DESCRIPTION

This is the base class for all SVN::Web actions. It provides a constructor and some useful utility methods that actions may find useful. It also contains documentation for anyone interested in writing new SVN::Web actions.

OVERVIEW

SVN::Web actions are Perl modules loaded by SVN::Web. They are expected to retrieve some information from the Subversion repository, and return that information ready for the user's browser, optionally via formatting by a Template::Toolkit template.

Action names are listed in the SVN::Web configuration file, config.yaml, in the "actions:" clause. Each entry specifies the class that implements the action, options that are set globally for that action, and metadata that describes when and how the action should appear in the action menu.

  actions:
    ...
    new_action:
      class: Class::That::Implements::Action
      action_menu:            # Optional
        show:
          - file              # Zero or more of this, ...
          - directory         # ... this ...
          - revision          # ... or this.
          - global            # Or possibly just this one
        link_text: (text)     # Mandatory
        head_only: 1          # Optional
        icon: /a/path         # Optional
      opts:
        option1: value1
        option2: value2
    ...

Each action is a class that must implement a "run()" method.

SUBCLASSING

Actions should derive from SVN::Web::action. This gives them a default constructor that generates a hash based object.

  use base 'SVN::Web::action';

METHODS

run()

The "run" method is where the action carries out its work.

Parameters

The method is passed a single parameter, the standard $self hash ref. This contains numerous useful keys.

$self->{opts}

The options for this action from config.yaml. Using the example from the OVERVIEW, this would lead to:

  $self->{opts} = { 'option1' => 'value1',
                    'option2' => 'value2',
                  };

$self->{cgi}

An instance of a CGI compatible object corresponding to the current request. This is normally an object from either the CGI or CGI::Fast modules, although it is possible to specify another class with the "cgi_class" directive in config.yaml. Since we now use Plack, this is a Plack::Request object.

You can use this object to retrieve the values of any parameters passed to your action.

For example, if your action takes a "rev" parameter, indicating the repository revision to work on;

  my $rev = $self->{cgi}->param('rev');

$self->{path}

The path in the repository that was passed to the action.

$self->{navpaths}

A reference to an array of path components, one for each directory (and possible final file) in $self->{path}. Equivalent to "[ split('/', $self->{path}) ]"

$self->{config}

The config hash, as read by YAML from config.yaml. Directives from the config file are second level hash keys. For example, the "actions" configuration directive contains a list of valid actions.

  my @valid_actions = @{ $self->{config}->{actions} };

$self->{reposname}

The symbolic name of the repository being accessed.

$self->{repos}

A instance of the SVN::Repos class, corresponding to the repository being accessed. This repository has already been opened.

For example, to find the youngest (i.e., most recent) revision of the repository;

  my $yr = $self->{repos}->fs()->youngest_rev();

$self->{action}

The action that has been requested. It's possible for multiple action names to be mapped to a single class in the config file, and this lets you differentiate between them.

$self->{script}

The URL for the currently running script.

Return value

The return value from "run()" determines how the data from the action is displayed.

Using a template

If "run()" wants a template to be displayed containing formatted data from the method then the hash ref should contain two keys.

template

This is the name of the template to return. By convention the template and the action share the same name.

data

This is a hash ref. The hash keys become variables of the same name in the template.

The character set and MIME type can also be specified, in the "charset" and "mimetype" keys. If these values are not specified then they default to "UTF-8" and "text/html" respectively.

E.g., for an action named "my_action", using a template called "my_action" that looks like this:

  <p>The youngest interesting revision of [% file %] is [% rev %].</p>

then this code would be appropriate.

  # $rev and $file set earlier in the method
  return { template => 'my_action',
           data     => { rev  => $rev,
                         file => $file,
                       },
         };

Returning data with optional charset and MIME type

If the action does not want to use a template and just wants to return data, but retain control of the character set and MIME type, "run()" should return a hash ref. This should contain a key called "body", the value of which will be sent directly to the browser.

The character set and MIME type can also be specified, in the "charset" and "mimetype" keys. If these values are not specified then they default to "UTF-8" and "text/html" respectively.

E.g., for an action that generates a PNG image from data in the repository (perhaps using SVN::Churn);

  # $png contains the PNG image, created earlier in the method
  return { mimetype => 'image/png',
           body     => $png
         };

Returning HTML with default charset and MIME type

If the action just wants to return HTML in UTF-8, it can return a single scalar that contains the HTML to be sent to the browser.

  return "<p>hello, world</p>";

UTILITY METHODS

The following methods are intended to share common code among actions.

recent_interesting_rev($path, $rev)

Given a repository path, and a revision number, returns the most recent interesting revision for the path that is the same as, or older (i.e., smaller) than the revision number.

If called in an array context it returns all the arguments normally passed to a log message receiver.

get_revs()

Returns a list of 4 items. In order, they are:

Explicit rev

The value of any CGI "rev" parameter passed to the action ($exp_rev).

Youngest rev

The repository's youngest revision ($yng_rev) for the current path. This is not necessarily the same as the repositories youngest revision.

Actual rev

The actual revision ($act_rev) that will be acted on. This is the explicit rev, if it's defined, otherwise it's the youngest rev.

Head

A boolean value indicating whether or not we can be considered to be at the HEAD of the repository ($at_head).

format_svn_timestamp()

Given a cstring that represents a Subversion time, format the time using POSIX::strftime() and the current settings of the "timedate_format" and "timezone" configuration directives.

CACHING

If the output from the action can usefully be cached then consider implementing a "cache_key" method.

This method receives the same parameters as the "run()" method, and must use those parameters to generate a unique key for the content generated by the "run()" method.

For example, consider the standard "Revision" action. This action only depends on a single parameter --- the repository revision number. So that makes a good cache key.

  sub cache_key {
      my $self = shift;
      return $self->{cgi}->param('rev');
  }

Other actions may have more complicated keys.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2005-2007 by Nik Clayton "<[email protected]>".

Copyright 2012 by Dean Hamstead "<[email protected]>".

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

See <http://www.perl.com/perl/misc/Artistic.html>