Gmane save the day again

I had a problem where I wanted to perform authorization without authentication. After alot of scratching of my head, Gmane came to the rescue:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.catalyst.general/17180

I really like Gmane, there is a handy search plugin for it as well:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.discuss/8737

Adding body events to a single catalyst page

I wanted to include some javascript on a single page which was identical to the rest of the site, except it had 'onLoad()' and 'onResize()' events in the page body.

To do this, I created a new ./lib/MyApp/View/NewView.pm, which was identical to ./lib/MyApp/View/HTML.pm except it pointed to a different wrapper: 'site/jsPageWrapper'.

My 'site/jsPage' was identical to 'site/wrapper' except it called the WRAPPER 'site/jsPageHTML'

In turn, 'site/jsPageHTML' was identical to 'site/html' but with the relevant event handlers on the body tags.

In my controller, I needed to forward to my new view: $c->forward('MyApp::View::NewView').

and that was that.

another day another incantation

I want to use namespaces within my PostgreSQL database (schema in PostgreSQL world). However, they are not currently supported within the Catalyst scripts which will automatically build catalyst::schema automatically.

So the solution is to call Schema::Loader 'manually' with this incantation:

perl -MDBIx::Class::Schema::Loader=make_schema_at,dump_to_dir:./lib -e 'make_schema_at("AddressBook::Addresses", { debug => 1, db_schema => "addressStuff" }, [ "dbi:Pg:host=localhost;dbname=testdb", "testuser", "123" ])'

so there you have it: thanks to the irc crew for sorting this out... and they pointed out that cross schema querying will require some jiggery pokery when I get to that...

LDAP, catalyst, roles and groups

After a day or so of effort, I've got LDAP authorization working for groups/roles. I'm posting my config files here, since they worked for me and someone else may stumble across them and find them useful:

my ldif file is as follows:

dn: o=example.org
objectclass: top
objectclass: organization
o: example.org

dn: cn=admin,o=example.org
objectClass: simpleSecurityObject
objectclass: organizationalRole
cn: admin
description: LDAP Administrator
userPassword: 123

dn: ou=groups,o=example.org
objectClass: organizationalUnit
ou: groups
description: generic groups branch

dn: ou=people,o=example.org
ou: people
description: All people in organisation
objectclass: organizationalunit

dn: cn=researchers,ou=groups,o=example.org
objectClass: groupofnames
cn: researchers
member: uid=richard,ou=people,o=example.org

dn: uid=lionel,ou=people,o=example.org
objectClass: top
objectClass: organizationalPerson
objectClass: inetOrgPerson
cn: Lionel Porcheron
sn: Porcheron
userPassword: password
mail: l@a.b
title: Just a person
initials: LP
ou: people

dn: uid=richard,ou=people,o=example.org
objectClass: top
objectClass: organizationalPerson
objectClass: inetOrgPerson
cn: Richard Richard
sn: Richard
userPassword: password
mail: r@a.b
title: Researcher and person
initials: R
ou: people
ou: researchers

This LDIF file creates a group: researchers and a couple of people: richard and lionel. Richard is added to the group of researchers.

# Config for Store::LDAP
authentication:
    default_realm: ldap
    realms:
        ldap:
            credential:
                class: Password
                password_field: password
                password_type:  self_check
            store:
                class: LDAP
                ldap_server: localhost
                ldap_server_options:
                    timeout: 10
                binddn: anonymous
                bindpw: dontcare
                start_tls: 0
                start_tls_options:
                    verify: none
                user_basedn: o=example.org
                user_filter: (&(objectClass=organizationalPerson)(uid=%s))
                user_scope: sub
                user_field: uid
                use_roles: 1
                role_basedn: ou=groups,o=example.org
                role_filter: (member=%s)
                role_scope: one
                role_field: cn
                role_value: dn
                role_search_options:
                    deref: always

This is my config file for catalyst.

sub list : Local {
    my ($self, $c) = @_;
    $c->assert_user_roles( qw/researchers/ ); # only researchers and view a list.
    my $people : Stashed = $c->model('AddressDB::People');
    $c->stash->{template} = 'person/list.tt2';
}

and this is a chunk of text from my controller.

Hope this is helpful - and saves you some time.

enhancement to the code

Well, I wondered if this should be part of the catalyst book errerta, but in the end I decided that the code in the book worked, so it wasn't in error.

I have been working through the book using Pg instead of SQLite. The big difference with Pg is that a user/pass are needed. I've navigated a few hurdles on the way, and this afternoon I found another one.

When including a script within your catalyst app, it is The Book has an excellent example which properly integrates your script with the existing config files.

If you construct a DSN in the following way, you can also use the user/pass conbination from your config file!

my @dsn = @{$config->{'Model::AddressDB'}->{connect_info}};

my $HOME = dir($Bin, '..');
$dsn[0] =~ s/__HOME__/$HOME/;

my $schema = AddressBook::Schema::AddressDB->connect(@dsn)
or die "Failed to connect to database at $dsn[0]";

config files

I'm using a config file as I work through the tutorial. This is an obvious thing to do and I completely agree with it. However, when I introduce this structure, I don't really want it to 'over-ride' existing values - I want to delete all the values which are now to be stored only in the config file.

I had to play around a bit. My model previously contained database connection information. When I introduce the config file, the values were taken from the file. However, when I deleted all of the relevant section from the Model, it broke the app. I needed to leave in a minimal stub:

__PACKAGE__->config(
schema_class => 'AddressBook::Schema::AddressDB');

day two, hurdle navigated

Well this is my second day working through the JROCK Catalyst book.

It has been a little frustrating - but this has reinforced some of the paradigms behind MVC and Catalyst so it can be thought of as useful.

Todays TIP: find_or_new does not return and empty model if it fails. The new it returns has the primary key which it failed to find. This could be 'undef' or 'null', and this object is not suitable for a subsequent: update_or_insert. Instead, do a find, if that fails, create a new object.

Catalyst, day one

I've previously played with Ruby on Rails. My experience was ok with that. However, I considered 'no composite keys' a limitation.

So I've been watching the mailing lists of both CakePHP and Catalyst. I couldn't convince myself that CakePHP would allow for composite keys. In order to evaluate Catalyst, I have bought the book by Jonathan Rockaway and am working thought that.

This is the end of the first day at that and I thought note a couple my initial impressions.

On the book: It is worth visiting the errata. I went thought this and pencilled it into the book before I started reading.

On Catalyst: It seems a little complicated for my tastes. I'm expect that 'complicated' will become 'powerful' as I gain experience in it. We will see.

TIP for today: when creating a model in catalyst, and using a database with a user and password, you'll need to use something like: ...create=static dbi:Pg:dbname=testdatabase testuser testpassword if you want to include a username and password.