The application we'll be building in this chapter is called ChatStat and arises from a need to track the opinions of irc.perl.org denizens. A common convention on irc.perl.org is to add ++ or -- and a quip after a word. These one-liners are usually amusing and deserve to live on after they've scrolled off the screen. So, we'll write a Catalyst application to make this data available on the Web.
Following is a glimpse of what you are going to build:
Best/worst/most controversial and least controversial topic listing:
Reasons for being loved and hated for a single item:
Reasons for ups and downs (chained actions just like the previous):
Before we set up the data model, it's important to understand what data we need to keep track of. The most important piece of data to track is the actual opinions from the IRC channel. A complete opinion on IRC looks something like the following:
(on #channel) < nickname> (some thing)++ # things are good
Here we see nickname saying...