[Pdx-pm] Apache, mod_perl, Catalyst, qx, and the ampersand

[Nathaniel Nuss]

Roderick A. Anderson wrote:
> I'm starting here to get some ideas on whether I'm going anywhere near
> the right direction.
>
> We have a Catalyst based application but have been asked to some
> non-View processing while the user continues with other things.
>
> Short-ish story is we pull a XML file -- specified as a GET from a URL
> redirect.  Parse it and get a URI/URL of a large file.  The next step is
> to pull that file back but not make the user wait on it.  They should be
> able to continue with other parts of the process.
>
> I'm wondering if
>
>   qx{ script_that_does_the_get_and_other_magic & };
>
> is the right way to go.  Other methods of backgrounding a process from
> within Apache/mod_perl.

The cat folks [user mailing list] contemplated this around the end of October:
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/catalyst/users/10412

While I didn't see a clear consensus answer it seems they leaned towards using
a parallel job server to handle such long-running non-interactive requests.

--
Nate Nuss