Dear Perlmonks, I have what I feel is a relatively fundamental question about Perl OO, regarding multiple inheritance: can I bless a ref into multiple packages?

The specific problem I'm trying to solve involves DBIx::Class. This ORM maps SQL table rows to instances of a class/package associated with the table. In order to achieve subclassing, one can store the additional attributes for the subclasses in the same table as the base class. Whenever a table row is retrieved, the method inflate_result() of the corresponding class is called - this method then blesses the table row (stored as a hashref) into the correct subclass (normally by looking at a specific table attribute that contains e.g. the name of the subclass).

E.g. a vehicles table containes rows that correspond to instances of the class Vehicle. A 'type' attribute could contain information about the type of vehicle and be used by Vehicle::inflate_result() to bless the vehicle row into an instances of Vehicle::Car or Vehicle::Airplane.

Now, I have a table containing entries that inherit from two base classes. These classes have subclasses, and I want to bless the table row hashref into two different subclasses, one for each base class - I have attributes like 'type1' and 'type2', not just one 'type'.

Now my question: How can I bless a hashref into two different packages? I know Perl can do multiple inheritance via the @ISA array, but I need to use bless to associate with two unrelated classes.

In reply to Multiple Inheritance (DBIx::Class) by Cybris

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