OK, I ran your code. Very interesting. Thanks for illustrating this problem for me so clearly. Circular references are one of those concepts I blew off and didn't worry about. It's probably time I started worrying.

So what's the best solution to my problem? Here's my self-contained code that illustrates what I'm doing:

#! /usr/bin/env perl

use warnings;
use strict;

package BigObjs;
use Moose;
has 'little_objs' => ( is => 'rw', isa => 'HashRef', default => sub { 
+{} } );

# our reader method
sub get_little_obj {
  my ($s, $id) = @_;

  return $s->little_objs->{$id};
}

# add new little objects to our collection
sub add_little_obj {
  my ($s, $little_obj) = @_;

  # create code ref to reader method in big object
  $little_obj->get_obj_by_id(sub{$s->get_little_obj(@_)});

  $s->little_objs->{$little_obj->id} = $little_obj;
}

package LittleObjs;
use Moose;

has 'id' => (is => 'rw');
has 'data' => (is => 'rw');
has 'get_obj_by_id' => (is => 'rw');

sub alter_another_little_object {
  my ($s, $id) = @_;
  my $other_little_object = $s->get_obj_by_id->($id);
  $other_little_object->do_stuff;
}

sub do_stuff {
  my $s = shift;
  print "I'm doing stuff to: " . $s->id . "\n";
}

no Moose;

my $big = BigObjs->new();
my $little1 = LittleObjs->new(id => 'little1', data => 'foo');
my $little2 = LittleObjs->new(id => 'little2', data => 'bar');

$big->add_little_obj($little1);
$big->add_little_obj($little2);

$little1->alter_another_little_object('little2');

[download]

So you are saying I need to use sub{$s->get_little_obj(@_)} as an argument to a weaken function?

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$nysus = $PM . ' ' . $MCF;
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In reply to Re^2: Is there an advantage to storing references to objects in an attribute instead of the object itself? by nysus
in thread Is there an advantage to storing references to objects in an attribute instead of the object itself? by nysus

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