests, we get:

t/01app.t ............. ok   
t/02pod.t ............. skipped: set TEST_POD to enable this test
t/03podcoverage.t ..... skipped: set TEST_POD to enable this test
t/controller_Books.t .. ok   
t/view_HTML.t ......... ok   
All tests successful.
Files=5, Tests=8,  3 wallclock secs ( 0.04 usr  0.02 sys +  2.15 cusr  0.23 csys =  2.44 CPU)
Result: PASS

Much better. Now I can actually see other stuff, such as the fact that I’m skipping POD tests. Personally, I like to make sure that POD tests run all the time, as I’m likely to forget to set the environment variable. So let’s edit t/02pod.t and t/03podcoverage.t and delete this line from each:

plan skip_all => 'set TEST_POD to enable this test' unless $ENV{TEST_POD};

So what does that get us?

t/01app.t ............. ok   
t/02pod.t ............. ok     
t/03podcoverage.t ..... 1/6 
#   Failed test 'Pod coverage on MyApp::Controller::Books'
#   at /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.1/Test/Pod/Coverage.pm line 126.
# Coverage for MyApp::Controller::Books is 50.0%, with 1 naked subroutine:
#   list

#   Failed test 'Pod coverage on MyApp::Controller::Root'
#   at /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.1/Test/Pod/Coverage.pm line 126.
# Coverage for MyApp::Controller::Root is 66.7%, with 1 naked subroutine:
#   default
# Looks like you failed 2 tests of 6.
t/03podcoverage.t ..... Dubious, test returned 2 (wstat 512, 0x200)
Failed 2/6 subtests 
t/controller_Books.t .. ok   
t/view_HTML.t ......... ok   

Test Summary Report
-------------------
t/03podcoverage.t   (Wstat: 512 Tests: 6 Failed: 2)
  Failed tests:  2-3
  Non-zero exit status: 2
Files=5, Tests=25,  3 wallclock secs ( 0.05 usr  0.02 sys +  2.82 cusr  0.29 csys =  3.18 CPU)
Result: FAIL
Failed 1/5 test programs. 2/25 subtests failed.

Well that figures, doesn’t it? We added the list action to MyApp::Controller Books but never documented it. And for some reason, Catalyst creates the default action in MyApp::Controller::Root with no documentation. Such a shame. So let’s document those methods. Add this to t/lib/MyApp/Controller/Root.pm:

=head2 default

The default action. Just returns a 404/NOT FOUND error. Might want to update
later with a template to format the error like the rest of our site.

=cut

While there, I notice that the index action has a doc header, but nothing to actually describe what it does. Let’s fix that, too:

The default Catalyst action, which just displays the welcome message. This is
the "Yay it worked!" page. Consider changing to a real home page for our app.

Great. Now open t/lib/MyApp/Controller/Books.pm and document the list action:

=head2 list

Looks up all of the books in the system and executes a template to display
them in a nice table. The data includes the title, rating, and authors of each
book

=cut

Oh hey, look at that. There’s an index method that doesn’t do anything. And it has a POD header and no docs, too. So let’s document it:

The default method for the books controller. Currently just says that it
matches the request; we'll likely want to change it to something more
reasonable down the line.

Okay, so how do the tests look now?

t/01app.t ............. ok   
t/02pod.t ............. ok     
t/03podcoverage.t ..... ok   
t/controller_Books.t .. ok   
t/view_HTML.t ......... ok   
All tests successful.
Files=5, Tests=25,  3 wallclock secs ( 0.05 usr  0.02 sys +  2.82 cusr  0.31 csys =  3.20 CPU)
Result: PASS

Excellent! Now, the truth is that we didn’t document our templates, either. Test::Pod doesn’t cotton on to that fact because they’re not installed like normal subroutines in the test classes. So it’s up to us to document them ourselves. (Note to self: Consider adding a module to test that all Template::Declare classes have docs for all of their templates.) I’ll wait here while you do that.

All done? Great! I had actually planned to start testing the view next, but I think this is enough for today. Stay tuned for more testing goodness.

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Create a Template::Declare Wrapper

Next in my ongoing series of posts on using Catalyst with Template::Declare and DBIx::Connector, we pick up again in chapter 3 to create a wrapper for the view. I added the wrapper support to Template::Declare over a year ago, and while the idea is sound, the interface makes it feel like it’s bolted on. See if you agree with me.

Returning to the MyApp project, open lib/MyApp/Templates/HTML.pm and implement a wrapper like so:

use Sub::Exporter -setup => { exports => [qw(wrapper) ] };

create_wrapper wrapper => sub {
    my ($code, $c, $args) = @_;
    xml_decl { 'xml', version => '1.0' };
    outs_raw '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" '
            . '"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">';
    html {
        head {
            title { $args->{title} || 'My Catalyst App!' };
            link {
                rel is 'stylesheet';
                href is $c->uri_for('/static/css/main.css' );
            };

        };

        body {
            div {
                id is 'header';
                # Your logo can go here.
                img {
                    src is $c->uri_for('/static/images/btn_88x31_powered.png');
                };
                # Page title.
                h1 { $args->{title} || $c->config->{name} };
            }; # end header.

            div {
                id is 'bodyblock';
                div {
                    id is 'menu';
                    h3 { 'Navigation' };
                    ul {
                        li {
                            a {
                                href is $c->uri_for('/books/list');
                                'Home';
                            };
                        };
                        li {
                            a {
                                href is $c->uri_for('/');
                                title is 'Catalyst Welcome Page';
                                'Welcome';
                            };
                        };
                    };
                }; # end menu

                div {
                    id is 'content';
                    # Status and error messages.
                    if (my $msg = $args->{status_msg}) {
                        span { class is 'message'; $msg };
                    }
                    if (my $err = $args->{error_msg}) {
                        span { class is 'error'; $err };
                    }

                    # Output the template contents.
                    $code->($args);
                }; # end content

            }; # end bodyblock
        };
    };
};

This looks like more work than it is because of the copious use of whitespace I’ve used. Personally, I find the pure Perl syntax easier to read than the mix of HTML and TT syntax in the Template Toolkit wrapper. Anyway, this is a nearly direct port of the Template Toolkit wrapper from the tutorial. Template::Declare wrappers expect at least one argument: a code reference that will output the content of the main template. You can see it used here near the end of the code, with the line $code->($args).

Unfortunately, Template::Declare doesn’t make such wrappers easily available to templates. So we have to add the Sub::Exporter line at the top to export the wrapper function it creates, named wrapper.

Next, open up lib/MyApp/Templates/HTML/Books.pm and edit the list template to take advantage of the wrapper. The new code looks like this:

use MyApp::Templates::HTML 'wrapper';

template list => sub {
    my ($self, $args) = @_;
    wrapper {
        table {
            row {
                th { 'Title'  };
                th { 'Rating' };
                th { 'Author' };
            };
            my $sth = $args->{books};
            while (my $book = $sth->fetchrow_hashref) {
                row {
                    cell { $book->{title}  };
                    cell { $book->{rating} };
                    cell { $book->{author} };
                };
            };
        };
    } $self->c, $args;
};

First we import the wrapper function from MyApp::Templates::HTML, and then we simply use it to wrap the contents of our template. Note that the context object and template arguments must be passed on to the wrapper; they’re not provided to the wrapper by Template::Declare. That’s something else I’d like to adjust.

In the meantime, contrary to the tutorial, I don’t think the template should set the title of the page. It seems to me that’s more the responsibility of the controller. So while this template could easily add a title key to the $args hash before passing it on to the wrapper, I recommend editing the list action in MyApp::Controller::Books instead:

sub list : Local {
    my ($self, $c) = @_;
    my $stash = $c->stash;
    $stash->{title} = 'Book List';
    $stash->{books} = $c->conn->run(fixup => sub {
        my $sth = $_->prepare('SELECT isbn, title, rating FROM books');
        $sth->execute;
        $sth;
    });
}

So, with the wrapper in place, let’s create the stylesheet the wrapper uses:

$ mkdir root/static/css

Then open root/static/css/main.css and add the following content:

#header {
    text-align: center;
}
#header h1 {
    margin: 0;
}
#header img {
    float: right;
}
#footer {
    text-align: center;
    font-style: italic;
    padding-top: 20px;
}
#menu {
    font-weight: bold;
    background-color: #ddd;
    float: left;
    padding: 0 0 50% 5px;
}
#menu ul {
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
    list-style: none;
    font-weight: normal;
    background-color: #ddd;
    width: 100px;
}
#content {
    margin-left: 120px;
}
.message {
    color: #390;
}
.error {
    color: #f00;
}

Now restart the app as usual and reload the books list at http://localhost:3000/books/list. You should now see a nicely formatted page with the navigation and header stuff, as well as the book list. You can change the CSS and the wrapper to modify the overall look of your site, and then use the wrapper in all of your page request templates to get the same look and feel across your site.

While this works, I’m not satisfied with the overall interface for Template::Declare wrappers. The need to explicitly export them and pass arguments is annoying. Maybe the Jifty guys have some other approach that works better. But if not, I’ll likely go back to the drawing board on wrappers and see how they can be made better.

Next up: More database fun!

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Create Catalyst Views with Template::Declare

Following up on last week’s release of Template::Declare 0.41, this week I’m pleased to announce the release of a new Catalyst view class, Catalyst::View::TD.

Yes, I’m aware of Catalyst::View::Template::Declare. As I mentioned last week, it doesn’t make very good use of Template::Declare. I don’t blame jrock for that, though; Template::Declare had very poor documentation before 0.41. But now that it is properly documented and I have a pretty solid grasp of how it works, I wanted to create a new Catalyst View that could take proper advantage of its features.

If you’re a Catalyst developer, chances are that you currently use Template Toolkit or Mason for your templating needs. So why should you consider Catalyst::View::TD for your next project? How about:

  • Feature-parity with Catalyst::View::TT, the view class for Template Toolkit
  • Includes a myapp_create.pl helper for creating new template classes.
  • Intuitive, easy-to-use HTML and XML templating in Perl
  • All templates loaded at server startup time (great for forking servers like mod_perl)
  • Template paths that correspond to Controller URIs.

If you weren’t convinced by the first three points, that forth one is the killer. It’s the reason I wrote a new view. But here’s an even better reason: I’m going to show you exactly how to use it, right here in this blog post.

A Simple Hello

I’m borrowing from chapter 3 of the Catalyst tutorial. First, create a new app:

$ catalyst.pl MyApp
cd MyApp

Then update the list of plugins in MyApp.pm:

use Catalyst qw/
    -Debug
    ConfigLoader
    Static::Simple
    StackTrace
/;

Now create a controller:

$ script/myapp_create.pl controller Books

Then edit it and add this controller (see chapter 3 if you need explanation about what this does):

sub list : Local {
    my ($self, $c) = @_;
    $c->stash->{books} = [];
    $c->stash->{template} = '/books/list';
}

And now, create a view and a new template class:

$ script/myapp_create.pl view HTML TD
$ script/myapp_create.pl TDClass HTML::Books

Open lib/MyApp/Templates/HTML/Books.pm and add the list template:

my ($self, $args) = @_;
table {
    row {
        th { 'Title'  };
        th { 'Rating' };
        th { 'Author' };
    };
    for my $book (@{ $args->{books} }) {
        row {
            cell { $book->{title}  };
            cell { $book->{rating} };
            cell { $book->{author} };
        };
    }
};

Then point your browser to http://localhost:3000/books/list. If you have everything working so far, you should see a web page that displays nothing other than our column headers for “Title”, “Rating”, and “Author(s)” — we won’t see any books until we get the database and model working below.

A Few Comments

The first thing I want to draw your attention to in this example is that list template. Isn’t it a thing of beauty? It’s so easy for Perl hackers to read. Compare it to the TT example from the tutorial (with the comments removed, just to be fair):

<tr><th>Title</th><th>Rating</th><th>Author(s)</th></tr>
[% FOREACH book IN books -%]
    <tr>
    <td>[% book.title %]</td>
    <td>[% book.rating %]</td>
    <td></td>
    </tr>
[% END -%]
</table>

I mean, which would you rather have to maintain? And this is an extremely simple example. The comparison only becomes more stark when the HTML becomes more complex.

The other thing I want to point out is the name of the template class we created, MyApp::Template::HTML::Books and its template, list. They correspond perfectly with the controller, MyApp::Controller::Books, and its action list. See the parity there? The URI for the action is /books/list, and the template path, by coincidence is also /books/list. Nice, huh? Thanks to this parity, you can even remove the template specification in the controller, since by default Catalyst will render a template with the same name as the action:

sub list : Local {
    my ($self, $c) = @_;
    $c->stash->{books} = [];
}

This is the primary way in which Catalyst::View::TD differs from its predecessor. Whereas the latter would load all of the modules under the view’s namespace and shove all of their templates into root path, the former imports templates under paths that correspond to their class names. Hence the match with controller names.

Stay Tuned

It was kind of fun to subvert the Catalyst tutorial for my nefarious purposes. Maybe I’ll keep it up with more blog posts in the coming weeks that continues to do so. Not only will it let me show off how nice Template::Declare templates can be, but it will let me continue my rant against ORMs as well. Stay tuned.

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