[pm-h] JSON web services server side starting hints

[Mark Allen]

No need for CGI or Apache or anything else in the pipeline.

starman your_dancer_app.pl

https://metacpan.org/pod/Starman


Most people front the Starman instance(s) with nginx to load balance, reverse proxy, terminate SSL and accept requests off port 80 or 443. Many use Server::Starter as Brett suggests below, too.

I echo the suggestion to use REST semantics for any API because that decouples your clients from any particular implementation of an RPC protocol.  You can use curl as a client if you want in a REST environment.  I personally see that as a feature.




On Tuesday, October 29, 2013 9:00 AM, B. Estrade <estrabd at gmail.com> wrote:
 
On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 5:12 PM, Michael R. Davis <mrdvt92 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> > I need to set up JSON web services (server side) as a simple interface to an existing database infrastructure.  Can anyone recommend any building blocks, standards, etc.?
>
>> From: Mark Allen <mrallen1 at yahoo.com>
>> Sent: Saturday, October 26, 2013 12:13 AM
>> http://advent.perldancer.org/2010/8-Writing REST web services with Dancer
>
>
>So, I just wanted to follow up on my progress and research.  It was a bit frustrating!
> 
>Even though REST is not a requirement, I looked into Dancer and it was okay but boy was it a lot of research to just get it to work under Apache CGI with Plack::Runner.  I also DO NOT like that it's function based.  To get there I had to write a session object which returns a lazy loading DBIx::Array database handle .  But, overall I did like the dispatching (except I kept forgetting the sub is an anonymous sub to the function "get" so the "get" function needs a semicolon at the end of the anonymous sub block).
> 
>Next I'm going to look a the JSON RPC packages on CPAN.  I've attached my code here as it really is throwaway at this time.  I hope someone else can learn from it.
>


If you are going to run Dancer, I'd suggest nginx. Apache is fine, but if you're passing the request off, it's better to have a lighter weight httpd (that also supports SSL) in front of it. For the PSGI server, I'd look at Starman (coupled potentially with Server::Starter for initialization). And it's really not unlike CGI::Application, just PSGI compliant and built for persistence.

If you are not bound to a persistent process, then CGI::Application + CGI::Application::Dispatch is really nice. There are also tons of plugins, including Sessions and Authentication.

I do like Dancer, but am not as familiar with it as CGI::Application. Whatever you use, however, I would recommend committing to "REST" rather than RPC. 

At the end of the day, your API will be much cleaner and you'll end up writing a lot less code on the backend to handle the requests.  I would also consider a PSGI compliant framework since it really opens up your hosting and testing options.

Brett
 
 
>---
>My Dancer CGI app,,,
> 
>$ cat dancer.cgi
>#!/usr/bin/env perl
>use Plack::Runner;
>Plack::Runner->run('/var/www/cgi-bin/dancer.pl');
>
> 
>$ cat dancer.pl
>#/usr/bin/perl
>use strict;
>use warnings;
>use Dancer;
> 
>set 'logger'       => 'console';
>set 'show_errors'  => 1;
>set 'warnings'     => 1;
> 
>our $session; #cannot set session here at compile time
> 
>sub session { #set session at run time
>  return $session||=STOP::Session->new(%{params()});
>}
> 
>get '/' => sub {
>  content_type 'text/html';
>  return '<p>Hello World!<p>';
>};
> 
>get '/env' => sub {
>  content_type 'text/plain';
>  return join "\n", map {sprintf "%s => %s", $_ => $ENV{$_}} sort keys %ENV;
>};
> 
>get '/die' => sub {
>  die("Error: die\n");
>};
> 
>prefix '/:database/:dag';
>
>#content_type 'application/json';
>content_type 'text/plain';
> 
>get '/params' => sub {
>  content_type 'text/plain';
>  return join "\n", map {sprintf "%s => %s", $_ => param($_)} sort keys %{params()};
>};
> 
>get '/device/:id' => sub {
>  return to_json {
>            device    => scalar({}),
>            id        => param("id"),
>            schematxt => &session->schematxt,
>            date      => &session->sdb->sqlscalar("SELECT SYSDATE FROM DUAL"),
>         };
>};
> 
>get '/devices' => sub {
>  return to_json {
>           devices => scalar(&session->sdb->sqlarrayhash(&devices_sql(&session->schematxt), &session->userid)),
>         };
>};
> 
>dance;
>
> 
> 
>---
> 
>mrdvt92
>
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