Pretty URLs in CGI::Application

carthag has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I've been using CGI::Application for a while, and enjoy it because it makes coding most projects so much easier when you have a framework ready.

The problem I have is that I often end up with links that point to incredibly ugly urls, such as "http://www.site.com/script?op=do¶m1=this¶m2=and¶m3=this" or the like.

I've found a workaround that's working, and is pretty from the outside. The links now look like "http://www.site.com/script?walkfrom100to3" or "?jump40". This works fine, but is not internally pretty, as it puts a bunch of the code that really belongs in CGIApp into the index file that calls the CGIApp, like so:

use CGIApp;
use CGI;

################################

my $q = CGI->new();

if ($q->query_string =~ /^keywords=walkfrom(\d+)to(\d+)$/)
{
    $q->param(-name=>'op',-value=>'move');
    $q->param(-name=>'mode',-value=>'walk');
    $q->param(-name=>'location',-value=>$1);
    $q->param(-name=>'destination',-value=>$2);
}
elsif ($q->query_string =~ /^keywords=(walk|jump|run|fall)(\d+)?$/)
{
    $q->param(-name=>'op',-value=>'move');
    $q->param(-name=>'mode',-value=>$1);
    $q->param(-name=>'amount',-value=>$2||10);
}
elsif ($q->query_string =~ /^keywords=explode$/)
{
    $q->param(-name=>'op',-value=>'explode');
}

my $app = CGIApp->new(QUERY=>$q);

$app->run();
[download]

Is there a way to make this prettier in the code without breaking all sorts of things?

Comment on Pretty URLs in CGI::Application Download Code

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Re: Pretty URLs in CGI::Application by hardburn (Abbot) on Sep 16, 2003 at 18:42 UTC
You could stick that code in your app under `cgiapp_prerun()` using `prerun_mode()`. See the CGI::Application documentation. ---- I wanted to explore how Perl's closures can be manipulated, and ended up creating an object system by accident. -- Schemer Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re: Pretty URLs in CGI::Application by carthag (Scribe) on Sep 16, 2003 at 20:36 UTC
I had tried before, but I couldn't get it to work properly, but following your advice, I looked at the documentation again and got a working solution using a sub reference in mode_param() in setup containing the code I previously had in my index file, with an added return $q->param('op') at the end. That worked! Thanks :) Sorry for convoluted sentence	[reply]