Writing Apache Modules with Perl and C
By:   Lincoln Stein and Doug MacEachern
Published:   O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.  - March 1999

Copyright © 1999 by O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.


 


   Show Contents   Previous Page   Next Page

Appendix A - Standard Noncore Modules

In this section...

Introduction
The Apache::Registry Class
The Apache::PerlRun Class
The Apache::RegistryLoader Class
The Apache::Resource Class
The Apache::PerlSections Class
The Apache::ReadConfig Class
The Apache::StatINC Class
The Apache::Include Class
The Apache::Status Class

Introduction

   Show Contents   Go to Top   Previous Page   Next Page

In This Appendix

The mod_perl distribution comes with a number of helper classes that add specialized functionality to the package. None of them are essential to write Apache modules in the Perl API or have any equivalent in the C-language API, but they can be very handy at times.

The Apache::Registry Class

   Show Contents   Go to Top   Previous Page   Next Page

The Apache::Registry class is essentially a CGI environment emulator that allows many CGI scripts to run without modification under mod_perl.

Because there are many differences between CGI and the Apache API, Apache::Registry has to do a great deal of work to accomplish this sleight of hand. It loads the scripts in its designated directory, compiles them, and stores them persistently in a memory structure. Before Apache::Registry runs a script, mod_perl will set up the various CGI environment variables, provided PerlSetupEnv is configured to On, which is the default. When the PerlSendHeader directive is On, mod_perl monitors the text printed by the script, intercepts the HTTP header, and passes it through send_cgi_header(). It also arranges for STDIN to be read from the request object when the script attempts to process POST data. Apache::Registry also monitors the modification dates of the script files it is responsible for and reloads them if their timestamp indicates they have been changed more recently than when they were last compiled.

Despite its complexity, Apache::Registry is easy to set up. The standard configuration consists of an Alias directive and a <Location> section:

Alias /perl/ /home/www/perl
<Location /perl>
 SetHandler     perl-script
 PerlHandler    Apache::Registry
 Options        +ExecCGI
 # optional
 PerlSendHeader On
</Location>

After restarting the server, you can place any (well, almost any) Perl CGI script into /home/www/perl (or the location of your choice) and make it executable. It runs just like an ordinary CGI script but will load much faster.

The behavior of Apache::Registry can be tuned with the following directives:

PerlTaintCheck

When set to On, mod_perl will activate Perl taint checks on all the scripts under its control. Taint checks cause Perl to die with a fatal error if unchecked user-provided data (such as the values of CGI variables) is passed to a potentially dangerous function, such as exec(), eval(), or system().

PerlSendHeader

When set to On, mod_perl will scan for script output that looks like an HTTP header and automatically call send_http_header(). Scripts that send header information using CGI. pm's header() function do not need to activate PerlSendHeader. While scripts that use CGI.pm's header() will still function properly with PerlSendHeader On, turning it Off will save a few CPU cycles.

PerlFreshRestart

If PerlFreshRestart is set to On, mod_perl will flush its cache and reload all scripts when the server is restarted. This is very useful during module development to immediately see the changes to the source code take effect.

PerlWarn

If the script mentions the -w switch on its #! line, Apache::Registry will turn Perl warnings on by setting the $^W global to a nonzero value. The Perl-Warn directive can be configured to On to turn on warnings for all code inside the server.

Apache::Registry has several debug levels which write various informational messages to the server error log. Apache::Registry scripts can change the debug level by importing Apache::Debug with its level pragma:

 use Apache::Debug level => $level;

The debug level is a bit mask generated by ORing together some combination of the following values:

1 Make a note in the error log whenever the module is recompiled
2 Call Apache::Debug::dump() on errors
4 Turn on verbose tracing

The current value of the debug level can be found in the package global $Apache::Registry::Debug. You should not set this value directly, however. See Chapter 2, A First Module, for more hints on debugging Apache::Registry scripts.

The Apache::PerlRun Class

   Show Contents   Go to Top   Previous Page   Next Page

The Apache::PerlRun handler is intended for Perl CGI scripts that depend strongly on the traditional one-process-per-execution CGI model and cannot deal with being invoked repeatedly in the same process. For example, a script that depends on a lot of global variables being uninitialized when it starts up is unlikely to work properly under Apache::Registry.

Like Apache::Registry, Apache::PerlRun manages a directory of CGI scripts, launching them when they are requested. However, unlike Apache::Registry, this module does not cache compiled scripts between runs. A script is loaded and compiled freshly each time it is requested. However, Apache::PerlRun still avoids the overhead of starting a new Perl interpreter for each CGI script, so it's faster than traditional Perl CGI scripting but slower than Apache::Registry or vanilla Apache API modules. It offers a possible upgrade path for CGI scripts: move the script to Apache::PerlRun initially to get a modest performance bump. This gives you time to rework the script to make it globally clean so that it can run under Apache::Registry for the full performance benefit.

The configuration section for running Apache::PerlRun is similar to Apache::Registry:

Alias /perl-run/ /home/www/perl-run/
<Location /perl>
 SetHandler     perl-script
 PerlHandler    Apache::PerlRun
 Options        +ExecCGI
 # optional
 PerlSendHeader On
</Location>

The Apache::PerlRun handler is only a small part of the picture. The rest of the Apache::PerlRun class provides subclassable methods that implement the functionality of Apache::Registry. The Apache::PerlRun handler simply uses a subset of these methods; other modules may override certain methods to implement the Apache::Registry enviroment with a few twists. However, these Apache::PerlRun class methods were not fully defined when this book was going to press.

The Apache::RegistryLoader Class

   Show Contents   Go to Top   Previous Page   Next Page

Ordinarily, Apache::Registry scripts are not compiled until they are needed. This means that the very first time one of these scripts is required by a child process, there will be a delay while the script is loaded and compiled.

Apache::RegistryLoader was designed to avoid this delay by precompiling Apache::Registry scripts during the server startup phase. In addition to minimizing loading time, it also reduces memory consumption because the Registry scripts are compiled into the single server parent process before it forks off the flock of child servers. The memory occupied by this precompiled code is then shared among the children, and although there doesn't appear to be a difference in child process size when you invoke ps (on Unix systems), overall memory consumption is reduced. See the mod_perl_tuning document in the mod_perl distribution for more details.

Typically, you will invoke Apache::RegistryLoader from a Perl startup script. A typical entry looks like this:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use MyFavoriteModule1 ();
use MyFavoriteModule2 ();
...
use Apache::RegistryLoader ();
my $rl = Apache::RegistryLoader->new;
$rl->handler('/perl/test.pl'=> '/home/www/perl/test.pl');
$rl->handler('/perl/test2.pl'=> '/home/www/perl/test2.pl');
...
This code creates a new Apache::RegistryLoader object by invoking the class's new() 
method and then calls this object's handler() method for each script you want
to load. Apache::RegistryLoader is actually a subclass of Apache::Registry which
overrides certain methods such that the Apache::RegistryLoader handler() method only
invokes the script compliation and caching methods of Apache::Registry.

Notice that handler() requires two arguments: the URI of the script to compile and its physical pathname. The reason you can't just provide one or the other is that the task of translating from a URI to a filename is usually done at request time by a translation handler. However, at server startup time there's no request to process, and therefore no way of getting at the translation handler.

If you specify a URI only, Apache::RegistryLoader will try to interpret it relative to the server root. This will work only if the Apache::Registry directory URI is aliased to an identically named physical directory beneath the server root.

Here's an example:

# in httpd.conf
ServerRoot /home/www
Alias      /perl/  /home/www/perl/
# in Perl startup script
use Apache::RegistryLoader ();
Apache::RegistryLoader->new->handler("/perl/test.pl");

Another solution is to provide a URI translation routine to the new() method at the time you create the Apache::RegistryLoader object. The Apache translation handlers can only be run during request time, so we must roll our own during start-up. The translation handler will take an argument consisting of the script URI and return the translated physical pathname to the file as its function result. The following code fragment illustrates how to precompile all .pl files in the directory ~www/perl/:

# in perl.conf (or any other configuration file)
PerlRequire conf/preload_scripts.pl
# in conf/preload_scripts.pl
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use Apache::RegistryLoader ();
use DirHandle ();
use strict;
sub do_translate {
 my $uri = shift;
 return Apache->server_root_relative($uri);
};
my $rl = Apache::RegistryLoader->new(trans => \&do_translate);
my $dir = Apache->server_root_relative("perl/");
my $dh = DirHandle->new($dir) or die $!;
foreach my $file ($dh->read) {
  next unless $file =~ /\.pl$/;
  $rl->handler("/perl/$file");
}
   Show Contents   Go to Top   Previous Page   Next Page
Copyright © 1999 by O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.

HIVE: All information for read only. Please respect copyright!
Hosted by hive КГБ: Киевская городская библиотека