[Catalyst] Two questions regarding components

[Jules Agee]

Good information, thanks Christian! Would it be OK to add the text of
your message to the documentation?

Christian Hansen wrote:
> 
> On 2005-06-28, at 16.55, Bernhard Bauer wrote:
> 
>> 1. As far as I can tell, every component is require'd and instantiated
>> via new(). The instances are then stored in
>> $c->components->{$component_name}, making them some sort of singleton
>> objects. While this makes sense to me for controllers (which don't
>> carry a state) and views (which really are Adapters to the respective
>> template system), I see some problems here for models.
> 
> 
> All packages that lives in MyApp::[MVC]|Model|View|Controller are loaded
> during setup, but only components that inherit from Catalyst::Base are
> instantiated.
> 
>> Specifically, is there a way to make new() in the base class for your
>> application models setup the model (and return the package name for
>> example) while having new() in a derived class return a new instance?
>> Or could the Engine maybe call a method shared_instance() which
>> returns the singleton instance of the component, while new() returns a
>> new instance every time it is called?
> 
> 
> You don't have to do anything, just don't inherit from Catalyst::Base
> and your component will be loaded and available in $c->component.
> $c->component('MyApp::Model::Package') will return the class.
> 
>> 2. Is there a way for a plugin (or component) which depends on another
>> plugin to load it? For example, have a controller which uses
>> Catalyst::Plugin::Textile load it at startup without having to
>> explicitly specify it in the plugin list?
> 
> 
> Currently not, but i usually document it and do a check in setup:
> 
> sub setup {
>     my $c = shift;
> 
>     unless ( $c->isa('Catalyst::Plugin::Textile') ) {
>         die __PACKAGE__ . ' requires Catalyst::Plugin::Textile';
>     }
> 
>     $c->NEXT::setup;
> }
>