Job van Achterberg

An useful plugin for writing RESTful Dancer web applications is Dancer::Plugin::Rest by Alexis Sukrieh, available at https://metacpan.org/module/Dancer::Plugin::REST.

To use it when defining routes, easily:


package MyApp;

use Dancer;
use Dancer::Plugin::REST;


This exports the resource keyword, which can be used as such:


resource camel => (
create => sub {},
get => sub {},
update => sub {},
delete => sub {},
);


This automatically creates the following route handlers:

• post /camel (create)
• post /camel.:format (create)
• get /camel/:id (read)
• get /camel/:id.:format (read)
• put /camel/:id (update)
• put /camel/:id.:format (update)
• del /camel/:id (delete)
• del /camel/:id.:format (delete)

The format param can be used in requests such as


GET /camel/larry.xml


Next to that, this module exports a whole bunch of error handler methods, such as

• status_unauthorized
• status_ok
• status_length_required
• status_not_found
• status_forbidden

which can be used to make life easier:


return status_unauthorized("Not Larry") unless $user->is_larry;


If the code of the status you are using is equal or higher than 100, your error message will be the value of key 'error' ( { error => "Not Larry" } ) - otherwise it's just a verbatim. Of course it's expected that since you're working with REST, you're serialising your return values.

Some nitpicks:

• "get" should be called "read" for CRUD (create read update delete)


• The POD is incorrect.

I earlier issued a pull request of a fork where I update the POD problem and renamed "get" to "read" as well as swapping the meaning of POST and PUT. I believed PUT should be CREATE, and POST update, even though this later proved to be incorrect. I hope the changes to POD will however be added. It's trivial, but correct.

Closing words
This is one of those nifty little modules that makes writing a RESTful webapp just that little bit easier and makes your code more organised. I can recommend it!