I fear that giving the complete answer to this quesiton will only show the kind of deludged curmudgeon I am.

So I'm working on a web project. I'm working with CGI::Application. I want to use Apache::Session (or SessionX, whatever) to do my sessioning stuff. I want to retrieve my session in the setup stage, and then just haul its ass around to whatever run-modes I need via the $self.

Now, $self->param within CGI::Application could do the job, a la:

sub setup {

    my $self = shift;

    tie %session, 'Apache::Session', $self->query->cookie('session_id'
+);
    $self->param('session', \%session);

    # etc.

}

sub current_run_mode {

    my $self = shift;

    # etc.

    my $uid = $self->param('session')->{uid};

    # etc.

}
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I'm willing to do this, if need be. But I like my composited objects (and their related methods) to be "first class". In this case, that means I'd rather my attempts to get session data would look like:

    my $uid = $self->session->uid;
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How would I do this? (Rhetorical question.) I have already subclassed CGI::Application to My::CGIApplication that gives me 1st class object composition capabilities, like this:

sub setup {

    my $self = shift;

    tie %session, 'Apache::Session', $self->query->cookie('session_id'
+);

    $self->composite_object( name => 'session',
                 object => tied(%session));

    # etc.

}
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This gives me calls like $self->session. So now I need to get at the session data in a first class way. (Obviously I could get at it in a 2nd or 3rd class way such as $self->session->FETCH('uid'), but I don't like the smell of this.)

So, this leads me to subclassing Apache::Session. Consider My::ApacheSession which has within it this...

sub AUTOLOAD {

    my $self      = shift;
    my $attribute = $AUTOLOAD;

    $method =~ s/.*:://;
    if ( length($method) != 0 ) {
    if ( @_ > 1) {
        return $self->STORE($attribute, @_);
    } else {
        return $self->FETCH($attribute);
    }
    } else {
        croak "No such object attribute referenced by name '"
        . $attribute
        . ' to provide ";
    }

}
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So this is entirely doable. However, I would like it cleaner (i.e. forgetting about FETCH and STORE). So refer back to my original posting...

sub AUTOLOAD {

    my $self      = shift;
    my $attribute = $AUTOLOAD;

    $method =~ s/.*:://;

    my %session = Foo($self);

    if ( @_ > 1) {
    return $session{$attribute} = $_[0];
    } else {
    return $session{$attribute};
    }
    
}
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So that's all. Hope with all that wind-up it wasn't an anticlimax. Perrin, as you said, there is another way. I was just hoping that the way I wanted to do things exists, too.

Cheers,
Richard