CAM::Template

"CAM" stands for Clotho Advanced Media, www.clotho.com, which
supported most of the development of this module.  Contact us at
cpan@clotho.com.

Install via the usual:
  perl Makefile.PL
  make
  make test
  make install

This module implements a basic framework for building web database
applications with the CAM library.  It is designed to be subclassed
(see SUBCLASSING below) by your software to provide web functionality
with low overhead.  It is intended for the usual Apache, Perl, MySQL,
and Linux environment, but as little as possible is hardcoded for that
idiom (or, when hardcoded, we try to make the pieces overrideable).

External libraries referenced:
  Required:
    CGI
    CAM::Template
  Optional: (NOTE! Some of these have not yet been released to CPAN)
    DBI
    CAM::Session
    CAM::SQLManager
    CAM::SQLObject
    CAM::EmailTemplate
    CAM::EmailTemplate::SMTP
    CAM::Template::Cache

This module is released under the GNU Public License v2.  See
"COPYING".

The Perl module CAM::App most closely resembles is CGI::Application. It's
main advantages over that module are:

 * Simplifies DBI connections
 * Prefills templates
 * Integrated with a session manager (CAM::Session)
 * Centralized error handling
 * Simple email sending (via CAM::EmailTemplate)
 * Integrates a very simple configuration mechanism

It's main disadvantages vs. CGI::Application are:

 * Doesn't autodetect or support run modes, except via subclassing.
 * Doesn't support HTML::Template
 * Run modes are not necessarily centralized

And features which may or may not be advantages:

 * Behaves as a helper instead of an environment
 * Uses CAM::Template instead of HTML::Template
 * Caller sets up explicit scripted run modes instead of
   CGI::Application's run modes.  (if you think this is an advantage,
   then CGI::Application really was never an option for you, was it?)

In general, CGI::Application is great for highly-structured web
applications that are easily broken into use modes.  CAM::App is good
for apps that are much more free form, and just need a little help
with organization.


--- TO DO ---

Future versions of CAM::App will hopefully accomplish some of the
following goals.  None of these have been architected yet.

* Extend the integration with CAM::SQLManager and CAM::SQLObject
* Simplify the use of CAM::Session for authentication
* Generalize the template mechanism so other template packages are
  possible
* Aid for multilingual support in templates and in-code messages


--- SUBCLASSING ---

There are a few important steps for you to use this library.

1) Although it's not strictly necessary, we HIGHLY recommend starting
with a subclass.  This can be as simple as creating a trivial file
like this in, for example, "MyApp.pm":

   package MyApp;
   use CAM::App;
   our @ISA = qw(CAM::App);
   1;

2) Create a configuration file.  We recommend starting with the
SampleConfig.pm, but you can quite easily build your own from scratch.

   cp example/SampleConfig.pm MyConfig.pm
   edit MyConfig.pm

3) Set up your CGI script to use MyApp and MyConfig.  It should contain lines something like this.

   use lib qw(.); # or where ever you stored the new .pm file
   use CGI;
   use MyApp;
   use MyConfig;
   
   my $app = MyApp->new(config => MyConfig->new(), cgi => CGI->new());
   exit if (!$app->authenticate());