Hm, yes, I am aware of the potential problems with AUTOLOAD. The approach above does work -- but it has one problem that the use of AUTOLOAD solves: I want to always have all of a DBH's methods sent to my DBH. So, it looks like I'm faced with a tradeoff.

On the one hand, I could do as you suggest above, but I'd have to maintain a list of the methods on my {DBH} attribute. If I miss one, then I have a bug. This also raises the complexity of my test suite.

On the other hand, I could continue to use AUTOLOAD, and deal with the issue. My current version of the AUTOLOAD sub: 

# sets up autoload subs that 'inherit' DBI's DBH methods
sub AUTOLOAD {
    my $op = $AUTOLOAD;
    my $self = shift;
    $op =~ s/^.*:://;
    if ( DBI::db->can($op) ) {
        # create a wrapper for a DBH method
        eval "sub $op { return shift->{DBH}->$op(\@_); }";
        $op->($self, @_);
    }
    elsif ( $op =~ /^_/ ) {
        # return the appropriate attribute
        $op =~ s/^_//;
        exists $self->{$op} && return $self->{$op};
        return $self->error("Can't autoload for attribute _$op");
    }
    else {
        return $self->error("Cannot autoload $op");
    }
}

[download]

I don't worry too much about the security of my eval in this case, since this is a module, and doesn't directly process user input. My scripts never use user input to pass to AUTOLOAD either. Finally, I don't eval anything until I've checked that it's a DBH method. That, all in all, seems pretty safe, though I'd love to be enlightened if I'm missing something there.

I like the idea of Class::Delegator (and, actually, it solved another issue I've been pondering recently, so thanks!), but I'm wondering if there's a way to get the important feature that AUTOLOAD is providing me (making all of the DBI dbh methods available) without the issues AUTOLOAD raises.

Any ideas?

<-radiant.matrix->
A collection of thoughts and links from the minds of geeks
The Code that can be seen is not the true Code
"In any sufficiently large group of people, most are idiots" - Kaa's Law

In reply to Re^2: Using AUTOLOAD to create class methods by radiantmatrix
in thread Using AUTOLOAD to create class methods by radiantmatrix

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.