[sf-perl] the mouse with antlers

[Chris Weyl]

On Wed, 4 Apr 2012 17:38:53 -0700
Joseph Brenner <doom at kzsu.stanford.edu> wrote:

> I find myself worrying about what I would do if I needed more than two
> stages, instantiation and lazy access.  Like what if I wanted to put
> the id in the subject?
> I'd have to do a gratuitous access of id to make sure it was defined
> before accessing subject...

Soo...  Forgive me if I'm not reading this correctly, but it sounds like you're concerned that when subject is lazily built, you won't be able to get id's value as it won't have been built yet?

Ignore the rest if I've misread this :)

Lazily built attributes are built the first time they're read, if they haven't been explicitly set in the constructor call.  Basically, attributes are set:

* via explicit value in new()
* at new() if a default/builder is provided and the attribute is not lazy
* at any access if a default/builder has been provided, the attribute is not set, and the attribute is lazy

So long as there are no circular references between your attribute defaults/builders (exciting!), you can have them access any other lazily built attribute without worrying if it has been built already or not.  In your musing above, subject's default/builder can rely on id being set when it accesses id, as id will be built on that access if it has not already been built.

If, for whatever reason, you need to determine if an attribute has already been built, you can use a predicate; the predicate will tell you if the attribute contains a value (even if that value is undef) or if it has been set somehow.

                         -Chris