NAME
   Module::Pluggable - automatically give your module the ability to have
   plugins

SYNOPSIS
   Simple use Module::Pluggable as a base -

       package MyClass;
       use Module::Pluggable;
       use base qw(Module::Pluggable);

   and then later ...

       use MyClass;
       my $mc = MyClass->new();
       # returns the names of all plugins installed under MyClass::Plugins::*
       my @plugins = $mc->plugins();

   Alternatively, if you don't want to use 'plugins' as the method ...

       package MyClass;
       use Module::Pluggable (sub_name => 'foo');
       use base qw(Module::Pluggable);

   and then later ...

       my @plugins = $mc->foo();

   Or if you want to look in another directory

       package MyClass;
       use Module::Pluggable (search_path => ['Acme/MyClass/Plugin', 'MyClass/Extend']);
       use base qw(Module::Pluggable);

   Or if you want to instantiate each plugin rather than just return the
   name

       package MyClass;
       use Module::Pluggable (instantiate => 'new');
       use base qw(Module::Pluggable);

   and then

       # whatever is passed to 'plugins' will be passed
       # to 'new' for each plugin
       my @plugins = $mc->plugins(@options);

DESCRIPTION
   Provides a simple but, hopefully, extensible way of having 'plugins' for
   your module. Obviously this isn't going to be the be all and end all of
   solutions but it works for me.

   Essentially all it does is export a method into your namespace that
   looks through a search path for .pm files and turn those into class
   names.

   Optionally it instantiates those classes for you.

OPTIONS
   You can pass a hash of options when importing this module.

   The options can be ...

 sub_name
   The name of the subroutine to create in your namespace.

   By default this is 'plugins'

 search_path
   An array ref of paths to look in. Whilst attempts have been made provide
   cross platform-ness when looking for plugins you'll have to take care of
   the search paths yourself.

   See the test files for examples on how to do this.

   But something like this should work

       use File::Spec::Functions qw(catdir);
       # search in Some/Path/To/Plugins but in a cross platform way
       use Module::Pluggable (search_path => [catdir(qw(Some Path To Plugins))]);

 instantiate
   Call this method on the class. In general this will probably be 'new'
   but it can be whatever you want. Whatever arguments are passed to
   'plugins' will be passed to the method.

   The default is 'undef' i.e just return the class name.

FUTURE PLANS
   This does everything I need and I can't really think fo any other
   features I want to add. Finding multiple packages in one .pm file is
   probably too hard and AFAICS it should 'just work'[tm] with PAR.

   However suggestions (and patches) are welcome.

AUTHOR
   Simon Wistow <[email protected]>

COPYING
   Copyright, 2003 Simon Wistow

   Distributed under the same terms as Perl itself.

BUGS
   None known.

SEE ALSO
   File::Spec, File::Find::Rule, File::Basename, Class::Factory::Util