The Catalyst development team is proud to announce the release of Catalyst version 5.

Most noticeable new features are next to countless bufixes and improvements:

    - New sweet syntax for action definition

           sub default : Private { $_[1]->res->output('Hello') } );

           sub default : Local { $_[1]->res->output('Hello') } );

           sub default : Global { $_[1]->res->output('Hello') } );

           sub index : Path('/index.html') {
               my ( $self, $c ) = @_;
               $c->res->output('Hello');
               $c->forward('foo');
           }

           sub product : Regex('^product[_]*(\d*).html$') {
               my ( $self, $c ) = @_;
               $c->stash->{template} = 'product.tt';
               $c->stash->{product} = $c->req->snippets->[0];
           }

    - Mason autohandlers like 'auto' actions

    - Refactored engines (Test, HTTP, CGI, FCGI, mod_perl1 and experimental mod_perl2)

    - Whole new core with a very extendable api (it's possible to change nearly everything)

    - New testing framework (with actually around 300 tests) which can even test remote applications over http!

    - Helper system using TT2 (does not exclude Mason!)

For the Ajax addicted, we've also ported the helper tags for the famous Prototype JavaScript library from Ruby on Rails, available from CPAN as Catalyst::Plugin::Prototype.

And for Pluggable applications there is now Catalyst::Plugin::Pluggable on CPAN , which makes it dead simple to add a plugin api to your application.


If you might not know what the Catalyst Framework is either.

We've labeled it as a " Elegant MVC Web Application Framework", whatever that means.
To explain easily, it's the glue that binds web development technologies like templates, database models and web servers together.
Catalyst borrows heavily from systems like Ruby On Rails and Maypole.
The key concepts are DRY (don't repeat yourself) and Lego Architecture (reusable components).

--
gabb is the greatest... :)