mod_perl 2 Tutorial at OSCON this year

[Jim Brandt <cb...@buffalo.edu>]

Hello all,

As you may have noticed, there is a bit of an uptick in Perl 
representation at OSCON this year compared the the last couple of years 
and I'm happy to be a part of that with my Intro to mod_perl 2 tutorial.

http://en.oreilly.com/oscon2008/public/schedule/detail/2819

You'll notice that it is an intro talk, so it may not be of interest to 
the more experienced folks on the list. However, I'd welcome any input 
if you have it.

My basic approach will be to try to give a general lay of the land with 
regard to mod_perl's place in the web serving picture. I find that a lot 
of the initial questions from beginners involve what goes where and what 
exactly is being done by which components. This can all be very 
confusing and a barrier to understanding things, but when you're trying 
to get something done, you don't often look for the broad scope docs. 
You just want an answer.

So I've structured the talk the way I perceive many people getting into 
mod_perl. They might start with CGI acceleration and down the road 
realize they can inject something interesting into the Apache request 
cycle to solve a problem. My hope is people will walk out of the talk 
with a clear picture of the tools that are available and how they fit 
into the big picture.

I'll also cover migrating from 1 to 2 with an example module. I figured 
I could do an actual module and give the changes back to the author or 
release the new Apache2 version. Any suggestions for something fairly 
small but useful under mod_perl 1 that hasn't been migrated?

(I was going to do: http://search.cpan.org/~petdance/Apache-Pod-0.22/, 
but Theron Lewis beat me to it: 
http://search.cpan.org/~kypreos/Apache2-Pod-0.24/)

Also, I'm giving the migration part of the talk at YAPC::NA this year. 
The schedule isn't out yet, but the web site is here:

http://conferences.mongueurs.net/yn2008/

Please pass along the info to anyone you think might benefit from an 
intro to mod_perl talk, or sign up yourself if you're in that situation.

Also, I'd be happy to hear any suggestions.

Thanks,
Jim



-- 
Jim Brandt
Administrative Computing Services
University at Buffalo

Re: mod_perl 2 Tutorial at OSCON this year

[Torsten Foertsch <to...@gmx.net>]

On Fri 18 Apr 2008, Jim Brandt wrote:
> They might start with CGI acceleration and down the road
> realize they can inject something interesting into the Apache request
> cycle to solve a problem.

Not so much for the beginner but to solve problems:

Apache2::Translation provides dynamic request configuration without restarting 
apache. Similar to .htaccess but with several backends and a nice admin 
frontend. From another point of view it looks like a perlish mod_rewrite. 
Works mostly in URI Translation and MapToStorage. If you are interested and 
know German I can provide a bit of text I am writing (when I have time) and a 
few images.

Apache2::POST200 replaces replies to POST requests with HTTP code 200 with 
redirects to the same URL. A keyword passed as parameter then tells the 
server to ship the original answer. When a browser gets an HTTP code 200 as 
reply to a POST request and the user presses "Reload" the browser asks if it 
should repost the data. This is annoying and many people don't know how to 
react. Apache2::POST200 solves that. It can even be deployed on a proxy.

Apache2::ModSSL provides access to mod_ssl exported functions like 
$c->is_https, $c->ssl_var_lookup and $c->ssl_ext_lookup. (The latter looks 
for x509 certificate extensions.)

Don't forget to point out that there is still plenty of work to do to improve 
mod_perl and that fresh developers are welcome.

Torsten

--
Need professional mod_perl support?
Just hire me: torsten.foertsch@gmx.net