What are common pitfalls or gotchas with Catalyst?

Catalyst, a popular Perl MVC framework, can be very powerful, but there are some common pitfalls that developers may encounter. Understanding these gotchas can help you develop more robust applications.

Common Pitfalls in Catalyst

  • Session Management: Misconfiguration of session storage can lead to data loss or security vulnerabilities.
  • Database Connections: Failing to handle database connections properly can result in connection leaks or performance issues.
  • Routing Issues: Confusing routes can cause unexpected behavior in your application, leading to 404 errors or incorrect responses.
  • Dependency Conflicts: Catalyst depends on various modules that can sometimes conflict with each other or with other parts of your application.
  • Debugging Challenges: Limited debugging information can make it hard to troubleshoot errors unless proper logging is implemented.

Example of Addressing a Common Pitfall

Here is an example of how to properly manage database connections:

package MyApp::Model::DB; use parent qw/Catalyst::Model::DBIC::Schema/; __PACKAGE__->config( schema_class => 'MyApp::Schema', create_set => 1, connect_info => [ 'dbi:SQLite:myapp.db', '', '', { RaiseError => 1, PrintError => 0 } ], ); 1;

Catalyst Perl MVC framework common pitfalls session management database connections routing issues debugging