NAME
    Badger - Perl Application Programming Toolkit

SYNOPSIS
        use Badger;
            
        # 1) have more fun
        # 2) get the job done quicker
        # 3) make your code shinier
        # 4) finish work early
        # 5) go skateboarding
        # 6) enjoy life

WARNING
    This is the third version of the Badger Toolkit. It should be treated as
    *alpha* quality code.

    !!! READ THE MORE DETAILED WARNING IN Badger.pm !!!    

DESCRIPTION
    The Badger toolkit is a collection of Perl modules designed to simplify
    the process of building object-oriented Perl applications. It provides a
    set of foundation classes upon which you can quickly build robust and
    reliable systems that are simple, sexy and scalable. All modulo the
    warning above.
    
  Overview
    Let's take a quick frolic through the feature list forest to get an idea
    what "Badger" is all about.

    Foundation classes for OO programming
        Badger includes base classes for creating regular objects
        (Badger::Base), mixin objects (Badger::Mixin), prototypes/singletons
        (Badger::Prototype), factory classes (Badger::Factory) and central
        resource hubs (Badger::Hub).

    Class Metaprogramming
        The Badger::Class module employs metaprogramming techniques to
        simplify the process of defining object classes. It provides methods
        to automate many of the annoying trivial tasks required to
        "bootstrap" an object class: specifying base classes, version
        numbers, exportable symbols, defining constants, loading utility
        functions from external modules, creating accessor and mutator
        methods, and so on. There are also methods that simplify the process
        of accessing class data (e.g. package variables) to save all that
        mucking about in symbols tables. Some of these methods will also
        account for inheritance between related classes, making it much
        easier to share default configuration values between related
        classed, for example.

        Badger::Class can itself be subclassed, allowing you to build your
        own metaprogramming modules tailored to your particular needs.

    Error handling and debugging
        Base classes and mixin modules provide functionality for both *hard
        errors* in the form of exception-based error handling and *soft
        errors* for declining requests (e.g. to fetch a resource that
        doesn't exist) that aren't failures but require special handling.
        Methods for debugging and raising general warnings are also
        provided. Generic hooks are provided for receiving notification of,
        or implementing custom handling for errors, warnings and declines.
        Running alongside this is a generic message formatting system that
        allow you to define all error/warning/debug messages in one place
        where they can easily be localised (e.g. to a different spoken
        language) or customised (e.g. to generate HTML format instead of
        plain text).

    Symbol Exporter
        Badger implements an object oriented version of the Exporter module
        in the form of Badger::Exporter. It works correctly with respect to
        class inheritance (that is, a subclass automatically inherits the
        exportable symbols from its base classes) and provides a number of
        additional features to simplify the process of defining exportable
        symbols and adding custom import hooks.

    Standard utilities and constants.
        The Badger::Utils module provides a number of simple utility
        functions of its own as well as acting as a delegate to various
        other standard utility modules (e.g. Scalar::Util, Digest::MD5,
        etc). Badger::Constants defines various constants used by the Badger
        modules and also of general use. Both these modules are designed to
        be subclassed so that you can create your own collections of utility
        functions, constants, and so on.

    Filesystem modules
        The Badger::Filesystem module and friends provide an object-oriented
        interface to a filesystem. Files and directories are represented as
        Badger::Filesystem::File and Badger::Filesystem::Directory objects
        respectively. As well as being useful for general filesystem
        manipulation (in this respect, they are very much like the
        Path::Class modules), the same modules can also be used to represent
        virtual filesystems via the Badger::Filesystem::Virtual module. This
        allows you to "mount" a virtual file system under a particular
        directory (useful when you're dealing with web sites to map page
        URLs, e.g. /example/page.html, to the source files, e.g.
        /path/to/example/page.html). You can also create a virtual file
        system that is a composite of several root directories (if you're
        familiar with the Template Toolkit then think of the way the
        "INCLUDE_PATH" works).

    Codec modules
        Going hand-in-hand with many basic filesystem operations, the codec
        modules provide a simple object interface for encoding and decoding
        data to and from any particular format. The underlying functionality
        is provided by existing Perl modules (e.g. MIME::Base64, Storable,
        YAML, etc). The codec modules are wrappers that provide a standard
        interface to these various different modules. It provides both
        functional and object oriented interfaces, regardless of how the
        underlying module works. It also provides the relevant hooks that
        allow codec objects to be composed into pipeline sequences.

    Free
        Badger is Open Source and "free" in both "free beer" and "free
        speech" senese of the word. It's 100% pure Perl and has no external
        dependencies on any modules that aren't part of the Perl core.
        Badger is the base platform for version 3 of the Template Toolkit
        (coming RSN) and has portability and ease of installation as primary
        goals. Non-core Badger add-on modules can make as much use of CPAN
        as they like (something that is usually to be encouraged) but the
        Badger core will always be dependency-free to keep it
        upload-to-your-ISP friendly.

FURTHER INFORMATION
    See the documentation included with the Badger modules, starting with
    Badger.pm.  Or look online:

       http://badgerpower.com/ 

AUTHOR
    Andy Wardley <abw@wardley.org>

COPYRIGHT
    Copyright (C) 1996-2008 Andy Wardley. All Rights Reserved.

    This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
    under the same terms as Perl itself.

