Plugin::Installer 0.04

Plugin::Installers goal is to provide a simple, flexable interface for developing plugin languages.

SYNOPSIS

package Myplugin;

use base qw( Plugin::Installer Plugin::Language::Foobar );

...

my $plugin = Myplugin->construct;

# frobnicate is passed first to Plugin::Installer
# via AUTOLOAD, then to P::L::Foobars compile
# method. if what comes back from the compiler is
# a referent it is intalled in the P::L::F namespace
# and if it is a code referent it is dispatched.

$plugin->frobnicate;

The goal of this module is to provide a simple, flexable interface for developing plugin languages. Any language that can store its object data as a hash and implement a "compile" method that takes the method name as an argument can use this class. The Plugin framework gives runtime compile, install, and dispatch of user-defined code. The code doesnt have to be Perl, just something that the object handling it can compile.

The installer is language-agnostic: in fact it has no idea what the object does with the name passed to its compioer. All it does is (by default) install a returned reference and dispatch coderefs. This is intended as a convienence class that standardizes the top half of any plugin language.

Note that any referent returned by the compiler is installed. Handing back a hashref can deposit a hash into the callers namespace. This allows for plugins to handle command line switches (via GetoptFoo and a hashref) or manipulate queues (by handing back an [udpated] arrayref.

By default coderefs are dispatched via goto, which allows the obvious use of compiling the plugin to an anonymous sub for later use. This make the plugins something of a trampoline object, with the exception that the "trampolines" are the class methods rather than the object itself.