NAME

Uttu::Manual::FunctionSet - Description of function sets.

DESCRIPTION

A function set is a collection of content files and Perl modules that together provide a functional module for an application, such as e-mail, user management, or announcements. A function set typically is written with a particular framework in mind, so it expects authentication and session information, for example, to be stored in a particular manner.

A function set has a name, usually a single word. For example, a set providing Unix quota management might be called `unix-quota'. Through the rest of this section, we will consider the name to be `xxx'.

A function set may have any or all of the following parts. The left hand side is the file in the function set distribution. The right hand side is the directory or location to which it is moved (using HTML::Mason as an example content handler).

If the function set actually requires configuration, then the name of the function set should be a valid Perl module name (i.e., no hyphens (-) or other special characters).

pages/*      -> $uttu_prefix/functionsets/$framework/xxx/*
xxx.pm       -> $uttu_prefix/framework/$framework/lib/perl/Uttu/Framework/$framework/xxx.pm
l10n/lang.pm -> $uttu_prefix/framework/$framework/lib/perl/Uttu/Framework/$framework/L10N/xxx/lang.pm
lib/*        -> $uttu_prefix/framework/$framework/lib/perl/* (optional)
sitemap.txt  -> SQL or general configuration file

Function sets may use the Uttu::MakeMaker module in a Makefile.PL to provide an installation method that mirrors that of standard modules on CPAN. See Uttu::MakeMaker for more information.

% perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=<$uttu_prefix> \
                   ... # other ExtUtils::MakeMaker options
% make
% make test (?)
% make install

Web Pages

Any web pages provided by the set will usually be run through the content handler. These should be placed under $function_set_base/xxx/. URI to file mappings are provided in a different part of the function set.

Configuration

The configuration module should be installed as Uttu::Framework::$global_framework::xxx. This module will be loaded automatically during server startup and is responsible for defining any configuration variables as well as registering components needed by the framework.

URI to Component Mapping

The mapping of URI to component can be done either as an addition to the configuration file (not recommended) or as an addition to the SQL tables (recommended). The mapping should be provided as a plain text file with one URI to component mapping per line. The URIs are relative to the absolute URI location of this function set. The component names are relative to the component installation directory (usually $function_set_base/xxx/).

For example,

# URI           component
index.html      index.html
quota/edit.html edit.html
queue/view.html view-queue.html