User::Identity(3pm)

User Contributed Perl Documentation

User::Identity(3pm)

NAME¶

User::Identity - maintains info about a physical person

INHERITANCE¶

 User::Identity
   is a User::Identity::Item

SYNOPSIS¶

 use User::Identity;
 my $me = User::Identity->new
  ( 'john'
  , firstname => 'John'
  , surname   => 'Doe'
  );
 print $me->fullName  # prints "John Doe"
 print $me;           # same

DESCRIPTION¶

The "User::Identity" object is created to maintain a set of informational objects which are related to one user. The "User::Identity" module tries to be smart providing defaults, conversions and often required combinations.

The identities are not implementing any kind of storage, and can therefore be created by any simple or complex Perl program. This way, it is more flexible than an XML file to store the data. For instance, you can decide to store the data with Data::Dumper, Storable, DBI, AddressBook or whatever. Extension to simplify this task are still to be developed.

If you need more kinds of user information, then please contact the module author.

OVERLOADED¶

$obj-> stringification

When an "User::Identity" is used as string, it is automatically translated into the fullName() of the user involved.

example:

 my $me = User::Identity->new(...)
 print $me;          # same as  print $me->fullName
 print "I am $me\n"; # also stringification

METHODS¶

Constructors¶

User::Identity-> new([NAME], OPTIONS)

Create a new user identity, which will contain all data related to a single physical human being. Most user data can only be specified at object construction, because they should never change. A NAME may be specified as first argument, but also as option, one way or the other is required.

 Option     --Defined in     --Default
 birth                         undef
 charset                       $ENV{LC_CTYPE}
 courtesy                      undef
 description  User::Identity::Item  undef
 firstname                     undef
 formal_name                   undef
 full_name                     undef
 gender                        undef
 initials                      undef
 language                      'en'
 name         User::Identity::Item  <required>
 nickname                      undef
 parent       User::Identity::Item  undef
 prefix                        undef
 surname                       undef
 titles                        undef

. birth => DATE

. charset => STRING

. courtesy => STRING

. description => STRING

. firstname => STRING

. formal_name => STRING

. full_name => STRING

. gender => STRING

. initials => STRING

. language => STRING

. name => STRING

. nickname => STRING

. parent => OBJECT

. prefix => STRING

. surname => STRING

. titles => STRING

Attributes¶

$obj-> age

Calcuted from the datge of birth to the current moment, as integer. On the birthday, the number is incremented already.

$obj-> birth

Returns the date in standardized format: YYYYMMDD, easy to sort and select. This may return "undef", even if the dateOfBirth() contains a value, simply because the format is not understood. Month or day may contain '00' to indicate that those values are not known.

$obj-> charset

The user's prefered character set, which defaults to the value of LC_CTYPE environment variable.

$obj-> courtesy

The courtesy is used to address people in a very formal way. Values are like "Mr.", "Mrs.", "Sir", "Frau", "Heer", "de heer", "mevrouw". This often provides a way to find the gender of someone addressed.

$obj-> dateOfBirth

Returns the date of birth, as specified during instantiation.

$obj-> description

See "Attributes" in User::Identity::Item

$obj-> firstname

Returns the first name of the user. If it is not defined explicitly, it is derived from the nickname, and than capitalized if needed.

$obj-> formalName

Returns a formal name for the user. If not defined as instantiation parameter (see new()), it is constructed from other available information, which may result in an incorrect or an incomplete name. The result is built from "courtesy initials prefix surname title".

$obj-> fullName

If this is not specified as value during object construction, it is guessed based on other known values like "firstname prefix surname". If a surname is provided without firstname, the nickname is taken as firstname. When a firstname is provided without surname, the nickname is taken as surname. If both are not provided, then the nickname is used as fullname.

$obj-> gender

Returns the specified gender of the person, as specified during instantiation, which could be like 'Male', 'm', 'homme', 'man'. There is no smart behavior on this: the exact specified value is returned. Methods isMale(), isFemale(), and courtesy() are smart.

$obj-> initials

The initials, which may be derived from the first letters of the firstname.

$obj-> isFemale

See isMale(): return true if we are sure the user is a woman.

$obj-> isMale

Returns true if we are sure that the user is male. This is specified as gender at instantiation, or derived from the courtesy value. Methods isMale and isFemale are not complementatory: they can both return false for the same user, in which case the gender is undertermined.

$obj-> language

Can contain a list or a single language name, as defined by the RFC Examples are 'en', 'en-GB', 'nl-BE'. The default language is 'en' (English).

$obj-> name([NEWNAME])

See "Attributes" in User::Identity::Item

$obj-> nickname

Returns the user's nickname, which could be used as username, e-mail alias, or such. When no nickname was explicitly specified, the name is used.

$obj-> prefix

The words which are between the firstname (or initials) and the surname.

$obj-> surname

Returns the surname of person, or "undef" if that is not known.

$obj-> titles

The titles, degrees in education or of other kind. If these are complex, you may need to specify the formal name of the users as well, because smart formatting probably failes.