[dbi-dev] Proposed fetchall_hashref and selectall_hashref extensions

[Daniel S. Lewart]

DBI Developers,

> Speak before you patch

I would like to extend DBI's fetchall_hashref and selectall_hashref
methods to handle multiple keys.  Being new to DBI, I miss Michael Peppler's
Sybperl::Simple's useful HashOfHashOfHash method.  The following are
my proposed new syntaxes:

  $sth->fetchall_hashref(@key_field);
  $dbh->selectall_hashref($statement, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [, \%attr[, @bind_values]]);

For example, let FOO and BAR form a composite key.  Then:
        $sth = $dbh->prepare("SELECT FOO, BAR, NAME, BAZ FROM TABLE");
        $sth->execute;
        $hash_ref = $sth->fetchall_hashref(qw(FOO BAR));
        print "NAME for FOO=4 and BAR=2 is $hash_ref->{4}{2}{NAME}\n";
or
        $sql = "SELECT FOO, BAR, NAME, BAZ FROM TABLE";
        $hash_ref = $sth->selectall_hashref($sql, [qw(FOO BAR)]);
        print "BAZ for FOO=4 and BAR=2 is $hash_ref->{4}{2}{BAZ}\n";

My current patch can handle @key_field of 1 .. 4 elements.

I would appreciate any comments.

Cheers,
Daniel Lewart
[EMAIL PROTECTED]