Question

Say I define an abstract My::Object and concrete role implementations My::Object::TypeA and My::Object::TypeB. For maintainability reasons, I’d like to not have a hardcoded table that looks at the object type and applies roles. As a DWIMmy example, I’m looking for something along these lines in My::Object:

has => 'id' (isa => 'Str', required => 1);

sub BUILD {
  my $self = shift;

  my $type = $self->lookup_type(); ## Returns 'TypeB'
  {"My::Object::$type"}->meta->apply($self);
}

Letting me get a My::Object with My::Object::TypeB role applied by doing the following:

my $obj = My::Object(id = 'foo')

Is this going to do what I want or am I on the entirely wrong track?

Edit: I simplified this too much; I don’t want to have to know the type when I instantiate the object, I want the object to determine its type and apply the correct role’s methods appropriately. I’ve edited my question to make this clearer.

Answer 1

Have you tried it?

$perl -Moose -E'
     sub BUILD { my ($self, $p) = @_; my $role = qq[Class::$$p{role}]; $role->meta->apply($self) };
     package Class::A; use Moose::Role; has a => (is => q[ro], default => 1);
     package main; say Class->new(role => q[A])->dump'

Yields:

$VAR1 = bless( {
             'a' => 1
           }, 'Class::MOP::Class::__ANON__::SERIAL::1' );

This appears to be what you want. Cleaned up the code in the oose.pm call is:

package Class; 
use Moose;
sub BUILD { 
    my ($self, $p) = @_;
    my $role = qq[Class::$$p{role}];
    $role->meta->apply($self);
}

package Class::A;
use Moose::Role;

has a => ( is => 'ro', default => 1 );

package main;
Class->new(role => 'A');