Extorter - Import Routines By Any Means Necessary

version 0.09

use Extorter qw(

    *utf8
    *strict
    *warnings

    feature^say
    feature^state

    Carp::croak
    Carp::confess

    Data::Dump::dump

    Digest::SHA1::sha1_hex
    Digest::SHA1::sha1_base64

    Encode::encode_utf8
    Encode::decode_utf8

    IO::All::io

    List::AllUtils::distinct
    List::AllUtils::firstval
    List::AllUtils::lastval
    List::AllUtils::pairs
    List::AllUtils::part
    List::AllUtils::uniq

    Memoize::memoize

    Scalar::Util::blessed
    Scalar::Util::refaddr
    Scalar::Util::reftype
    Scalar::Util::weaken

);

The Extorter module allows you to create import lists which extract routines from the package(s) specified. It will import routines found in the package variables @EXPORT, @EXPORT_OK and %EXPORT_TAGS, or, extract routines defined in the package which are not explicitly exported. Otherwise, as a last resort, Extorter will try to load the package, using a parameterized use statement, in the event that the package has a custom or magical importer that does not conform to the Exporter interface.

Extorter accepts a list of fully-qualified declarations. The verbosity of the declarations are meant to promote explicit, clean, and reasonable import lists. Extorter has the added bonus of extracting functionality from packages which may not have originally been designed to be imported. Declarations are handled in the order in which they're declared, which means, as far as the import and/or extraction order goes, the last routine declared will be the one available to your program and any redefine warnings will be suppressed. This is a feature not a bug. NOTE: Any declaration prefixed with an asterisk is assumed to be a fully-qualified namespace of a package and is imported directly.

Declaring version requirements and version-specific features is handled a bit differently. As mentioned in the description, any declaration prefixed with an asterisk is assumed to be a fully-qualified namespace of a package and is imported directly. This works for modules as well as pragmas like strict, warnings, utf8, and others. However, this does not work for declaring a Perl version or version-specific features. Currently, there is no single declaration which will allow you to configure Extorter to implement them but the following approach is equivalent:

use 5.18.0;

The Perl version requirement will be enforced whenever a scope issuing the use VERSION declaration is found, i.e. as long as you ensure that declaration is seen, the version requirement will be enforced for your program. So now we just need to figure out how to import features into the calling namespace using Extorter. The following approach works towards that end:

use 5.18.0;
use Extorter 'feature^:5.18';

You can use Extorter with the Exporter module, to create a sophisticated exporter which implements the Exporter interface. The following is an example:

package MyApp::Imports;

use Extorter;
use base 'Exporter';

our @EXPORT_OK = qw(
    optional_thing1
);

our @IMPORT_OK = qw(
    MyApp::Functions::necessary_thing1
    MyApp::Functions::necessary_thing2
);

sub optional_thing1 {
    # does stuff
}

sub import {
    my ($class, $target) = (shift, caller);
    $class->extort::into($target, $_) for @IMPORT_OK;
    $class->export_to_level(2, $target);
}

1;

Yet another pattern you could use to have Extorter make importing into your environment more dynamic and configurable, is by implementing a parameterizable importer which delegates to the extort::into function. The following is an example:

package MyApp::Imports;

use Extorter;

my @common = qw(
    *strict
    *warnings
    *utf8::all

    autodie^:all
    feature^:5.18

    *Moo
    Carp::carp
    Carp::croak
    Scalar::Util::reftype
    Scalar::Util::refaddr
);

sub import {
    my ($class, $target) = (shift, caller);
    my @arguments = @_;

    $class->extort::into($target, $_) for @common;
    $class->extort::into($target, $_) for @arguments;

    return;
}

1;

The example above allows the calling class to import whatever defaults your application deems appropriate while also giving the calling class the ability to demand additional features. The following is an example of a class which imports all of the common declarations defined in the MyApp::Imports module and also demands two additional imports itself:

use MyApp::Imports qw(
    MyApp::Functions::necessary_thing1
    MyApp::Functions::necessary_thing2
);

The into function declared in the extort package, used as a kind of global method invokable by any package, is designed to load and import the specified @declarations, as showcased in the synopsis, into the $target package.

$package->extort::into($target, $declaration);

e.g.

$package->extort::into($target, 'Scalar::Util::refaddr');
$package->extort::into($target, 'Scalar::Util::reftype');

$package->extort::into($target, 'List::AllUtils::firstval');
$package->extort::into($target, 'List::AllUtils::lastval');

Additionally, this function supports a 3-argument version, where the 3rd option is a list of arguments that will be automatically concatenated with the $target package to provide the necessary declarations. The following is an example:

$package->extort::into($target, $namespace, @arguments);

e.g.

my @scalar_utils = 'Scalar::Util' => qw(
    refaddr
    reftype
);

my @list_utils = 'List::AllUtils' => qw(
    firstval
    lastval
);

$package->extort::into($target, @scalar_utils);
$package->extort::into($target, @list_utils);

Al Newkirk [email protected]

This software is copyright (c) 2014 by Al Newkirk.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.