I would like to release the following module in its own distribution.
I believe it to be generic (non-proprietary), tightly focused, and
widely usable. Please give me any comments you can.
My authorname is DUNCAND.
The module is already on CPAN under the temporary name of
"CGI::HashOfArrays" and has complete POD. The module has a DLSI of
"bdpO".
I particularly want to know, since that is the business of the
modules list, good recommendations for what to name the module. It
is a data structure that can be useful in any program type, but it
has some features especially useful to CGI programs. Other names I
thought of besides "CGI::HashOfArrays" were: "Data::HashOfArrays",
"Hash::OfArrays", "Hash::MultiValued", "Hash::ArrayValues". If any
of those look good or you have suggestions...
Below I quote the portion of the POD from Name, Dependencies,
Synopsis, Description. Left out is the syntax and method list.
Please tell me if this is too much information for this email.
Thanks in advance,
// Darren Duncan
---------------------------------
NAME
CGI::HashOfArrays - Perl module that implements a hash whose keys can
have either single or multiple values, and which can process
url-encoded data.
DEPENDENCIES
Perl Version
5.004
Standard Modules
I<none>
Nonstandard Modules
I<none>
SYNOPSIS
use CGI::HashOfArrays 1.02;
my $case_insensitive = 1;
my $complementry_set = 1;
my $params = CGI::HashOfArrays->new( $case_insensitive,
$ENV{'HTTP_COOKIE'} || $ENV{'COOKIE'}, '; ', '&' );
my $query_string = '';
if( $ENV{'REQUEST_METHOD'} =~ /^(GET|HEAD)$/ ) {
$query_string = $ENV{'QUERY_STRING'};
} else {
read( STDIN, $query_string, $ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'} );
}
$params->from_url_encoded_string( $query_string );
$params->trim_bounding_whitespace(); # clean up user input
foreach my $key ($params->keys()) {
my @values = $params->fetch( $key );
print "Field '$key' contains: '".join( "','", @values )."'\n";
}
my @record_list = ();
open( KEVOEL, "+<guestbook.txt" ) or die "can't open file: $!\n";
flock( KEVOEL, 2 );
seek( KEVOEL, 0, 2 );
$params->to_file( \*KEVOEL );
seek( KEVOEL, 0, 0 );
until( eof( KEVOEL ) ) {
push( @record_list, CGI::HashOfArrays->new(
$case_insensitive, \*KEVOEL ) );
}
flock( KEVOEL, 8 );
close( KEVOEL );
foreach my $record (@record_list) {
print "\nSubmitted by:".$record->fetch_value( 'name' )."\n";
print "\nTracking cookie:".$record->fetch_value(
'track' )."\n";
my %Qs_and_As = $record->fetch_all( ['name',
'track'], $complementary_set );
foreach my $key (keys %Qs_and_As) {
my @values = @{$Qs_and_As{$key}};
print "Question: '$key'\n";
print "Answers: '".join( "','", @values )."'\n";
}
}
DESCRIPTION
This Perl 5 object class implements a simple data structure that is
similar to a hash except that each key can have several values
instead of just one. There are many places that such a structure is
useful, such as database records whose fields may be multi-valued, or
when parsing results of an html form that contains several fields
with the same name. This class can export a wide variety of
key/value subsets of its data when only some keys are needed. In
addition, this class can parse and create url-encoded strings, such
as with http query or cookie strings, or for encoding binary
information in a text file.
While you could do tasks similar to this class by making your own
hash with array refs for values, you will need to repeat some
messy-looking code everywhere you need to use that data, creating a
lot of redundant access or parsing code and increasing the risk of
introducing errors.
