Description

The purpose of this class is to make a connection between the hash entries, defined in every generated class, and the native calls in the Gnome libraries, represented by each entry in the Hash.

When a native call is found and a call object is made, it is stored temporarely in the same Hash so this work does not have to be done a second time for the particular routine in the same run of the program.

A few examples taken from Gnome::Gdk4::ContentProvider shows a definition of a constructor and one of a method definition;

new-for-bytes => %(
  :type(Constructor), :is-symbol<gdk_content_provider_new_for_bytes>,
  :returns(N-Object), :parameters([ Str, N-Object])
),

get-value => %(
  :is-symbol<gdk_content_provider_get_value>,  :returns(gboolean),
  :cnv-return(Bool), :parameters([N-Object, CArray[N-Error]])
),

The entries in the hash is selected by a key which is the name of the method used in Raku. The value in the is-symbol field is the real name in the Gnome library. The type field is a means to handle the entry by this module. The rest of the fields speak for themselves.

However, when looking in the documentation of Gnome, you will e.g. see;

gboolean
gdk_content_provider_get_value (
  GdkContentProvider* provider,
  GValue* value,
  GError** error
)

A keen observer will notice that there are 3 parameters needed while the hash entry only specify 2!. Well, the first parameter of the native calls, when acting as a method, is always the native object of that particular class, in this case the content provider. So, to save space, the first argument is left out and will be inserted when a call is made.

All native objects are having the N-Object type, no matter what. The constructor will create one and stores it in the Raku object.

The API of the methods in this module will not be documented because it is of no value for the normal use.