Constants Namespaces in .tt files

[fu]

I'm looking for feedback on Bug 3170: Constant Namespaces in DW::Template.

Basically, right now our constants in .tt files can be found under email.*, site.*, roots.*, etc, and the more constants we have, the more likely it is that we'll accidentally have a namespace collision. So I would like to have all constants be under just the site namespace.

That is, instead of using:
email.webmaster
roots.site
site.name

We can use:
site.email.webmaster
site.root
site.name

In some cases, it's longer, but the additional clarity should be worth the extra characters. (Plus it would also make it easier to avoid mistakes -- I found several instances of dw.* in the files, which are blank, but luckily cause no issues)


site.name = $LJ::SITENAME
site.names.short = $LJ::SITENAMESHORT
site.names.abbrev = $LJ::SITENAMEABBREV

site.company = $LJ::SITECOMPANY

site.email.coppa = $LJ::COPPA_EMAIL
site.email.privacy = $LJ::PRIVACY_EMAIL

site.domain = $LJ::DOMAIN
site.domains.web = $LJ::DOMAIN_WEB

site.root = $LJ::SITEROOT
site.roots.img = $LJ::IMGPREFIX
site.roots.ssl = $LJ::SSLROOT

site.help.* = \%LJ::HELPURL





I'd like to point out, in particular,
site.name = $LJ::SITENAME
site.names.short = $LJ::SITENAMESHORT
site.names.abbrev = $LJ::SITENAMEABBREV

which suffers from inconsistency/needing to be aware of the technical limitations.

An alternative:
site.name.site = $LJ::SITENAME
site.name.short = $LJ::SITENAMESHORT
site.name.abbrev = $LJ::SITENAMEABBREV

But that suffers from the problem that the most commonly used variable, site.name, becomes long/ridiculous/redundant.

Comments

[kareila]

Why not:

site.name
site.nameshort
site.nameabbrev?

[alierak]

Also, I'm not familiar with TT, but is there a fundamental limitation that would prevent you using

site.name
site.name.short
site.name.abbrev?

[fu]

Yes, kinda. It would be like trying to do:

$site{name} = "value";
$site{name} = {};
$site{name}->{short} = "value";

That is, the value is overwritten.

There may be a way around it, but if there is, I haven't found it yet.

[alierak]

Okay, yeah. Can't store a value and a hashref in the same place. I do see a way to create a constant with a dot in the name (since Template::Namespace::Constants->new takes a perl hashref with arbitrary hash keys), but no way to access it, since the access would be fully tokenized before trying to look things up as hash keys.

[fu]

It may be possible using something called a custom stash that TT does... but I can't detangle it enough to go for it *g*

I will probably go with the simpler solution that kareila suggested o/

[mark]

In general, I'm in favor of moving everything to site.*.

In specific, I think Jen's suggestion is great.