stvn and I have been coding up an extremely lightweight & very simple deferred-loading proxy object. The goal was to be as unobstrusive as possible, while still allowing for useful lazyloading.

There are several usage forms: 

package My::Class

use Object::Proxy;

....

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Now, all My::Class objects will defer loading until they're used.

Let's say you are the user of a class and you want it to be lazy-loaded. 

use Object::Proxy 'Proxy::This';

my $obj = Proxy::This->new( @args );

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$obj is now a deferred load.

Or, you can import a proxy() method that will allow you to turn on lazy-loading for a class (or even just an instance) at runtime. There is also an unproxy() method, to turn it off.

Proxied objects will respect isa(), can(), overloading, and (nearly) all forms of direct access.

We found several modules on CPAN that do similar things, but they all required a lot more work on the programmer's part. Our way, you don't even have to write your class with any lazyloading in mind. The caller can choose to lazyload your class and you don't even know the difference.

First, does anyone think they would like this?

Second, what should we call it? Object::Proxy is kind-of our development name, but we were hoping for something better. Object::LazyLoader is another thought, but it's ... well ... ugly.

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In reply to RFC: Object::Proxy (or somesuch) by dragonchild

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