Ah, I think I see where the misunderstanding lies.

You ("you" meaning zigster) are assuming that I'm autogenerating methods based on the underlying object implementation. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about generating methods based on some other standard, like so:

Note: code based on working code and Camel, but untested

package Foo;

use strict;
use vars qw($AUTOLOAD %ACCESSOR_TABLE);
use Carp;

%ACCESSOR_TABLE = (
    'name' => '_name',
    'id' => '_id_code',
    'phone' => '_phonenum'
);

sub DESTROY { }

sub new {
   my $type = shift;
   my ($name, $id, $phone) = @_;

   my $self = {
     _data_table => { _name => $name,
                      _id_code => $id,
                      _phonenum => $phone,
                    },
   };
   bless $self, $type;
   return $self;
}

sub AUTOLOAD {
    my ($sub_name) = $AUTOLOAD =~ m{.*::(.*)$};
    $sub_name =~ /^get_(.*)/ or croak "Can't autoload method $AUTOLOAD
+";
    my $data_name = $1;
    defined $ACCESSOR_TABLE{$data_name}
        or croak "Can't autoload method $AUTOLOAD";
    my $field_name = $ACCESSOR_TABLE{$data_name};
    *$AUTOLOAD = sub {
        (ref($_[0]) && $_[0]->isa('Foo')) or croak "Accessor method '$
+sub_name' called improperly";
        return $_[0]->{'_data_table'}{$field_name};
    };
    goto &$AUTOLOAD;
}

[download]
And in other code... 
use Foo;

my $foo = Foo->new('jenny', '24601', '408-867-5309');
my $phone = $foo->get_phone();
my $name = $foo->get_name();

[download]
Then, I can add accessors by merely messing with the %ACCESSOR_TABLE, and not defining more subroutines. This is particularily useful for objects which are loaded from databases-- I can add new fields to the database without doing as much recoding. If there are accessors that don't store their data in '_data_table', I can define them separately, or just add some functionality to AUTOLOAD.

These are implementation details; I just want to show that there are legitimate uses for AUTOLOAD in an object-oriented context. And once again, this illustrates the power of OO. From the perspective of the class user, it doesn't matter whether I've defined individual subroutines or if I've got them autoloaded instead. The class user doesn't need to understand "what is under the hood."

stephen

Update: Added an 'accessor exists' check.

In reply to Re: (Zigster) Re: Re: Perl and Objects, how do you resolve the two? by stephen
in thread Perl and Objects, how do you resolve the two? by frankus

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.