[CDBI] Re: newbie: how can I put a placeholder on a query of a has_many relationship?

> For a given ALM I'd like to query the 'readings' relationship: my
> $iterator = $ALM->readings ; The above works but gives me /all/ the
> readings, ever. I'd like to query the readings between two dates.
>
> Now I get that I can query the readings class itself , e.g. my
> $extraSQL = qq(REA_READING_DATE >= \'$to\' - ? AND REA_READING_DATE
> <= \'$to\' );
>
> QG::Reading->add_constructor(rdgs_past_days => $extraSQL);
>
> but that's a constructor on the Readings class not the ALM class with
> the 'readings' "method".
>
> So far I can't see how to add a where clause to the 'readings' call
> defined in the has_many statement. From here it looks as of, to do
> what I want, I'd have to do a direct query on the Readings class, but
> then I'd need to add an additional placeholder for the rea_alm_id
> attribute, which kind of defeats the object of defining the has_many
> and is getting close to good ole DBI.
>
> Some kind soul tell me what I'm missing?

I don't think you're missing anything. There's no built-in way of doing this.
It sounds like you want a more flexible implementation of has_many limiting:

http://search.cpan.org/~tmtm/Class-DBI/lib/Class/DBI.pm#Limiting

You can't really do complex limiting queries with that, however, AFAIK.

You have a couple options that I can see:

1. You *might* be able to develop your own Class::DBI::Relationship subclass
   to implement this. Refer to HasMany.pm in the Class::DBI distribution
   and/or Class::DBI::Relationship::HasManyOrdered on CPAN for examples. I'm
   not aware of any implementations that do exactly what you want, but I
   agree that it would be nice to have this capability. If you go this route
   and get it working, please share the Relationship code with us!

2. Put the add_constructor() in the QG::Reading class and then add a simple
   "wrapper method" in QG::ALM which takes the number of days as an argument
   and passes that argument and any relevant object attributes along to the
   QG::Reading constructor that you created and then returns the results. I
   think this is what almost everyone does. It's usually only a 3-4 lines of
   pretty simple code to implement such a method.

Hope this helps,
Ed