Link files in Catalyst error messages to Textmate

When you develop with Catalyst, if you have an error condition, you get a pretty interface with access to all the major objects in the request.

At the top, Catalyst will place the classical perl error message like "Caught exception in MODULE, at FILE line LINE."

This hack takes that classical format and links the "FILE line LINE" with a txmt: link. If clicked, it will open directly into your project in TextMate.

The code is simple. Stick this into your main application class:

sub finalize_error {
  my $c = shift;

  $c->NEXT::finalize_error(@_);
  return unless $c->debug;

  my $error_msg = $c->response->output;
  return unless $error_msg;

  $error_msg =~ s{(\s+at\s+)([\/]\S+)\s+line\s+(\d+)}
                 {"$1<a href='"._mk_textmate_link($2, $3)."'>$2 line $3</a>"}ge;
  $c->response->body($error_msg);
}

use Cwd qw( abs_path );
sub _mk_textmate_link {
  my ($file, $line) = @_;

  my $abs_file = abs_path($file);
  return "txmt://open/?url=file://$abs_file&line=$line";
}

It works for me so far. If this breaks anything for you, you get to keep both parts.

Here is a sample of the output with this hack applied (click for bigger version):

Update: a new version. The big change is the use of the abs_path method to make sure you get the absolute path. This solves problems that I was having with symbolic links. TextMate was opening a new window, because the project and the file path in the error message had different prefixes.