Re: [Openinteract-help] Package 'hooks'

[Chris W. <ch...@cw...>]

Stathy G. Touloumis wrote:
> I was wondering open_interact has built in support for packages 
> interacting with each other.  More specifically I would like to add 
> 'links' to the 'box' of one application from another application.  This 
> would be similar to how you can do this with boxes in general.

Nothing is built-in. Packages communicate with each other like 
everything else in OI, through common names of registered 
components. This is normally seen in two ways:

  - SPOPS object name-to-class mappings
    1.x: my $object_class = $R->object_name
    2.x: my $object_class = CTX->lookup_object( 'object_name' )

  - Action handler name-to-class mappings
    1.x: my $action_info_hash =
             $R->lookup_action( 'action_name',
                                { return => 'info } );
    1.x: my ( $action_class, $method ) =
             $R->lookup_action( 'action_name' );
    2.x: my $action_obj = CTX->lookup_action( 'action_name' );
         my $action_name = CTX->lookup_action_name( 'url' );
         my $action_info_hash =
             CTX->lookup_action_info( 'action_name' );

In 1.x you can also use $R to pass around information as 
necessary. It's a little hackish (that is, not built-in) but it's 
fairly easy to do, and all your packages need to agree on is what 
name to use ('tmp_box_links' in the example below). For instance, 
in your box handler you could have:

sub handler {
     my ( $class, $params ) = @_;

     # These are the links used in the box call
     my $my_links    = $params->{links} || [];

     # These are the links added by other people
     my $other_links = $R->{tmp_box_links} || [];

     my @all_links = ( @{ $my_links }, @{ $other_links } );
     return $R->template->handler(
       {}, { links => \@all_links }, { name => 'mypkg::tmpl' } );
}

Since OI 2.x represents all actions, including boxes, as objects 
you can store state in them from anywhere you wish. Much more 
flexible.

Hope this helps,

Chris

-- 
Chris Winters (ch...@cw...)
Building enterprise-capable snack solutions since 1988.