adding a new bit of component-call syntax

Hi,

I'm trying to subclass some bits and pieces of Mason in order to
(among other things) add a new special component-call syntax. An
example would be something like this:

  <& &FOO/bar &>

This means, in our little world, to look for the component "bar" in a
PAR-bundled package that, elsewhere in the system, has declared that
implements the interface "FOO". There are some more twists, but that's
the short explanation <laugh>.

I need to subclass Request in order to over-ride fetch_comp(), and
Interp in order to over-ride load(). I'm running into a stumbling
block, and was hoping for some advice from the experts assembled here.

Early on in a request sequence, ApacheHandler::prepare_request() calls
Interp::make_request(). Interp::make_request() does a
create_delayed_object() to create its 'request' contained object. That
object will eventually have its fetch_comp() method called, which is
on of the things I need to over-ride. But I can't figure out how to
make this request object be created as an instance of a class that I
specify.

I tried adding a 'request_class' arg to my standard ApacheHandler new
call (in a handler.pl):

  my $ah = HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler->new
  (
   resolver_class => 'CommaX::Mason::Gadgets::Resolver',
   comp_root      => '/web-working',
   data_dir       => '/usr/local/apache/mason_data',
   error_mode     => 'output',
   request_class  => 'CommaX::Mason::Gadgets::ApacheHandler',
  );

But that causes an error on Apache startup:

  Deep recursion on subroutine "Class::Container::allowed_params" at
  /usr/local/share/perl/5.8.4/Class/Container.pm line 466.

Passing 'request_class' to Interp->new results in the same error being
thrown.

So I went ahead and created a subclass of HTML::Mason::Interp, and
tried to over-ride the 'request' contained object declaration. But
there are a couple of reasons (at least) that this doesn't
work. Reason 1: re-specifying the request=>{class} doesn't seem to
have any effect:

Here's the class:

  package CommaX::Mason::Gadgets::Interp;

  use HTML::Mason::Interp;
  use base qw( HTML::Mason::Interp );

  __PACKAGE__->contained_objects
    (
     request  => 
     { class => class => 'CommaX::Mason::Gadgets::Request',
       delayed => 1,
       descr => "Objects returned by make_request are members of this class" },
    );

  sub make_request {
    my $self = shift;
    my $obj = $self->create_delayed_object( 'request', interp => $self, @_ );
    Apache->request->warn ( "---- make_request -- $self creates new $obj ----" );
    return $obj;
  }

  1;

If I specify this class when creating the ApacheHandler, it gets
used. But make_request still creates an
HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler.

I'm not sure why, and I haven't started to dig more deeply into
Class::Container, yet. Before I do, I'd greatly appreciate any advice.

Kwin





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