Question

I have an object which holds a stack of objects. The object represents the current state, and each object in the stack holds the state at a particular level of nesting.

package State;

use Mouse;
use RealState;

has state_stack => {
    is    => 'rw',
    isa   => 'ArrayRef[RealState]',
    default => sub {
        return [RealState->new]
    }
};

I want State to delegate to State->state_stack->[0]. How can I do that efficiently with Mouse (so no meta hacking). I cannot use Moose, my project cannot have any dependencies (I’m bundling Mouse::Tiny).

“You can’t” is fine, I’ll write an AUTOLOAD.

Answer 1

You can’t it directly, but there’s a hack better than AUTOLOAD. That is, RealState->meta->get_all_method_names() gives you method names which are defined in RealState.

#!perl
use 5.14.0;
package RealState {
    use Mouse;

    sub foo { 'foo' }
    __PACKAGE__->meta->make_immutable;
}
package State {
    use Mouse;

    has stack => (
        is => 'rw',
        isa => 'ArrayRef',
        default => sub { [ RealState->new ] },
    );

    # define delegates for stack->[0]
    my $meta = __PACKAGE__->meta;
    foreach my $name(RealState->meta->get_all_method_names) {
        next if Mouse::Object->can($name); # avoid 'new', 'DESTROY', etc.

        # say "delegate $name";
        $meta->add_method($name => sub {
            my $self = shift;
            $self->stack->[0]->$name(@_);
        });
    }

    $meta->make_immutable;
}

my $state = State->new();
say $state->foo();