NAME
Acme::Thing - Represent anything as Perl (CPAN) module
SPECIFICATION VERSION
0.1
VERSION
This document describes version 0.1.0 of Acme::Thing (from Perl
distribution Acme-Thing), released on 2023-03-19.
DESCRIPTION
"Acme::Thing" is a convention for representing anything as a Perl
module/distribution. Custom prerequisite phase/relationship in
distribution metadata can be used to relate the thing to other things.
The "get_thing_attrs" class method can be used to rerieve attributes of
the thing. The module's POD can be used to document the thing.
Naming convention
The module should be named "Acme::Thing::$SUBNAMESPACE::$NAME" where
$SUBNAMESPACE is one or more levels of subnamespaces and $NAME is the
name/title of the thing. Both $SUBNAMESPACE and $TITLE should use
"CamelCase" notation and should be in singular noun form whenever
possible. Underscore is used to separate name parts. For example, for a
TV series the $NAME could be the title of the series using the IMDB
convention:
Acme::Thing::TVSeries::BreakingBad_2008_2013
Acme::Thing::TvSeries::CornerGas_2004_2009
and for a book title the $NAME could be the title (without the subtitle)
of the book, preferrably with the publication year. Subsequent editions
of a book should be named using the "nE" notation. Examples:
Acme::Thing::Book::ProgrammingPerl_1991
Acme::Thing::Book::ProgrammingPerl_4E_2012
Relationship with other things
TBD.
Attributes
The module must provide a class method called "get_thing_attrs" (by
itself or by inheritance, doesn't matter), which must return a DefHash
containng attributes of the thing. The required attributes are:
* title
Title of the thing, in a format common for that thing.
For example, for a book title:
{
title => "Programming Perl",
isbn => ...,
year => 1991,
summary => ...,
description => ...,
...
}
For a TV series:
{
title => "Breaking Bad",
year_first => 2008,
year_last => 2013,
imdb_title_id => ...,
summary => ...,
description => ...,
...
}
Why?
Now comes the harder question: why use Perl module/distribution to
represent seomthing at all, other than an actual Perl module? Releasing
as Perl distribution and module leverages a few things: 1) the CPAN
distribution metadata (see CPAN::Meta) where a distribution can depend
(relate) to other modules (other things); 2) the CPAN infrastructure
where revisions of the thing can be released, distributed, tested, and
installed to target systems; 3) the OO feature of the Perl language
where a user can interact with a thing (e.g. download a TV series poster
or trailer, etc).
Of course, none of the above suggest that a generic representation like
"Acme::Thing" is better than a more specific one, e.g.
"WebService::ISBNDB" for books.
HOMEPAGE
Please visit the project's homepage at
<https://metacpan.org/release/Acme-Thing>.
SOURCE
Source repository is at <https://github.com/perlancar/perl-Acme-Thing>.
SEE ALSO
DefHash
AUTHOR
perlancar <perlancar@cpan.org>
CONTRIBUTING
To contribute, you can send patches by email/via RT, or send pull
requests on GitHub.
Most of the time, you don't need to build the distribution yourself. You
can simply modify the code, then test via:
% prove -l
If you want to build the distribution (e.g. to try to install it locally
on your system), you can install Dist::Zilla,
Dist::Zilla::PluginBundle::Author::PERLANCAR,
Pod::Weaver::PluginBundle::Author::PERLANCAR, and sometimes one or two
other Dist::Zilla- and/or Pod::Weaver plugins. Any additional steps
required beyond that are considered a bug and can be reported to me.
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
This software is copyright (c) 2023 by perlancar <perlancar@cpan.org>.
This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.
BUGS
Please report any bugs or feature requests on the bugtracker website
<https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=Acme-Thing>
When submitting a bug or request, please include a test-file or a patch
to an existing test-file that illustrates the bug or desired feature.