Deprecate Mojo::DOM::AUTOLOAD and Mojo::Collection::AUTOLOAD

[kraih]

I expect this to be a controversial pull request. While those two AUTOLOAD methods allow for some pretty nice shortcuts, like $dom->find('not(p)')->strip and $dom->parse('<div><b>Test</b></div>')->div->b->to_string, they can also be rather confusing for less experienced Perl programmers.

Especially the fact that Mojo::DOM::AUTOLOAD can return a single Mojo::DOM object, or a Mojo::Collection object containing Mojo::DOM objects, depending on the structure of the HTML/XML document, makes it pretty much impossible to use outside of one-liners. This is documented, but we regularly see questions about how to use it in non-trivial scripts anyhow.

Other problematic cases are the infamous $dom->find('foo')->find('bar') and $dom->find('foo')->at('bar'), with unexpected return values for anyone who hasn't spent a lot of time with the documentation.

[Akron]

👍 I always liked the limited use of magic in Mojolicious and considered AUTOLOAD in Mojo::DOM nice voodoo, but voodoo - meaning I avoided it. So I would really appreciate the deprecation.

[sattellite]

Good idea. Reducing the number of objects when they are not needed - excellent!

[kraih]

Guess this is less controversial than expected. 😃

[jberger]

I understand why this is necessary, and will grudgingly vote for it. I wonder if any corresponding changes can be made to the get command and to ojo to ease the passing of this feature which was most useful on the command line?

[powerman]

You right about Mojo::DOM::AUTOLOAD, it create inconsistency and even looks weird, but what is wrong with Mojo::Collection::AUTOLOAD?