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perlboot(1)





NAME

       perlboot - Beginner's Object-Oriented Tutorial


DESCRIPTION

       If you're not familiar with objects from other languages, some of the
       other Perl object documentation may be a little daunting, such as per-
       lobj, a basic reference in using objects, and perltoot, which intro-
       duces readers to the peculiarities of Perl's object system in a tuto-
       rial way.

       So, let's take a different approach, presuming no prior object experi-
       ence. It helps if you know about subroutines (perlsub), references
       (perlref et. seq.), and packages (perlmod), so become familiar with
       those first if you haven't already.

       If we could talk to the animals...

       Let's let the animals talk for a moment:

           sub Cow::speak {
             print "a Cow goes moooo!\n";
           }
           sub Horse::speak {
             print "a Horse goes neigh!\n";
           }
           sub Sheep::speak {
             print "a Sheep goes baaaah!\n"
           }

           Cow::speak;
           Horse::speak;
           Sheep::speak;

       This results in:

           a Cow goes moooo!
           a Horse goes neigh!
           a Sheep goes baaaah!

       Nothing spectacular here.  Simple subroutines, albeit from separate
       packages, and called using the full package name.  So let's create an
       entire pasture:

           # Cow::speak, Horse::speak, Sheep::speak as before
           @pasture = qw(Cow Cow Horse Sheep Sheep);
           foreach $animal (@pasture) {
             &{$animal."::speak"};
           }

       This results in:

           a Cow goes moooo!
           a Cow goes moooo!
           a Horse goes neigh!
           a Sheep goes baaaah!
           a Sheep goes baaaah!

       Wow.  That symbolic coderef de-referencing there is pretty nasty.
       We're counting on "no strict subs" mode, certainly not recommended for
       larger programs.  And why was that necessary?  Because the name of the
       package seems to be inseparable from the name of the subroutine we want
       to invoke within that package.

       Or is it?

       Introducing the method invocation arrow

       For now, let's say that "Class->method" invokes subroutine "method" in
       package "Class".  (Here, "Class" is used in its "category" meaning, not
       its "scholastic" meaning.) That's not completely accurate, but we'll do
       this one step at a time.  Now let's use it like so:

           # Cow::speak, Horse::speak, Sheep::speak as before
           Cow->speak;
           Horse->speak;
           Sheep->speak;

       And once again, this results in:

           a Cow goes moooo!
           a Horse goes neigh!
           a Sheep goes baaaah!

       That's not fun yet.  Same number of characters, all constant, no vari-
       ables.  But yet, the parts are separable now.  Watch:

           $a = "Cow";
           $a->speak; # invokes Cow->speak

       Ahh!  Now that the package name has been parted from the subroutine
       name, we can use a variable package name.  And this time, we've got
       something that works even when "use strict refs" is enabled.

       Invoking a barnyard

       Let's take that new arrow invocation and put it back in the barnyard
       example:

           sub Cow::speak {
             print "a Cow goes moooo!\n";
           }
           sub Horse::speak {
             print "a Horse goes neigh!\n";
           }
           sub Sheep::speak {
             print "a Sheep goes baaaah!\n"
           }

           @pasture = qw(Cow Cow Horse Sheep Sheep);
           foreach $animal (@pasture) {
             $animal->speak;
           }

       There!  Now we have the animals all talking, and safely at that, with-
       out the use of symbolic coderefs.

       But look at all that common code.  Each of the "speak" routines has a
       similar structure: a "print" operator and a string that contains common
       text, except for two of the words.  It'd be nice if we could factor out
       the commonality, in case we decide later to change it all to "says"
       instead of "goes".

       And we actually have a way of doing that without much fuss, but we have
       to hear a bit more about what the method invocation arrow is actually
       doing for us.

       The extra parameter of method invocation

       The invocation of:

           Class->method(@args)

       attempts to invoke subroutine "Class::method" as:

           Class::method("Class", @args);

       (If the subroutine can't be found, "inheritance" kicks in, but we'll
       get to that later.)  This means that we get the class name as the first
       parameter (the only parameter, if no arguments are given).  So we can
       rewrite the "Sheep" speaking subroutine as:

           sub Sheep::speak {
             my $class = shift;
             print "a $class goes baaaah!\n";
           }

       And the other two animals come out similarly:

           sub Cow::speak {
             my $class = shift;
             print "a $class goes moooo!\n";
           }
           sub Horse::speak {
             my $class = shift;
             print "a $class goes neigh!\n";
           }

       In each case, $class will get the value appropriate for that subrou-
       tine.  But once again, we have a lot of similar structure.  Can we fac-
       tor that out even further?  Yes, by calling another method in the same
       class.

       Calling a second method to simplify things

       Let's call out from "speak" to a helper method called "sound".  This
       method provides the constant text for the sound itself.

           { package Cow;
             sub sound { "moooo" }
             sub speak {
               my $class = shift;
               print "a $class goes ", $class->sound, "!\n"
             }
           }

       Now, when we call "Cow->speak", we get a $class of "Cow" in "speak".
       This in turn selects the "Cow->sound" method, which returns "moooo".
       But how different would this be for the "Horse"?

           { package Horse;
             sub sound { "neigh" }
             sub speak {
               my $class = shift;
               print "a $class goes ", $class->sound, "!\n"
             }
           }

       Only the name of the package and the specific sound change.  So can we
       somehow share the definition for "speak" between the Cow and the Horse?
       Yes, with inheritance!

       Inheriting the windpipes

       We'll define a common subroutine package called "Animal", with the def-
       inition for "speak":

           { package Animal;
             sub speak {
               my $class = shift;
               print "a $class goes ", $class->sound, "!\n"
             }
           }

       Then, for each animal, we say it "inherits" from "Animal", along with
       the animal-specific sound:

           { package Cow;
             @ISA = qw(Animal);
             sub sound { "moooo" }
           }

       Note the added @ISA array.  We'll get to that in a minute.

       But what happens when we invoke "Cow->speak" now?

       First, Perl constructs the argument list.  In this case, it's just
       "Cow".  Then Perl looks for "Cow::speak".  But that's not there, so
       Perl checks for the inheritance array @Cow::ISA.  It's there, and con-
       tains the single name "Animal".

       Perl next checks for "speak" inside "Animal" instead, as in "Ani-
       mal::speak".  And that's found, so Perl invokes that subroutine with
       the already frozen argument list.

       Inside the "Animal::speak" subroutine, $class becomes "Cow" (the first
       argument).  So when we get to the step of invoking "$class->sound",
       it'll be looking for "Cow->sound", which gets it on the first try with-
       out looking at @ISA.  Success!

       A few notes about @ISA

       This magical @ISA variable (pronounced "is a" not "ice-uh"), has
       declared that "Cow" "is a" "Animal".  Note that it's an array, not a
       simple single value, because on rare occasions, it makes sense to have
       more than one parent class searched for the missing methods.

       If "Animal" also had an @ISA, then we'd check there too.  The search is
       recursive, depth-first, left-to-right in each @ISA.  Typically, each
       @ISA has only one element (multiple elements means multiple inheritance
       and multiple headaches), so we get a nice tree of inheritance.

       When we turn on "use strict", we'll get complaints on @ISA, since it's
       not a variable containing an explicit package name, nor is it a lexical
       ("my") variable.  We can't make it a lexical variable though (it has to
       belong to the package to be found by the inheritance mechanism), so
       there's a couple of straightforward ways to handle that.

       The easiest is to just spell the package name out:

           @Cow::ISA = qw(Animal);

       Or allow it as an implicitly named package variable:

           package Cow;
           use vars qw(@ISA);
           @ISA = qw(Animal);

       If you're bringing in the class from outside, via an object-oriented
       module, you change:

           package Cow;
           use Animal;
           use vars qw(@ISA);
           @ISA = qw(Animal);

       into just:

           package Cow;
           use base qw(Animal);

       And that's pretty darn compact.

       Overriding the methods

       Let's add a mouse, which can barely be heard:

           # Animal package from before
           { package Mouse;
             @ISA = qw(Animal);
             sub sound { "squeak" }
             sub speak {
               my $class = shift;
               print "a $class goes ", $class->sound, "!\n";
               print "[but you can barely hear it!]\n";
             }
           }

           Mouse->speak;

       which results in:

           a Mouse goes squeak!
           [but you can barely hear it!]

       Here, "Mouse" has its own speaking routine, so "Mouse->speak" doesn't
       immediately invoke "Animal->speak".  This is known as "overriding".  In
       fact, we didn't even need to say that a "Mouse" was an "Animal" at all,
       since all of the methods needed for "speak" are completely defined with
       "Mouse".

       But we've now duplicated some of the code from "Animal->speak", and
       this can once again be a maintenance headache.  So, can we avoid that?
       Can we say somehow that a "Mouse" does everything any other "Animal"
       does, but add in the extra comment?  Sure!

       First, we can invoke the "Animal::speak" method directly:

           # Animal package from before
           { package Mouse;
             @ISA = qw(Animal);
             sub sound { "squeak" }
             sub speak {
               my $class = shift;
               Animal::speak($class);
               print "[but you can barely hear it!]\n";
             }
           }

       Note that we have to include the $class parameter (almost surely the
       value of "Mouse") as the first parameter to "Animal::speak", since
       we've stopped using the method arrow.  Why did we stop?  Well, if we
       invoke "Animal->speak" there, the first parameter to the method will be
       "Animal" not "Mouse", and when time comes for it to call for the
       "sound", it won't have the right class to come back to this package.

       Invoking "Animal::speak" directly is a mess, however.  What if "Ani-
       mal::speak" didn't exist before, and was being inherited from a class
       mentioned in @Animal::ISA?  Because we are no longer using the method
       arrow, we get one and only one chance to hit the right subroutine.

       Also note that the "Animal" classname is now hardwired into the subrou-
       tine selection.  This is a mess if someone maintains the code, changing
       @ISA for <Mouse> and didn't notice "Animal" there in "speak".  So, this
       is probably not the right way to go.

       Starting the search from a different place

       A better solution is to tell Perl to search from a higher place in the
       inheritance chain:

           # same Animal as before
           { package Mouse;
             # same @ISA, &sound as before
             sub speak {
               my $class = shift;
               $class->Animal::speak;
               print "[but you can barely hear it!]\n";
             }
           }

       Ahh.  This works.  Using this syntax, we start with "Animal" to find
       "speak", and use all of "Animal"'s inheritance chain if not found imme-
       diately.  And yet the first parameter will be $class, so the found
       "speak" method will get "Mouse" as its first entry, and eventually work
       its way back to "Mouse::sound" for the details.

       But this isn't the best solution.  We still have to keep the @ISA and
       the initial search package coordinated.  Worse, if "Mouse" had multiple
       entries in @ISA, we wouldn't necessarily know which one had actually
       defined "speak".  So, is there an even better way?

       The SUPER way of doing things

       By changing the "Animal" class to the "SUPER" class in that invocation,
       we get a search of all of our super classes (classes listed in @ISA)
       automatically:

           # same Animal as before
           { package Mouse;
             # same @ISA, &sound as before
             sub speak {
               my $class = shift;
               $class->SUPER::speak;
               print "[but you can barely hear it!]\n";
             }
           }

       So, "SUPER::speak" means look in the current package's @ISA for
       "speak", invoking the first one found. Note that it does not look in
       the @ISA of $class.

       Where we're at so far...

       So far, we've seen the method arrow syntax:

         Class->method(@args);

       or the equivalent:

         $a = "Class";
         $a->method(@args);

       which constructs an argument list of:

         ("Class", @args)

       and attempts to invoke

         Class::method("Class", @Args);

       However, if "Class::method" is not found, then @Class::ISA is examined
       (recursively) to locate a package that does indeed contain "method",
       and that subroutine is invoked instead.

       Using this simple syntax, we have class methods, (multiple) inheri-
       tance, overriding, and extending.  Using just what we've seen so far,
       we've been able to factor out common code, and provide a nice way to
       reuse implementations with variations.  This is at the core of what
       objects provide, but objects also provide instance data, which we
       haven't even begun to cover.

       A horse is a horse, of course of course -- or is it?

       Let's start with the code for the "Animal" class and the "Horse" class:

         { package Animal;
           sub speak {
             my $class = shift;
             print "a $class goes ", $class->sound, "!\n"
           }
         }
         { package Horse;
           @ISA = qw(Animal);
           sub sound { "neigh" }
         }

       This lets us invoke "Horse->speak" to ripple upward to "Animal::speak",
       calling back to "Horse::sound" to get the specific sound, and the out-
       put of:

         a Horse goes neigh!

       But all of our Horse objects would have to be absolutely identical.  If
       I add a subroutine, all horses automatically share it.  That's great
       for making horses the same, but how do we capture the distinctions
       about an individual horse?  For example, suppose I want to give my
       first horse a name.  There's got to be a way to keep its name separate
       from the other horses.

       We can do that by drawing a new distinction, called an "instance".  An
       "instance" is generally created by a class.  In Perl, any reference can
       be an instance, so let's start with the simplest reference that can
       hold a horse's name: a scalar reference.

         my $name = "Mr. Ed";
         my $talking = \$name;

       So now $talking is a reference to what will be the instance-specific
       data (the name).  The final step in turning this into a real instance
       is with a special operator called "bless":

         bless $talking, Horse;

       This operator stores information about the package named "Horse" into
       the thing pointed at by the reference.  At this point, we say $talking
       is an instance of "Horse".  That is, it's a specific horse.  The refer-
       ence is otherwise unchanged, and can still be used with traditional
       dereferencing operators.

       Invoking an instance method

       The method arrow can be used on instances, as well as names of packages
       (classes).  So, let's get the sound that $talking makes:

         my $noise = $talking->sound;

       To invoke "sound", Perl first notes that $talking is a blessed refer-
       ence (and thus an instance).  It then constructs an argument list, in
       this case from just "($talking)".  (Later we'll see that arguments will
       take their place following the instance variable, just like with
       classes.)

       Now for the fun part: Perl takes the class in which the instance was
       blessed, in this case "Horse", and uses that to locate the subroutine
       to invoke the method.  In this case, "Horse::sound" is found directly
       (without using inheritance), yielding the final subroutine invocation:

         Horse::sound($talking)

       Note that the first parameter here is still the instance, not the name
       of the class as before.  We'll get "neigh" as the return value, and
       that'll end up as the $noise variable above.

       If Horse::sound had not been found, we'd be wandering up the
       @Horse::ISA list to try to find the method in one of the superclasses,
       just as for a class method.  The only difference between a class method
       and an instance method is whether the first parameter is an instance (a
       blessed reference) or a class name (a string).

       Accessing the instance data

       Because we get the instance as the first parameter, we can now access
       the instance-specific data.  In this case, let's add a way to get at
       the name:

         { package Horse;
           @ISA = qw(Animal);
           sub sound { "neigh" }
           sub name {
             my $self = shift;
             $$self;
           }
         }

       Now we call for the name:

         print $talking->name, " says ", $talking->sound, "\n";

       Inside "Horse::name", the @_ array contains just $talking, which the
       "shift" stores into $self.  (It's traditional to shift the first param-
       eter off into a variable named $self for instance methods, so stay with
       that unless you have strong reasons otherwise.)  Then, $self gets de-
       referenced as a scalar ref, yielding "Mr. Ed", and we're done with
       that.  The result is:

         Mr. Ed says neigh.

       How to build a horse

       Of course, if we constructed all of our horses by hand, we'd most
       likely make mistakes from time to time.  We're also violating one of
       the properties of object-oriented programming, in that the "inside
       guts" of a Horse are visible.  That's good if you're a veterinarian,
       but not if you just like to own horses.  So, let's let the Horse class
       build a new horse:

         { package Horse;
           @ISA = qw(Animal);
           sub sound { "neigh" }
           sub name {
             my $self = shift;
             $$self;
           }
           sub named {
             my $class = shift;
             my $name = shift;
             bless \$name, $class;
           }
         }

       Now with the new "named" method, we can build a horse:

         my $talking = Horse->named("Mr. Ed");

       Notice we're back to a class method, so the two arguments to
       "Horse::named" are "Horse" and "Mr. Ed".  The "bless" operator not only
       blesses $name, it also returns the reference to $name, so that's fine
       as a return value.  And that's how to build a horse.

       We've called the constructor "named" here, so that it quickly denotes
       the constructor's argument as the name for this particular "Horse".
       You can use different constructors with different names for different
       ways of "giving birth" to the object (like maybe recording its pedigree
       or date of birth).  However, you'll find that most people coming to
       Perl from more limited languages use a single constructor named "new",
       with various ways of interpreting the arguments to "new".  Either style
       is fine, as long as you document your particular way of giving birth to
       an object.  (And you were going to do that, right?)

       Inheriting the constructor

       But was there anything specific to "Horse" in that method?  No.  There-
       fore, it's also the same recipe for building anything else that inher-
       ited from "Animal", so let's put it there:

         { package Animal;
           sub speak {
             my $class = shift;
             print "a $class goes ", $class->sound, "!\n"
           }
           sub name {
             my $self = shift;
             $$self;
           }
           sub named {
             my $class = shift;
             my $name = shift;
             bless \$name, $class;
           }
         }
         { package Horse;
           @ISA = qw(Animal);
           sub sound { "neigh" }
         }

       Ahh, but what happens if we invoke "speak" on an instance?

         my $talking = Horse->named("Mr. Ed");
         $talking->speak;

       We get a debugging value:

         a Horse=SCALAR(0xaca42ac) goes neigh!

       Why?  Because the "Animal::speak" routine is expecting a classname as
       its first parameter, not an instance.  When the instance is passed in,
       we'll end up using a blessed scalar reference as a string, and that
       shows up as we saw it just now.

       Making a method work with either classes or instances

       All we need is for a method to detect if it is being called on a class
       or called on an instance.  The most straightforward way is with the
       "ref" operator.  This returns a string (the classname) when used on a
       blessed reference, and "undef" when used on a string (like a class-
       name).  Let's modify the "name" method first to notice the change:

         sub name {
           my $either = shift;
           ref $either
             ? $$either # it's an instance, return name
             : "an unnamed $either"; # it's a class, return generic
         }

       Here, the "?:" operator comes in handy to select either the dereference
       or a derived string.  Now we can use this with either an instance or a
       class.  Note that I've changed the first parameter holder to $either to
       show that this is intended:

         my $talking = Horse->named("Mr. Ed");
         print Horse->name, "\n"; # prints "an unnamed Horse\n"
         print $talking->name, "\n"; # prints "Mr Ed.\n"

       and now we'll fix "speak" to use this:

         sub speak {
           my $either = shift;
           print $either->name, " goes ", $either->sound, "\n";
         }

       And since "sound" already worked with either a class or an instance,
       we're done!

       Adding parameters to a method

       Let's train our animals to eat:

         { package Animal;
           sub named {
             my $class = shift;
             my $name = shift;
             bless \$name, $class;
           }
           sub name {
             my $either = shift;
             ref $either
               ? $$either # it's an instance, return name
               : "an unnamed $either"; # it's a class, return generic
           }
           sub speak {
             my $either = shift;
             print $either->name, " goes ", $either->sound, "\n";
           }
           sub eat {
             my $either = shift;
             my $food = shift;
             print $either->name, " eats $food.\n";
           }
         }
         { package Horse;
           @ISA = qw(Animal);
           sub sound { "neigh" }
         }
         { package Sheep;
           @ISA = qw(Animal);
           sub sound { "baaaah" }
         }

       And now try it out:

         my $talking = Horse->named("Mr. Ed");
         $talking->eat("hay");
         Sheep->eat("grass");

       which prints:

         Mr. Ed eats hay.
         an unnamed Sheep eats grass.

       An instance method with parameters gets invoked with the instance, and
       then the list of parameters.  So that first invocation is like:

         Animal::eat($talking, "hay");

       More interesting instances

       What if an instance needs more data?  Most interesting instances are
       made of many items, each of which can in turn be a reference or even
       another object.  The easiest way to store these is often in a hash.
       The keys of the hash serve as the names of parts of the object (often
       called "instance variables" or "member variables"), and the correspond-
       ing values are, well, the values.

       But how do we turn the horse into a hash?  Recall that an object was
       any blessed reference.  We can just as easily make it a blessed hash
       reference as a blessed scalar reference, as long as everything that
       looks at the reference is changed accordingly.

       Let's make a sheep that has a name and a color:

         my $bad = bless { Name => "Evil", Color => "black" }, Sheep;

       so "$bad->{Name}" has "Evil", and "$bad->{Color}" has "black".  But we
       want to make "$bad->name" access the name, and that's now messed up
       because it's expecting a scalar reference.  Not to worry, because
       that's pretty easy to fix up:

         ## in Animal
         sub name {
           my $either = shift;
           ref $either ?
             $either->{Name} :
             "an unnamed $either";
         }

       And of course "named" still builds a scalar sheep, so let's fix that as
       well:

         ## in Animal
         sub named {
           my $class = shift;
           my $name = shift;
           my $self = { Name => $name, Color => $class->default_color };
           bless $self, $class;
         }

       What's this "default_color"?  Well, if "named" has only the name, we
       still need to set a color, so we'll have a class-specific initial
       color.  For a sheep, we might define it as white:

         ## in Sheep
         sub default_color { "white" }

       And then to keep from having to define one for each additional class,
       we'll define a "backstop" method that serves as the "default default",
       directly in "Animal":

         ## in Animal
         sub default_color { "brown" }

       Now, because "name" and "named" were the only methods that referenced
       the "structure" of the object, the rest of the methods can remain the
       same, so "speak" still works as before.

       A horse of a different color

       But having all our horses be brown would be boring.  So let's add a
       method or two to get and set the color.

         ## in Animal
         sub color {
           $_[0]->{Color}
         }
         sub set_color {
           $_[0]->{Color} = $_[1];
         }

       Note the alternate way of accessing the arguments: $_[0] is used
       in-place, rather than with a "shift".  (This saves us a bit of time for
       something that may be invoked frequently.)  And now we can fix that
       color for Mr. Ed:

         my $talking = Horse->named("Mr. Ed");
         $talking->set_color("black-and-white");
         print $talking->name, " is colored ", $talking->color, "\n";

       which results in:

         Mr. Ed is colored black-and-white

       Summary

       So, now we have class methods, constructors, instance methods, instance
       data, and even accessors.  But that's still just the beginning of what
       Perl has to offer.  We haven't even begun to talk about accessors that
       double as getters and setters, destructors, indirect object notation,
       subclasses that add instance data, per-class data, overloading, "isa"
       and "can" tests, "UNIVERSAL" class, and so on.  That's for the rest of
       the Perl documentation to cover.  Hopefully, this gets you started,
       though.


SEE ALSO

       For more information, see perlobj (for all the gritty details about
       Perl objects, now that you've seen the basics), perltoot (the tutorial
       for those who already know objects), perltooc (dealing with class
       data), perlbot (for some more tricks), and books such as Damian Con-
       way's excellent Object Oriented Perl.

       Some modules which might prove interesting are Class::Accessor,
       Class::Class, Class::Contract, Class::Data::Inheritable, Class::Method-
       Maker and Tie::SecureHash


COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (c) 1999, 2000 by Randal L. Schwartz and Stonehenge Consult-
       ing Services, Inc.  Permission is hereby granted to distribute this
       document intact with the Perl distribution, and in accordance with the
       licenses of the Perl distribution; derived documents must include this
       copyright notice intact.

       Portions of this text have been derived from Perl Training materials
       originally appearing in the Packages, References, Objects, and Modules
       course taught by instructors for Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc.
       and used with permission.

       Portions of this text have been derived from materials originally
       appearing in Linux Magazine and used with permission.

perl v5.8.8                       2006-06-14                       PERLBOOT(1)

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