Re: Summary: Perl 5 Classes for the Web

Martijn Koster (m.koster@nexor.co.uk)
Thu, 16 Mar 1995 09:48:46 +0000 

> Okay, I'll try to summarise what's being proposed so far:
> (I'll do it in Module List style :-) I've tagged OO on the end of
> those modules which I know implement objects.

Right.

> URL::
> ::Base                                                                  OO
> ::Proxy      (may well disappear or be absorbed elsewhere)              OO

I've made Proxy disappear; I wish I could make up my mind :-)

See also my separate message "Should URL.p be split up?",
URL could become:

  URL::
  ::Base
  ::http
  ::...
 
> MIME::
> ::*         media type and mailcap handling

> HTML::
> ::Charset   charset <--> &entity; mapping
> ::forms     temporary holding place for some old CGI.pm code ?
> ::*         generators, parsers, extractors, searchers etc

Sure.

> HTTP::
> ::Base
> ::Header
> ::Error
> ::Date
> ::Protocol  ? replaced by WWW::scheme below ?

 
 
> WWW::
> ::Agent     new, more accurate, name for WWW::Request objects ?         OO

Hmm. You did see the request and response are split into different
classes (defined in the same file) didn't you? This may not be what
you want of course...

> ::Scheme    (or maybe URL::scheme ?) base class for schemes below       OO
> ::<scheme>  protocol interfaces for URL schemes, e.g., file, wais etc   OO

So this is the "consistent HTTP interface" for all protocols right?

I was wondering if we should allow multiple such interfaces; who says
there is only one way to do it? (Already looks like it isn't! :) Maybe
we should actually name the particular method of interfacing,
e.g. "libwww-perl5" or LWP or something. If someone comes up with a
competing way of handling these transport issues, they can slot that
in under a different name, still use the URL classes etc, and not
interfere. Just because there is a name space doesn't mean we own it
:-)

> (Hopefully it's clear that putting all the above under WWW:: is
> not practical in the long run :-)

That depends. Maybe these should all be subdirectories of WWW (with
the WWW:: above being renamed to LWP); is it practical to shove all
classes people will design for other areas (mail, engineering, camel
racing competition marking etc) into the toplevel lib/perl5/?

-- Martijn
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