Development/Server Coding Style
Status: This page is work in progress and has very questionable content :)
MusicBrainz Server Coding Style
Perl Modules
- Use tabs, not spaces.
- Name references to the current object
$self, not$this. - Use words separated by underscores for function/method names. The server currently uses CamelCase, but I'd propose to change this to match perlstyle and most existing Perl modules.
TT2 Templates
When working with templates, in general try and be as concise as possible. If you find yourself doing a lot of logic, you should seek to abstract this out into a template component (more on these below) - or move the logic to the controller action; filing a bug on the bug tracker if you don't want to do this yourself.
Forms
I've tried to make working with forms as easy as possible, and there are 2 options. I have noticed we have 2 types of forms, which I'll call generic and custom. A generic form has labels on the left and inputs on the right (ie, login, artist edit, pretty much all of our forms). Custom forms impose no such restrictions, and allow you to layout the form however you want.
When working with any form, use the forms/form.tt wrapper. This wrapper sets up the <form> tags for you, along with providing the user information regarding any general errors and which fields are mandatory. By default the form is setup as a generic form, however if you pass the custom=1 option to the wrapper, no formatting will be done for you.
Once you have opened a form wrapper you are ready to begin your form. To add a widget to the form with a label (textbox, combo-box, etc) - you should INCLUDE the forms/widget.tt component. forms/widget.tt requires the following options:
- widget: The field in the form that you wish to display. You will often fetch this by using
form.field('field-name'). - label: The label of this field.
You should then finish your form with forms/submit.tt , providing the text for the button with the label parameter.
Below is a simple example form. For an example of a more complicated custom form, see the user preferences form
[% WRAPPER "forms/form.tt" %]
[% INCLUDE "forms/widget.tt" widget=form.fields('name') label="Full Name:" %]
[% INCLUDE "forms/submit.tt" label="Save Name" %]
[% END %]
CSS
- TODO
JavaScript
- TODO
ServerDevelopment
