Suggestion: allow Object with stringify overloading as passwd in connect()

[rwfranks]

Transcribed verbatim from CPAN RT#96763, warts and all.

Fri Jun 27 07:25:39 2014 zaucker [...] oetiker.ch - Ticket created
Subject: Suggestion: allow Object with stringify overloading as passwd in connect()

Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 13:25:25 +0200 (CEST)
To: [email protected]
From: Fritz Zaucker [email protected]

Dear DBI-maintainers,

first of all, many thanks for your great work on this module.

I recently used Damian Conway's IO::Prompter module to ask the user for a
DB-password to be used later in a call to DBI->connect().

As it turns out, DBI->connect() tests the parameter passed as password (for
being a string, I guess):

     Carp::croak('Usage: $class->connect([$dsn [,$user [,$passwd [,\%attr]]]])')
       if (ref $old_driver or ($attr and not ref $attr) or ref $pass);
#                                                         ^^^^^^^^^

IO::Prompter->prompt() returns an object with lazy evaluation of the user's
input (unless called with the -verbatim option). Therefore

my $dsn = 'whatever';
my $user = 'fritz';
my $passwd = IO::Prompter->prompt();
DBI->connect($dsn, $user, $passwd);

will croak().

This would solve the problem:

   use overload;
   Carp::croak('Usage: $class->connect([$dsn [,$user [,$passwd [,\%attr]]]])')
       if (ref $old_driver or ($attr and not ref $attr) or
          (ref $pass and not overload::Method($pass,q{""}));

  (as suggested by Damian).

Now, this is not really a very pressing issue, as I can always use the
-verbatim option for IO::Prompter (or force the lazy evaluation before
calling DBI->connect().

But perhaps you might want to use the above patch (overload being a core module
should make this painless for users of DBI).

Cheers,
Fritz

--
Oetiker+Partner AG tel: +41 62 775 9903 (direct)
Fritz Zaucker +41 62 775 9900 (switch board)
Aarweg 15 +41 79 675 0630 (mobile)
CH-4600 Olten fax: +41 62 775 9905
Schweiz web: www.oetiker.ch

[rwfranks]

Sun Sep 21 08:08:25 2014 TIMB [...] cpan.org - Correspondence added

Thanks for the suggestion Fritz.

As you say, it's not a high priority. However, if you want to contribute, I'd consider a patch that only loads the overload module if needed and includes tests.

Sun Sep 21 08:08:26 2014 The RT System itself - Status changed from 'new' to 'open'