Data::Stream::Bulk(3)

NAME
Data::Stream::Bulk - N at a time iteration API

VERSION
version 0.11

SYNOPSIS
        # get a bulk stream from somewere
        my $s = Data::Stream::Bulk::Foo->new( ... );

        # can be used like this:
        until ( $s->is_done ) {
                foreach my $item ( $s->items ) {
                        process($item);
                }
        }

        # or like this:
        while( my $block = $s->next ) {
                foreach my $item ( @$block ) {
                        process($item);
                }
        }

DESCRIPTION
This module tries to find middle ground between one at a time and all at once processing of data sets.

The purpose of this module is to avoid the overhead of implementing an iterative api when this isn't necessary, without breaking forward compatibility in case that becomes necessary later on.

The API optimizes for when a data set typically fits in memory and is returned as an array, but the consumer cannot assume that the data set is bounded.

The API is destructive in order to minimize the chance that resultsets are leaked due to improper usage.

API

  Required Methods
The API requires two methods to be implemented:

is_done
    Should return true if the stream is exhausted.

    As long as this method returns a false value (not done) "next" could potentially return another block.

next
    Returns the next block.

    Note that "next" is not guaranteed to return an array reference, even if "is_done" returned false prior to calling it.

  Convenience Methods

items
    This method calls "next" and dereferences the result if there are pending items.

all Force evaluation of the entire resultset.

    Note that for large data sets this might cause swap thrashing of various other undesired effects. Use with caution.

cat @streams
    Concatenates this stream with @streams, returning a single stream.

list_cat @tail
    Returns a possibly cleaned up list of streams.

    Used by "cat".

    Overridden by Data::Stream::Bulk::Array, Data::Stream::Bulk::Cat and Data::Stream::Bulk::Nil to implement some simple short circuiting.

filter $filter
    Applies a per-block block filter to the stream.

    Returns a possibly new stream with the filtering layered.

    $filter is invoked once per block and should return an array reference to the filtered block.

chunk $chunk_size
    Chunks the input stream so that each block returned by "next" will have at least $chunk_size items.

loaded
    Should be overridden to return true if all the items are already realized (e.g. in the case of Data::Stream::Bulk::Array).

    Returns false by default.

    When true calling "all" is supposed to be safe (memory usage should be in the same order of magnitude as stream's own usage).

    This is typically useful when tranforming an array is easier than transorming a stream (e.g. optional duplicate filtering).

CLASSES

Data::Stream::Bulk::Array
    This class is not a stream at all, but just one block. When the data set easily fits in memory this class can be used, while retaining forward compatibility with larger data sets.

Data::Stream::Bulk::Callback
    Callback driven iteration.

Data::Stream::Bulk::Chunked
    Wrapper to return larger blocks from an existing stream.

Data::Stream::Bulk::DBI
    Bulk fetching of data from DBI statement handles.

Data::Stream::Bulk::DBIC
    DBIx::Class::ResultSet iteration.

Data::Stream::Bulk::FileHandle
    Iterates over lines in a text file.

Data::Stream::Bulk::Nil
    An empty result set.

Data::Stream::Bulk::Cat
    A concatenation of several streams.

Data::Stream::Bulk::Filter
    A filter wrapping a stream.

SEE ALSO
HOP::Stream, Iterator, Class::Iterator etc for one by one iteration

DBI, DBIx::Class::ResultSet

POE::Filter

Data::Page

Parallel::Iterator

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MapReduce>, LISP, and all that other kool aid

TODO

Sorted streams
    Add a hint for sorted streams (like "loaded" but as an attribute in the base role).

    Introduce a "merge" operation for merging of sorted streams.

    Optimize "unique" to make use of sorting hints for constant space uniquing.

More utility functions
    To assist in proccessing and creating streams.

Coercion tables
    Moose::Util::TypeConstraints

VERSION CONTROL
This module is maintained using git. You can get the latest version from <http://github.com/nothingmuch/data-stream-bulk/>.

AUTHOR
Yuval Kogman <nothingmuch@woobling.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
This software is copyright (c) 2012 by Yuval Kogman.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.