NAME

Template::Base - base class module implementing common functionality

SYNOPSIS

    package Template::MyModule;
    use base qw( Template::Base );

    sub _init {
        my ($self, $config) = @_;
        $self->{ doodah } = $config->{ doodah }
            || return $self->error("No 'doodah' specified");
        return $self;
    }

DESCRIPTION

Base class module which implements a constructor and error reporting functionality for various Template Toolkit modules.

PUBLIC METHODS

new(\%config)

Constructor method which accepts a reference to a hash array or a list of name => value parameters which are folded into a hash. The _init() method is then called, passing the configuration hash and should return true/false to indicate success or failure. A new object reference is returned, or undef on error. Any error message raised can be examined via the error() class method or directly via the package variable ERROR in the derived class.

    my $module = Template::MyModule->new({ ... })
        || die Template::MyModule->error(), "\n";

    my $module = Template::MyModule->new({ ... })
        || die "constructor error: $Template::MyModule::ERROR\n";

error($msg)

May be called as an object method to get/set the internal _ERROR member or as a class method to get/set the $ERROR variable in the derived class's package.

    my $module = Template::MyModule->new({ ... })
        || die Template::MyModule->error(), "\n";

    $module->do_something() 
        || die $module->error(), "\n";

When called with parameters (multiple params are concatenated), this method will set the relevant variable and return undef. This is most often used within object methods to report errors to the caller.

    package Template::MyModule;

    ...

    sub foobar {
        my $self = shift;
        ...
        return $self->error('some kind of error...')
            if $some_condition;
        ...
    }

AUTHOR

Andy Wardley <abw@kfs.org>

    http://www.template-toolkit.org/
    http://www.kfs.org/~abw/

REVISION

$Revision: 1.1 $

COPYRIGHT

    Copyright (C) 1996-2000 Andy Wardley.  All Rights Reserved.
    Copyright (C) 1998-2000 Canon Research Centre Europe Ltd.

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

SEE ALSO

Template