First thing to mind is how you do the same things over and over - and I'm not sure the first thing to my mind is what's coming to your mind. ;-)

A quick perusal of Class::DBI gives me this thought. First off, it's way easier if you can keep the names the same ... so here we try:

my @comment_cols = qw/title author thread_id id/;
for (@comments) {
    my %data;
    @data{@comment_cols} = $_->get(@comment_cols);
    push @c_data, \%data;
}
[download]

Or, if you can't keep them the same:

my %comment_cols = qw/
  c_title title
  author  author
  id      thread_id
  c_id    id
/;
for (@comments) {
    my %data;
    @data{keys %comment_cols} = $_->get(values %comment_cols);
    push @c_data, \%data;
}
[download]

Then push the definition (@comment_cols or %comment_cols) out into a package variable so that it only is created once, and then adding/removing/renaming columns becomes a bit easier. After all that, I also notice that anything that says "for ... push" looks like a "map" to me. So I get:

@c_data = map {
    my %data;
    @data{keys %comment_cols} = $_->get(values %comment_cols);
    \%data;
} @comments;
[download]

Then you can take this loop or map, put it into a subroutine that takes the column list or column map as a reference, takes the input from Class::DBI as another reference, and returns the transformed data as a list of hashes. And then you'll be a long way towards making this easier to deal with, IMO. Although I have to admit, it's not really that bad now. I would just anticipate some column renamings by these steps, just to make things easier on me when I change my mind about the name of a column or something. :-)

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.