Hello Everyone:

I have recently been updating my CGI::Application program and it has grown enormous (for me at least), coming in at just shy of 3000 lines. Since it is just one file it is becoming a PITA to maintain. I am using around 20 perl modules (a lot of them are CGI::App::Plugins) and have a lot of various run modes.

I would like to break up the script into several parts so that I am not loading a lot of unnecssary modules and reading all those functions each time a webpage is loaded. However, I have not written a program this large that I need to break it up before. What my idea would be to have a main file with all the various run modes. Then in the run mode function it would load the modules that contains all that functionality (via require?). In pseudo code I want to do this: 

package MyCGIApp;

use base 'CGI::Application';
use CGI::Application::Plugin::AutoRunmode;

sub setup {

    ... load database ...
    ... load session  ...
    ... other setup stuff...

}

sub runmode1 : Runmode {

  my $html_output = '';
  $html_output .= $q->start_html(-title=>'petnuch.com',
                                 -style=>{-src=>'/css/layout.css'});
  $html_output .= $self->banner;
  $html_output .= $self->menu;

  require 'MyCGIApp::Runmode1';
  # do_runmode1 is defined in MyCGIApp::Runmode1

  $html_output .= $self->do_runmode1;

  $html_ouput .= $self->footer;

  return $html_output;

}

/* Common functions to every web page */
sub banner {
...
}

sub menu {
...
}

sub footer {
...
}

1;

[download]

But what do I need to put in Runmode1.pm? Specifically what do need to do with ISA. Is it a CGI::Application or a MyCGIApp. Do I need to export do_runmode1? Do I need to have a 'use CGI::Application::Plugin::Session' in each runmode modules, or will it automatically be loaded? This is what I have in pseudocode (that does not work): 

package MyCGIApp::Runmode1;

use strict;
use Runmode1specficmodules;

sub do_runmode1 {

  my $self = shift;
  my $session = $self->session;
  my $q = $self->query();
  my $id = $q->param('n');

  unless( somecondition ) return $self->error;
 
 ...do stuff...

  return $html_output;

}

sub error {

  ...runmode1 error stuff...

}

1;

[download]

All help will be greatly appreciated!

In reply to Breaking up a CGI::Application program by debiandude

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