First Post and eXtensible State Machines

jsmith on 2003-09-25T03:55:11

I'm on LiveJournal, but most of the people I know there aren't into Perl. This semester, I've been busy digging into a project that I've been working on for a year or so now. It's finally time to get it done. So, because I'm enthusiastic about it and spending long hours each day on it, I'll let some of that enthusiasm bubble over here.

I've been working on a XPath-like expression language for Perl data structures using Barrie Slaymaker's EventPath grammer which was based on James Clark's XPath grammer. I can now say /this/method::foo(/that)[@can="dance"] and get back any objects returned from the foo method of /this called with /that, and select those returned objects that can('dance'). Eventually I'll factor most of the code out and put it on CPAN as Data::DPath.

The Data::DPath stuff is the expression component of what I am calling eXtensible State Machines. These are like eXtensible Server Pages except they have no Perl (they are pure XML) and define the controller in an MVC application. The View is going to be provided by Template Toolkit (but that's configurable). I haven't decided what XSM will be called when I factor it out for CPAN.

The state machine compiler is borrowed from / based on the XSP compiler in AxKit. At this point, I'm more interested in it working correctly than efficiently. The data in the %EDGES hash is used to create Data::FormValidator objects to help decide which state to transition to. Of course, details are subject to change while in development.

is compiled to the following Perl code:

package Gestinanna::Sites::Hinoto::XSM::activate::V1_5;
# line 555 "Perl generated by /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/Gestinanna/XSM.pm"
#initialize sm namespace
sub edit_to_confirm {
    my ($sm) = shift;
    my %data = (
        local => $sm->data('out'),
 
        #session => $sm -> session,
        context => $sm->data, solar => {}, global => {},
    );
 
    return "edit" # 
      unless (
        (
         Gestinanna::XSM::Core::xsm_not(
             (
                 (
                     Gestinanna::XSM::Core::xsm_string_cmp(
                         (
                             grep { defined } map {
                                 Gestinanna::XSM::Expression::axis_child($_,
                                                                    "password1" )
                               } $data{"local"}
                         )[0],
                         (
                          grep { defined } map {
                              Gestinanna::XSM::Expression::axis_child($_,
                                                                    "password2" )
                            } $data{"local"}
                           )[0],
                     )
                 )
             )[0],
         )
        )
      );
 
    return;
} ## end sub edit_to_confirm
use vars qw(@ISA %HASA %VIEWS %ALIASES %EDGES);
 
@ISA     = ('Gestinanna::XSM::Base');
%HASA    = ();
%VIEWS   = ();
%ALIASES = ('_begin' => 'start');
%EDGES = (
       'confirm' => { 'done' => { 'required' => ['confirm'] },
                      'edit' => { 'required' => ['edit'] }
       },
       'edit' => # required to get from edit to confirm
         { 'confirm' => { 'required' => ['netid', 'password1', 'password2'] } },
       'start' => {
           'edit' => # required to get from start to edit
             { 'required' => ['uin', 'birth.day', 'birth.month', 'birth.year'] }
       }
);

---

XPath and Perl data structures

rob_au on 2003-11-13T12:17:03

I've been working on a XPath-like expression language for Perl data structures using Barrie Slaymaker's EventPath grammer which was based on James Clark's XPath grammer. I can now say /this/method::foo(/that)[@can="dance"] and get back any objects returned from the foo method of /this called with /that, and select those returned objects that can('dance'). Eventually I'll factor most of the code out and put it on CPAN as Data::DPath.

After reading this journal entry, I thought you might find it interesting to take a look at Class::XPath by Sam Tregar - This syntax for walking object trees has also been discussed previously on Perlmonks in this thread.