Perhaps because of this:      Can't locate object method "selectall_hashref" via package "DBI::db" at test line 5. Update: It would seem that, as boo_radley pointed out below, there is an upgrade to DBI. Jumped the gun there, I guess, if only because I've assumed that such a thing existed before only to find run-time errors. (Heh, oops) Thanks for the explanation! That puts the stuff below into a pseudo-historical context then...

I'm hoping that some day they will implement one. However, the idea was that I wanted to take an array containing (key,value) pairs inside their own ARRAY-ref and convert back.

I had cooked up something like this before:

sub selectall_hashref_byid
{
        my ($table) = shift;
        my ($select);

        if (scalar(@_) == 1)
        {
                # Single key to fetch, so no HoH

                return { @{$db->selectall_arrayref("SELECT id,? FROM $
+_", $_[0])} };
        }

        if (@_)
        {
                unshift (@_, 'id') unless (@_ && grep ("id", @_));
        }
        else
        {
                @_ = ('*');
        }

        my ($hash, $row, $query);

        $hash = {};

        $query = $db->prepare ("SELECT ".join (',', @_)." FROM $table"
+);
        $query->execute ();

        while (my $row = $query->fetchrow_hashref)
        {
                # Stoke it
                $hash->{$row->{id}} = $row;

                # Deredundantize it
                delete $hash->{$row->{id}}->{id};
        }

        return $hash;
}
[download]

The only downside is that the crazy casting that goes on in there doesn't handle errors very well, so it is really flying by the seat of your pants.