Wow. This is turning into an actual conversation. (Something I've found can sometimes not materialize on PM, unfortunately.) Let me respond one at a time. 

sub get {
    my $self = shift;
    my $class = ref($self) or wantarray ? return () : return undef;

    # This is just for safety
    local $_;

    my @args = $self->coerce_args('ARRAY', @_);

    my @return = ();
    if (scalar(@args) < 1) {
        if (wantarray) {
            return @return;
        } else {
            return 0;
        }
    }

    foreach (@args) {
        my $key_name = "${class}::$_";
        if (exists $self->{$key_name}) {
            push @return, $self->{$key_name};
        } else {
            push @return, undef;
        }
    }

    if (wantarray) {
        return @return;
    } else {
        if (scalar(@args) == 1) {
            return $return[0];
        } else {
            return \@return;
        }
    }
}

[download]

Ok. So, 35 lines, not 70. It was 70ish at one point, before I managed to condense a whole bunch. You'll notice the amount of checking I do.

There's a huge amount of stuff I want to add to this, such as switching everything to using a dispatch table, so that people can define their own handlers for a given action, like retrieving or setting an attribute. One of the major criticisms I've received from people looking at this style of abstract base class is that you're stuck using the exact same functionality for every single attribute in a given class. Well, adding dispatch tables would fix that. And, obviously, the idea you mentioned of having an error handler that someone could override needs to be added as well. Combining both things would both expand and contract the actual "getting" function.

There is an exists() function which does your has_attrib() action. I didn't realize we were going to be talking about my abstract base class implementation. (Please look at 88079 for more info.)

I've never used DBI. From my understanding, a SQL statement using the string "NULL" to represent a null string. That would mean that you cannot realistically store the string N-U-L-L in a SQL DB. However, I haven't seen anyone complaining about that, either. (I could very well be wrong, as I don't work with SQL on a day-to-day basis.)

Irregardless, I still maintain that every API forces you to accept certain restrictions on your allowable data-set that aren't in the base language. In using that API, we accept those restrictions (which should be very clearly stated in the accompanying documentation.)

In reply to Re: Re (tilly) 6: To sub or not to sub, that is the question? by dragonchild
in thread To sub or not to sub, that is the question? by tachyon

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.