Greetings monks,

Is there any way to reuse roles in packages that are not object-oriented?

I'm working with a large, old web application codebase and trying to integrate it with modern Moo-based (Dancer2) code. I'm having some issues with a particular package, Utility.pm, in the old code; it stores some important variables (the CGI, session, database handles), and is used by just about every other module as it contains everything from file system manipulation to CGI parameter access to print formatting to making cups of tea for the programmer (OK, not yet...). I would like to refactor some of the functionality, and ideally reuse some of the roles from Moo code -- e.g. session and cookie handling, query parameter access, etc. I don't know if this would be possible, given that Utility.pm is written as a set of functions with a few package variables, rather than as an object.

Here is an overview of the code that I'm working with. MyApp does various set up tasks, finds the appropriate module to load based on http params, then loads and runs the code:

package MyApp; # modern Moo-based app
use Moo;

# run initialisation checks
# set up session, parse http params

# run routing code: load (legacy) module, run the code
load 'ConsumingModule';  # this module uses Utility.pm
ConsumingModule::run();

# render output
[download]

ConsumingModule.pm uses Utility.pm, which looks like this:

package Utility;
...
my ($cgi, $session, $dbh, $config, ...); # create (but don't set)
                                         # important variables
# do miscellaneous stuff
...
init();
...
sub init {
   $cgi = CGI->new();
   $session = CGI::Session->new( $params );
   ...
}

# later on
sub get_session_param {
   my $p = shift;
   return $session->param( $p );
}

sub set_session_param {
    my ($p, $val) = @_;
    $session->param( $p, $val );
}
# plus other stuff for interacting with $session

sub param {
    my $p = shift;
    return $cgi->param( $p );
}
# plus other cgi interactions

# 9950 lines of other code
# (including similar code for setting up database handles, http client
+s, and
# other functionality that I have roles for)
[download]

Utility.pm exports all its functions by default, and modules that use it look like this:

package ConsumingModule;
...
use Utility;

sub run {
    ...
    my $query = param('query'); # get a CGI parameter
    ...
    set_session_param('foo', 'bar'); # interact with the session
}
[download]

As I understand it, roles can only be applied to objects or classes; I'm wondering if there is any way that I can refactor the existing Utility.pm code to enable me to use roles. There are 100+ modules that rely on Utility.pm and no test suite, so changing its API is going to be tricky at best and suicidal at worst. ;-)

Thank you!

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