Class::DBI is a very nice way to access a database in Perl. With it you can do all of the normal DBI operations that you would expect with very little code.
Let's assume that you have a table called 'tickets' in a database called 'Tracker' that looks like this:
<![CDATA[id int primary key auto_incriment
name varchar(200)
info varchar(200)]]>
Now you want to be able to do normal operations on the data in the table quickly and easily right? Here's how you do it:
You need to first create a class that you will use for a superclass everywhere else. It has the login / password information as well as the database name.
Lets call this Auth.pm
<![CDATA[package Auth;
use base 'Class::DBI';
__PACKAGE__->set_main( 'Main', 'dbi:mysql:Tracker', 'LOGIN','PASSWORD' );
1;]]>
Next, for each table, create another class that uses the Auth class as a superclass.
<![CDATA[package Tickets;
use base 'Auth';
__PACKAGE__->set_db( 'Tickets' );
1;]]>
That's it for setting it up. Now in your code you can do things like this:
<![CDATA[use Tickets;
my $cdbi = new Tickets;
my $row = $cdbi->search_like( name => 'burt' );
print( "Error: 'burt' is not a valid name." ) unless $row;
# Change his name to dave...
#
$row->name( 'dave' );
# Commit it to the database...
#
$row->save();
# Create a new record...
#
$row = $cdbi->create( name => 'durf', info => 'insert witty info here' );
# Delete the old one.
#
my $old_row = $cdbi->search_like( name => 'dave' );
$cdbi->delete( $old_row->id() );
# or...
#
$cdbi->delete( ($cdbi->search_like( name => 'dave' ))->id() );]]>
This is just a quick taste of the things you can do with Class::DBI.
http://search.cpan.org/~tmtm/Class-DBI-0.96/lib/Class/DBI.pm has a list of all of the available commands.
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