[Catalyst] Some "How Do I ..." questions

[Chisel Wright]

Primarily I'm asking these for purely selfish reasons, but maybe the
answers will be of use to other potential Catalyst users in a similar
position.

I realise that there are numberous possible ways that some of these
could be solved, but MVC, Class::DBI, etc are still fairly new to me -
so I'm just looking to find suggestions for the 'recommended' ways of
solving what are likely to be common areas of functionality.

1. Login Required
=================

This is when someone hits your site at something like /restricted/foo/X
- where they need to be logged-in/authenticated to view the page.

I'm fine using session_login() and C::P::Authentication::CDBI to log
people in.

My question is: what's the best way to send some-one through login, then
once successfully logged in continue their journey onto the original
request (in this case, /restricted/foo/X).

If I remember correctly, $c->req->path gives the requested URL - the
thing I'm not sure about is where and when to store it so it can be
forwarded to once authenticated.

2. Add/Edit Records
===================

Kinda fundamental really, but I don't know "the Catalyst way" of doing
this. I've always been stuck with in-house solutions that usually use a
lot of if/else statements to validate the parameters, then jump through
a couple of hoops to build my own sql inserts .... you get the picture.

I started looking at Catalyst::Plugin::FormValidator for part of it, but
the docs are too terse for me to deduce real-world usage.

Basically, I want to:
 - know i've got a form submit (deduce add/edit from URL I guess)
 - validate form data
 - insert/update record accordingly.

This one's pretty open-ended, because if I'm being honest, I have no
idea where to start.

Perhaps after this, I can be a bit quieter, learn more myself, and if
the planets align, I might even work out a more functional example to
throw into the pot. [the current ones don't seem to be very helpful in
my experience]

Thanks in advance,

Chisel
-- 
Chisel Wright
e: chisel at herlpacker.co.uk
w: http://www.herlpacker.co.uk/

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