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OpenInteract2::Manual::Packages - Managing code, data, structures and templates for distributable applications
This document describes the packaging system in OpenInteract2.
A package is all the code, SQL structures, configuration information, initial data and security settings, documentation and anything else necessary to define an OpenInteract2 application. A single large application may actually comprise multiple packages, but each package generally defines some feature scope within it.
In OpenInteract2, packages implement the actual application functionality while the core framework handles the storage interface (e.g., putting your objects in a database), dispatches URL requests to your objects (this is called handling an action), security, authentication and authorization, session management and a few other details.
An application usually defines persistent objects that keep state from request to request and server shutdown to server shutdown. It also needs to define how the objects are to be manipulated, which users can access them and how functionality is exposed to the user (by way of a URL-to-action mapping).
OpenInteract2 comes with tools to install, uninstall and query currently installed packages. This greatly simplifies the task of creating, testing and distributing your application.
What goes into a package? In general, you will find:
Perl module code: This can include action code (normally found
under OpenInteract2::Action), SPOPS object code (under
OpenInteract2) and installation code (under
OpenInteract2::SQLInstall), along with normal Perl routines and
objects used to support these activities.
Configuration: Files in the conf/ directory: action.ini
configures the package's actions and one or more spops*.ini files
define persistent objects. Both of these file types are discussed
further below.
Templates: Graphical interface to package functionality. Normally these are HTML files interspersed with template processing commands which makes the data the package manages visible to the user.
Installation information: This includes the package.conf file
along with the SQL installation class, normally found under
OpenInteract2::SQLInstall.
Package data structures and data: These are used by the SQL
installation class to install tables (found in struct/ and any
initial and security data data/ needed by the package.
Documentation: The 'create_skeleton' command of oi2_manage will
create a preliminary POD file for you which documents your package in
doc/. You are strongly encouraged to fill in the blanks and add
meaningful detail along with any other necessary files to let people
know what functionality your package provides.
The oi2_manage script included with OpenInteract2 will create a
basic package skeleton for you. Here's an example:
$ oi2_manage create_package \
--package=mypackage \
--source_dir=/path/to/OI2-source
which creates the following directories and files:
mypackage # Main directory mypackage/package.conf # Basic package configuration (name, ...) mypackage/MANIFEST # List of files in package mypackage/MANIFEST.SKIP # Regexes to skip when creating MANIFEST mypackage/conf # Configuration directory mypackage/conf/spops.ini # Persistent object(s) configuration mypackage/conf/action.ini # Action(s) configuration mypackage/data # Package data/security directory mypackage/doc # Documentation directory mypackage/doc/mypackage.pod # Starter documentation mypackage/struct # Package table definition directory mypackage/template # Template directory mypackage/template/sample.tmpl # Sample Template Toolkit template mypackage/script # Tools program directory mypackage/html # Static html directory mypackage/html/images # Image directory mypackage/OpenInteract2 # Object hierarchy directory mypackage/OpenInteract2/Action # Action implementation directory mypackage/OpenInteract2/Action/Mypackage.pm # Sample action with 'hello' and 'list' tasks mypackage/OpenInteract2/SQLInstall # Structure/data installation directory mypackage/OpenInteract2/SQLInstall/Mypackage.pm # Sample structure/data installation
For what files you'll most likely edit, check out the OpenInteract2::Manual::Tutorial.
Now that you've created a package already, you've seen most of its contents. (The ones you care about, anyway.) However, each package is a Openinteract2::Package object -- a simple Perl object that's able to lookup files, create itself, install itself to a website and more
Here are some sample usages, cribbed from the OpenInteract2::Package documentation:
1: # Read information about a package distribution
2:
3: my $package = OpenInteract2::Package->new({
4: package_file => '/home/cwinters/pkg/mynewpackage-1.02.zip' });
5: my $config = $package->config;
6: print "Package ", $package->name, " ", $package->version, "\n",
7: "Author ", join( ", ", @{ $config->author } ), "\n";
8: my $files = $package->get_files;
9: foreach my $filename ( @{ $files } ) {
10: print " File - $filename\n";
11: }
For each website OpenInteract2 maintains a file with the installed
packages. This is a simple INI file located in
$WEBSITE_DIR/conf/respository.ini. Each package should only be
listed once, and the repository only maintains name, version,
directory and installation date information. The rest is stored in the
package itself.
You can see what packages are installed to a website using the
oi2_manage tool:
$ oi2_manage list_packages --website_dir=$WEBSITE_DIR
Which will give you output like this:
PROGRESS: Starting task
PROGRESS: Task complete
ACTION:
OK: Package base-2.02 in site
OK: Package base_box-2.01 in site
OK: Package base_error-2.02 in site
OK: Package base_group-2.01 in site
OK: Package base_page-2.04 in site
OK: Package base_security-2.01 in site
OK: Package base_template-3.00 in site
OK: Package base_theme-2.01 in site
OK: Package base_user-2.03 in site
OK: Package full_text-2.01 in site
OK: Package news-2.01 in site
OK: Package lookup-2.00 in site
OK: Package object_activity-2.02 in site
OK: Package system_doc-2.00 in site
At server startup the OI2 server performs the following actions regarding packages:
It collects all modules from each package and places them in a
consolidated library directory. This ensures we don't have an @INC
with so many entries.
It asks each module for its action.ini file, scrubs the data (in
OpenInteract2::Action), creates action
objects from the file's information and asks each one for the URLs it
will respond to. This becomes the URL-to-action mapping.
It asks each module for its spops.ini files. It consolidates all
SPOPS information, does some scrubbing of the data (in
OpenInteract2::SPOPS) and then whips the
classes into existence using SPOPS::Initialize.
The OpenInteract2::Context object also instantiates a OpenInteract2::Repository object and stores a copy of all package objects in the website so they're always available.
During a request the package's job is generally limited to finding
files on request -- the package needs to report what documentation
files it contains to the system_doc package, things like that.
OpenInteract2::Manual::Tutorial
Copyright (c) 2002-2003 Chris Winters. All rights reserved.
Chris Winters <chris@cwinters.com>
Generated from the OpenInteract 1.99_03 source.