[dancer-users] Dancer::Plugin::Auth::Extensible - removing sub attributes - ready to try out

[David Precious]

Hi all,

Following the recent discussion on the list regarding DPAE's use of
subroutine attributes to declare which routes need auth/specific roles
and a before handler to check for them, the general consensus seems to
be that, whilst the attributes-based approach is quite clean, it's not
necessary solid enough to rely upon.

(Multiple people whose opinions I respect advised me that there are
likely to be issues with it - some potential problems include thread
safety, and problems I've seen at work when running under the
debugger / Devel::Cover etc.)

For that reason, whilst DPAE is still young and not widely used (as far
as I'm aware :) ), I've decided it would make sense to take the
approach recommended by multiple people, and replace sub attributes
with keywords which wrap the route handler coderef and perform the
required checks before executing it.

The changes are in a remove_attributes branch - the refactor commit is:

https://github.com/bigpresh/Dancer-Plugin-Auth-Extensible/commit/32844b7c3ccb1

From a user's point of view, the changes are in how you define that a
route needs login / specific roles.

Previously, you would say:

    get '/secret' => sub :RequiresLogin { ... };

Now, you'd say:

    get '/secret' => requires_login sub { ... };

And to require specific roles:

    get '/beer' => requires_role BeerDrinker => sub { ... };


Opinions on this would be warmly welcomed.  Also, if you've been using
DPAE and have a moment to try out your code with these changes, that
would be awesome.  DPAE passes all its tests after the changes, so I'm
reasonably convinced that it's working correctly, but will perform more
testing before this hits CPAN.

Cheers

Dave P

-- 
David Precious ("bigpresh") <davidp at preshweb.co.uk>
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