Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

what I'm doing now is 

sub foo {
    my $self = shift;
    $self->query->param('id');
    if (!$id) {return $self->get_id();}
#get_id returns a web page that prompts the user for an id
#this is all running in mod_perl, with CGI::Application
    my $obj = $self->get_obj($id);
    #else do foo kinda stuff with $obj
}

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But since I have many foo like sub's I'd like to do something like...

sub foo {
    my $self = shift;
    my $obj = $self->init;
    #do foo kinda stuff with $obj
}
sub init {
    my $self = shift;
    $self->query->param('id');
    if (!$id) {return $self->get_id();}
    my $obj = $self->get_obj($id);
    return($obj);
}

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Which wont work because init might return an object to foo (as $obj) or HTML to my C::A (as the output of get_id). I could check the return value of init and act accordingly but I'd rather not. So the question is how do I get the return $self->get_id() in init to return to C::A and not just bounce back to foo?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: controlling what is returned, where.
by Joost (Canon) on Jul 19, 2005 at 18:13 UTC
    Depending on the rest of the code, you might be able to stuff the 
     my $id = $self->query->param('id');
 $self->param("object") = $self->get_obj($id) if $id;

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    in the setup() method.

    Then you "only" need to do 

    sub foo {
   my $self = shift;
   my $object = $self->param("object") or return $self->get_id();
   # ... the rest 

}

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    If you *always* need that object, you might do 
    sub cgiapp_prerun {
  # ...
  my $id = $self->query->param('id');
  if (!$id) {
     return $self->prerun_mode('get_id');
  }
  $self->param("object") = $self->get_obj($id);
# ...
}

    [download]

    which will automatically run the get_id mode unless an id is specified, so all other modes can be certain the object is available in $self->param("object").

    "What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"
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