[Kc] Decoupling HTTP and interface

[Frank Wiles]

On Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:08:04 -0500
"Kit Peters" <popefelix at gmail.com> wrote:

> So I'm building a RESTful server in Perl to run under Apache2 and
> mod_perl 2.  And it occurs to me that my favorite method of debugging,
> perl -d, is not available in this setup, as all the Perl code is being
> executed by Apache and mod_perl, which are setting up their own
> environment that I can't duplicate easily.  So then it occurs to me
> that the better thing to do would be to work out the behaviour outside
> of Apache and mod_perl altogether.  I could then just make up GET
> strings on the command line or whatever.  For Apache's part, I could
> write my mod_perl handlers to call the subs from my text interface.
> 
> So, before I go reinventing the wheel, has anyone done this already?
> Is there some code out there already that I can integrate into this
> project?

  You can use Apache::DB from CPAN to allow you to do debugging
  on a mod_perl process.  I happen to be the maintainer of that
  module these days, so let me know if you have any problems. ( FYI
  it doesn't work with Perl 5.10 yet, I haven't had a chance to
  sort out the bugs ). 

  One bit of advice however, make sure you run httpd -X so that
  every browser request goes to the same backend of you'll drive
  yourself nuts. 

  But yes, in general you want to use a framework like Catalyst,
  Jifty, Gantry, etc. which do a lot more for you than just
  make debugging a bit easier. 

 -------------------------------------------------------
   Frank Wiles, Revolution Systems, LLC. 
     Personal : frank at wiles.org  http://www.wiles.org
     Work     : frank at revsys.com http://www.revsys.com