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Revision: 1.2
Committed: Sun Oct 27 20:17:16 2013 UTC (10 years, 8 months ago) by root
Branch: MAIN
CVS Tags: rel-0_01
Changes since 1.1: +91 -0 lines
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# User Rev Content
1 root 1.2 NAME
2     Types::Serialiser - simple data types for common serialisation formats
3    
4     SYNOPSIS
5     DESCRIPTION
6     This module provides some extra datatypes that are used by common
7     serialisation formats such as JSON or CBOR. The idea is to have a
8     repository of simple/small constants and containers that can be shared
9     by different implementations so they become interoperable between each
10     other.
11    
12     SIMPLE SCALAR CONSTANTS
13     Simple scalar constants are values that are overloaded to act like
14     simple Perl values, but have (class) type to differentiate them from
15     normal Perl scalars. This is necessary because these have different
16     representations in the serialisation formats.
17    
18     BOOLEANS (Types::Serialiser::Boolean class)
19     This type has only two instances, true and false. A natural
20     representation for these in Perl is 1 and 0, but serialisation formats
21     need to be able to differentiate between them and mere numbers.
22    
23     $Types::Serialiser::true, Types::Serialiser::true
24     This value represents the "true" value. In most contexts is acts
25     like the number 1. It is up to you whether you use the variable form
26     ($Types::Serialiser::true) or the constant form
27     ("Types::Serialiser::true").
28    
29     The constant is represented as a reference to a scalar containing 1
30     - implementations are allowed to directly test for this.
31    
32     $Types::Serialiser::false, Types::Serialiser::false
33     This value represents the "false" value. In most contexts is acts
34     like the number 0. It is up to you whether you use the variable form
35     ($Types::Serialiser::false) or the constant form
36     ("Types::Serialiser::false").
37    
38     The constant is represented as a reference to a scalar containing 0
39     - implementations are allowed to directly test for this.
40    
41     $is_bool = Types::Serialiser::is_bool $value
42     Returns true iff the $value is either $Types::Serialiser::true or
43     $Types::Serialiser::false.
44    
45     For example, you could differentiate between a perl true value and a
46     "Types::Serialiser::true" by using this:
47    
48     $value && Types::Serialiser::is_bool $value
49    
50     $is_true = Types::Serialiser::is_true $value
51     Returns true iff $value is $Types::Serialiser::true.
52    
53     $is_false = Types::Serialiser::is_false $value
54     Returns false iff $value is $Types::Serialiser::false.
55    
56     ERROR (Types::Serialiser::Error class)
57     This class has only a single instance, "error". It is used to signal an
58     encoding or decoding error. In CBOR for example, and object that
59     couldn't be encoded will be represented by a CBOR undefined value, which
60     is represented by the error value in Perl.
61    
62     $Types::Serialiser::error, Types::Serialiser::error
63     This value represents the "error" value. Accessing values of this
64     type will throw an exception.
65    
66     The constant is represented as a reference to a scalar containing
67     "undef" - implementations are allowed to directly test for this.
68    
69     $is_error = Types::Serialiser::is_error $value
70     Returns false iff $value is $Types::Serialiser::error.
71    
72     NOTES FOR XS USERS
73     The recommended way to detect whether a scalar is one of these objects
74     is to check whether the stash is the "Types::Serialiser::Boolean" or
75     "Types::Serialiser::Error" stash, and then follow the scalar reference
76     to see if it's 1 (true), 0 (false) or "undef" (error).
77    
78     While it is possible to use an isa test, directly comparing stash
79     pointers is faster and guaranteed to work.
80    
81     BUGS
82     The use of overload makes this module much heavier than it should be (on
83     my system, this module: 4kB RSS, overload: 260kB RSS).
84    
85     SEE ALSO
86     Currently, JSON::XS and CBOR::XS use these types.
87    
88     AUTHOR
89     Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
90     http://home.schmorp.de/
91