Introduction

Synopsis

Type::Tiny is a small Perl class for writing type constraints, inspired by Moose 's type constraint API and MooseX::Types . It has only one non-core dependency (and even that is simply a module that was previously distributed as part of Type::Tiny but has since been spun off), and can be used with Moose , Mouse , or Moo (or none of the above).

Type::Tiny is used by over 1000 Perl distributions on the CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network) and can be considered a stable and mature framework for efficiently and reliably enforcing data types.

Type::Tiny is bundled with Type::Library a framework for organizing type constraints into collections. Also bundled is Types::Standard , a Moose-inspired library of useful type constraints. Type::Params is also provided, to allow very fast checking and coercion of function and method parameters.

The following example gives you an idea of some of the features of these modules. If you don't understand it all, that's fine; that's what the rest of the manual is for. Although the example uses Moo, the use Moo could be changed to use Moose or use Mouse and it would still work. 

 use v5.12;
 use strict;
 use warnings;
 
 package Horse {
   use Moo;
   use Types::Standard qw( Str Int Enum ArrayRef InstanceOf );
   use Type::Params qw( signature );
   use namespace::autoclean;
   
   has name => (
     is       => 'ro',
     isa      => Str,
     required => 1,
   );
   has gender => (
     is       => 'ro',
     isa      => Enum[qw( f m )],
   );
   has age => (
     is       => 'rw',
     isa      => Int->where( '$_ >= 0' ),
   );
   has children => (
     is       => 'ro',
     isa      => ArrayRef[ InstanceOf['Horse'] ],
     default  => sub { return [] },
   );
   
   sub add_child {
     state $check = signature(
       method     => Object,
       positional => [ InstanceOf['Horse'] ]
     );
     
     my ( $self, $child ) = $check->(@_);   # unpack @_
     push @{ $self->children }, $child;
     
     return $self;
   }
 }
 
 package main;
 
 my $boldruler = Horse->new(
   name    => "Bold Ruler",
   gender  => 'm',
   age     => 16,
 );
 
 my $secretariat = Horse->new(
   name    => "Secretariat",
   gender  => 'm',
   age     => 0,
 );
 
 $boldruler->add_child( $secretariat );
 
 use Types::Standard qw( is_Object assert_Object );
 
 # is_Object will return a boolean
 #
 if ( is_Object($boldruler) ) {
   say $boldruler->name;
 }
 
 # assert_Object will return $secretariat or die
 #
 say assert_Object( $secretariat )->name;

Manual

Even if you are using Type::Tiny with other object-oriented programming toolkits (such as Moose or Mouse), you should start with the Moo sections of the manual. Most of the information is directly transferrable and the Moose and Mouse sections of the manual list the minor differences between using Type::Tiny with Moo and with them.

In general, this manual assumes you use Perl 5.12 or above and may use examples that do not work on older versions of Perl. Type::Tiny does work on earlier versions of Perl, but not all the examples and features in the manual will run without adjustment. (For instance, you may need to replace state variables with lexical variables, avoid the package NAME { BLOCK } syntax, etc.)

See Also

The Type::Tiny homepage .