SPUG: OO Perl conundrum

[Dean Hudson]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2001 at 03:45:50PM -0700, Richard Anderson wrote:
> package HTTP::WebTest;
> ...
> {
>     package PluginHelper;
>     ...
>    package Plugins;
>    use HTTP::WebTest;
>    ...
> }
>  ...
> 
> This seems like a fairly non-standard use of OO Perl.  Would this be better
> done by subclassing HTTP::WebTest and making PluginHelper and Plugins
> subclasses of the new subclass be better? Or is there some simpler approach?

It seems to me that inheritance is not the correct relationship
between these things; composition is prolly what you're looking for
(ie an HTTP::WebTest object HAS one or more HTTP::WebTest::Plugins.)
You can keep track of them via an array in your HTTP::WebTest
instance.

Then you could require that a HTTP::WebTest::Plugin object implement a
particular method (say test()) which implements the test that you want
the plug-in to handle. After running your standard tests you iterate
over your array of plug-in objects and call their test() methods,
passing them the web page to be tested.

Does that make any sense? I'm not familiar with the module at all, and
I'm also not sure where PluginHelper fits in (I'm not sure what it
does) so I could be off base. But usually composition is a more
appropriate relationship than inheritance. 

dean.

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