YAPC::NA 2010 Technology Overview

I am new to the Perl community. This is an overview of the the technology I found interesting in the talks I attended at YAPC::NA 2010 http://yapc2010.com/.

Web

• Catalyst - MVC framework for Perl supporting many different runtime environments
• Catalyst::Controller::DBIC::API - Simplify REST interface to DBIx::Class
• HTML::Zoom - rips the logic right out of your template thus acheiving a Zoom for the average designer
• Template::Declare - declaritive templating
• Form::Factory - a Moosified general-purpose form handling API,
  looks very promising
• PSGI - Perl Web Server Gateway Interface Specification (aka middleware)
• Plack - Perl Superglue for Web frameworks and Web Servers (Perl implementation of PSGI specification)
• http://nginx.org - Highly optimized HTTP and reverse proxy server,
  as well as a mail proxy server
• http://qublog.net - Catalyst web application using Template::Declare and Form::Factory

Environment

• minicpan - create or update a local mirror
• dpan - maintain a darkpan for company logic
• local::lib - setup local install paths for module install
• mcpani - maintain a mini mirror
• perlbrew - Perl environment manager
• Dist::Zilla - minimizing the amount of time you spend writing repeatitive code increases maintainability
• Strawberry Perl - Perl5 for windows
• git - popular distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency
• Devel::REPL - a modern Perl interactive shell

Testing

• Test::Builder - singleton module for creating TAP compliant test modules
• Test::More - adds very useful tools on top of standard Test modules
• Fennec - Full Featured Testing Toolbox And Development Kit
• Tree::DAG_Node - dependency graphing

Debugging

• Data::Show - parses source to give variable and line numbers on dumping statements
• Devel::NYTProf - Powerful fast feature-rich Perl source code profiler

Object Oriented Programming

• Moose - extends Class::MOP which implements a Meta Object Protocol system; looks a bit like Perl6; these are the glory days!
• MooseX::Declare - BETA - Moose syntax using Devel::Declare to make Perl beautiful
• MooseX::App::Cmd - Mashes up MooseX::Getopt and App::Cmd ftw!
• MooseX::Method::Signatures - add a method signature syntax without the full blown MooseX::Declare syntax
• Class::Method::Modifiers - gives before,
  after,
  around method modifiers.
  useful for non-Moose classes
• Method::Signatures::Simple - can be mixed with MooseX::Declare or MooseX::Method::Signatures to gain a speed boost on non-edge-of-program methods that do not need parameter validation

Other Cool Modules

• Regexp::Grammars - Perl6 grammar-like syntax for Perl5. Sill BETA. Managed to segfault it, filling perlbug soon
• IO::Prompter - comprehensive command line prompting with history and state information built in
• App::Padre - editor written in Perl
• Try::Tiny - minimal try/catch with proper localization of $@
• Reflex - - Rocco Caputo's new event driven system build on top of POE,
  still BETA,
  time to play!

Thanks

• to all the teachers and organizers that spend their time helping the Perl community
• to all the Perl hackers willing to learn,
  willing to research and unwilling to accept "not possible!".
• to Pod::Simple::HTML for converting this Pod document to html
  

  I wanted to try writting my blog entries with Pod.
  The blog entry you are currently reading probably has a familiar format.
  It was written in Pod and converted to html with Pod::Simple::HTML.

  My first attempt to convert this document to HTML I could post on http://blogs.perl.org/ failed. I was trying to use pod2html that comes with Perl. It kept converting the module names to something like /Try/Tiny.pm before it would prepend it to my --htmlroot option. I'm trying to set the --htmlroot option to http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?. So I'm not sure what the solution is to get my links correct. If you know the solution, ping me.

  The next thing I tried was Pod::Xhtml. The formatting just isn't very nice. It uses <dt> for list items instead of <li>. It just leaves the * in the place you put it for the list item. It does not handle numbered lists correctly. So, I moved on.

  Lastly, I tried Pod::Simple::HTML. This module worked for me with one problem. The html it produces, although valid, has new lines in strange places. It looked something like this:

      <li><a href="http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Devel%3A%3AREPL" class="podlinkpod"
      >Devel::REPL</a> - a modern Perl interactive shell</li>
      </ul>
  
      <h2><a class='u' href='#___top' title='click to go to top of document'
  
      name="Testing"
  
      >Testing</a></h2>

  This is fine, however the code on http://blogs.perl.org/ would break trying to parse this. Maybe a missing /s regexp modifier. So now I am using a modified Pod::Simple::HTML without the new lines inside html elements. Would always love to hear a better solution.