Using q() to define a query

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Using q() to define a query

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From:

Colin Wetherbee

Date:

January 10, 2008 19:59

Subject:

Using q() to define a query

Greetings.

I have a DBI (DBD::Pg) application I'm building in mod_perl.  My queries 
tend to look something like the following.

   my $sql = q(SELECT departure_date, eq.name AS equipment,
     dp.full_city AS departure_city, ap.full_city AS arrival_city,
     ca.name AS carrier_name, number
     FROM jsjourneys
     FULL OUTER JOIN jscarriers AS ca ON jsjourneys.carrier = ca.id
     FULL OUTER JOIN jsequipment AS eq ON jsjourneys.equipment = eq.id
     JOIN jsports AS dp ON jsjourneys.departure_port = dp.id
     JOIN jsports AS ap ON jsjourneys.arrival_port = ap.id
     ORDER BY departure_date);

And, then, I execute them as follows.

   $dbh->selectall_arrayref($sql, { Slice => {} });

Which works quite well.

However, I'm concerned about $sql because when I output it to Apache's 
debug log, it looks like this:

[Fri Jan 11 03:49:09 2008] [debug] Log.pm(36): [client 192.168.171.80] 
[JetSet] SELECT departure_date, eq.name AS equipment,\n 
dp.full_city AS departure_city, ap.full_city AS arrival_city,\n 
ca.name AS carrier_name, number\n      FROM jsjourneys\n      FULL OUTER 
JOIN jscarriers AS ca ON jsjourneys.carrier = ca.id\n      FULL OUTER 
JOIN jsequipment AS eq ON jsjourneys.equipment = eq.id\n      JOIN 
jsports AS dp ON jsjourneys.departure_port = dp.id\n      JOIN jsports 
AS ap ON jsjourneys.arrival_port = ap.id\n      ORDER BY departure_date

Notice the newline characters in there.  If those were really in the 
query, I can't imagine the database would run it, so I suppose they're 
an artifact of the combination of using q() to quote my query and using 
Apache's logger to output it.

All this leads up to a pretty simple question: is using q() to quote my 
queries a bad thing, and/or will it cause trouble in the future?

(As an aside, how do you guys quote your queries?  I find that for 
anything longer than about 60 characters, q() and '' and everything else 
start to look horribly inelegant.)

Thanks.

Colin

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