Differences in files/filenames

RT Users
1

I’m trying to sort through lib/RT in order to figure out how to write
scrips/scripts. I read the RT Essentials book but didn’t see anything that
describes the differences between files such as CustomFieldValue.pm and
CustomFieldValues.pm. More importantly, the _Overlay.pm files since, I think,
those are the files with the actual functions I’ll be incorporating into my
scrips/scripts.

Thanks
Mathew

2

Matthew;
try
perldoc /PATH TO RT/lib/RT/name of module

Roy
Mathew Snyder wrote:

3

Hmmm…Should I be using ObjectCustomFieldValues instead?

Mathew

Roy El-Hames wrote:

4

-----Original Message-----
From: rt-users-bounces@lists.bestpractical.com
[mailto:rt-users-bounces@lists.bestpractical.com] On Behalf
Of Mathew Snyder
Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 1:50 AM
To: rt-users@lists.bestpractical.com
Subject: [rt-users] Differences in files/filenames

I’m trying to sort through lib/RT in order to figure out how to write
scrips/scripts. I read the RT Essentials book but didn’t see
anything that
describes the differences between files such as
CustomFieldValue.pm and
CustomFieldValues.pm. More importantly, the _Overlay.pm
files since, I think,
those are the files with the actual functions I’ll be
incorporating into my
scrips/scripts.

Thanks
Mathew

Mathew,

A couple of things to know about the perl code:

A CustomField object is handled by CustomFieldValue.pm and
CustomFieldValue_Overlay.pm - when you make a new CustomField object in your
perl code, the object gets attributes & methods from both of these files. If
a method is defined in both files, the version in _Overlay is the one that’s
effective. Generally, the Overlay file is the one with the intersting stuff
in it.

The file names that are singular (e.g. CustomFieldValue.pm) represent a
single object (row in the database) and are usually based on the generic
RT::Record object. In your perl code you usually populate these objects by a
Load method or as the result of a method call on another object.

The file names that are plural (e.g. CustomFieldValues.pm) represent a
collection of objects - in this case a collection of CustomFieldValue
objects. They are usually based on the generic SearchBuilder object and are
populated by a database query that returns multiple rows (e.g. by limiting
and then iterating through the collection).

Hope this is useful,
Steve

Stephen Turner
Senior Programmer/Analyst - Client Support Services
MIT Information Services and Technology (IS&T)