Greetings fellow monks,

I'm playing around with Class::DBI again, and I'd really like to pass dynamic DSNs and other database connection information to my parent class from the calling script or application module. I've been using Config::IniFiles for a while now, and I really like it and would like to continue to use it. I've been toying with a few ideas on how to combine my various wants, and here's what I've come up with.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Config::IniFiles;
my $cfg;
BEGIN {
  $cfg = new Config::IniFiles( -file => 'settings.ini' );
  $ENV{_MyCDBI} = join("\t",
    $cfg->val('Database', 'dsn'),
    $cfg->val('Database', 'Username'),
    $cfg->val('Database', 'Password')
  );
}
use MyCDBI;
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I'm using use here just because it's habit and because it runs parallel to using other CPAN stuff and my own application modules. However, I could just as easily require instead of use to simplify things.

my $cfg = new Config::IniFiles( -file => 'settings.ini' );
$ENV{_MyCDBI} = join("\t",
  $cfg->val('Database', 'dsn'),
  $cfg->val('Database', 'Username'),
  $cfg->val('Database', 'Password')
);
require MyCDBI;
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Either way, I just split the various bits inside my Class::DBI parent.

package MyCDBI;
use base 'Class::DBI::mysql';
__PACKAGE__->connection(split("\t", $ENV{_MyCDBI}));
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Now, this works just fine, and I'm more or less happy with it for my purposes, but it's far from optimum. First of all, I'm using poor-man's serialization of the bits for the database connection. A better solution would include the capability of sending stuff like {AutoCommit => 1} and whatever else. Plus, the code in the calling script is somewhat obnoxious. I'd love to use use if possible, but even without, it's three lines long. I know if merlyn saw this, he'd cringe and use a one-liner alternative.

So my question is thus: What are some better ways of doing this? (Better = less lines of code, more flexible data sent, more class encapsulation, more coffee, etc.) One thing I was thinking about was writing an abstraction class for my parent Class::DBI class. I've always hated having to refer to the subclass names multiple times.

my $obj = MyCDBI::SomeDBObj->retrieve(1);
# versus
my $cls = new MyCDBI;
my $obj = $cls->SomeDBObj->retrieve(1);
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But I can't really say exactly why I don't like this.

I've been reading about Class::DBI::Factory, but I have to admit that much of it goes way over my head. Should I just grin and deal with the learning curve? Or is there a simpler way?