NAME

XAO::Web - XAO Web Developer, dynamic content building suite

DESCRIPTION

XAO::Web is a part of XAO open source web services suite. It allows to build dynamic web content using data, templates and external input (for an overview of the templating system please refer to XAO::DO::Web::Page description).

The distinguishing feature of XAO::Web is in its modular design where almost every aspect of functionality can be altered and alterations can be re-used. No complex code is embedded in the templates which allows to upgrade code and templates separately or maintain multiple visual representations of the same functionality at the same time.

Aside from that most interesting features of XAO::Web are:

Perl code is not mixed with templates. Templates can be normal HTML files if no processing is required.
A specific site can replace or modify standard XAO::Web objects if required by overriding or extending their methods. You do not need to re-implement entire object to make a site specific change.

In case of system object upgrade or bug fix there is no need to alter site-specific changes normally.
Site can create any extension objects or embed third-party extensions as well.
One server can serve arbitrary number of XAO::Web sites each with however extended functionality without creating any conflicts. That includes different modifications to the system objects for different sites.
Not limited to Web environment, allows to build any dynamic content -- content of mail messages or reports for instance.
Works with CGI or mod_perl (mod_perl is recommended for production grade sites).
If used in mod_perl mode improves performance by using caching of configuration, parsed templates, database handlers and so on.
XAO::Web is by default integrated with XAO::FS (see XAO::FS) as a database layer, but this is not a requrement -- if for any reason a different database must be used for a site it can be easily and gracefully achieved.
Hosting providers can allow their customers to build very complex sites without allowing them to execute arbitrary code, by allowing to modify only templates.

INSTALLATION

Download tarball from a CPAN server near you, from the master site (http://xao.com/) or using links on http://freshmeat.net/ and then install it in the usual way, just say:

perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
sudo make install

Saying "install XAO::Web" from the CPAN shell is a good way too:

perl -MCPAN -eshell
install XAO::Web

Using CPAN shell is usually the best way because all dependencies will be resolved automatically. If you do manual installation then XAO::Web depends on at least the following modules (look into Makefile.PL or just watch closely the output of `perl Makefile.PL' for additional dependencies):

XAO::Base
XAO::FS
Digest::MD5
Error
MIME::Lite
Test::Unit

When you run "perl Makefile.PL" you will be asked for XAO::Web test database. That database is only used when you do `make test' and it have to exist. It does not matter what is inside the database, it will be completely wiped out for each test case. Normally the database should be the same that you have used for XAO::FS tests and in case of MySQL is usually 'test' or 'test_fs'.

The directory where templates get installed is the same that you gave to XAO::Base when you installed it. Normally that directory is /usr/local/xao -- we will assume that for the rest of the document.

FIRST-TIME RUNNING AND TESTING

You are almost there. Now is the time to try it!

In addition to reading this manual (or instead of reading it if you feel too adventurous today) you can look at the generic site setup in the misc/samplesite/ directory of the distribution archive. The sample site also provides a very useful template to start any project with!

Configure your Apache server so that it would execute /usr/local/xao/handlers/xao-apache.pl when someone types URL like http://test.company.com/cgi-bin/xao-apache.pl. Here is an example of a virtual host configuration for that (or you can simply sym-link xao-apache.pl to your existing cgi-bin directory if you have one):

<VirtualHost 10.0.0.1:80>
 ServerName   test.company.com
 ScriptAlias  /cgi-bin/ /usr/local/xao/handlers/
</VirtualHost>

After you configure and re-start your web-server point your browser at http://test.company.com/cgi-bin/xao-apache.pl/mysite/ -- you should be able to see the default page template processed by XAO::Web. If you do not see it -- you might want to look into apache error log, usually there is some additional information there.

In the URL you used to look at the default page includes 'mysite' as a site name. In this case it can be anything you want, nothing depends on the name because your site does not yet have any specific templates, objects or configuration. We will get back to customizing your site later.

Now let us look into the URL - it does not look good, does it? It includes cgi-bin, site name and generally looks ugly, we agree. The way to deal with it currently is to use mod_rewrite to hide that into Apache configuration. We are working on the real mod_perl module that will not require mod_rewrite, you should expect it with the next release of XAO::Web.

Here is how to configure Apache with mod_rewrite in the meantime:

<VirtualHost 10.0.0.1:80>
 ServerName   test.company.com
 ServerAlias  test.company.com

 <Directory /usr/local/xao/handlers>
  Options ExecCGI
  SetHandler cgi-script
 </Directory>

 RewriteEngine on
 RewriteRule   ^/images/(.*)$  \
               /usr/local/xao/projects/mysite/images/$1  \
               [L]
 RewriteRule   ^/(.*)$  \
               /usr/local/xao/handlers/xao-apache.pl/mysite/$1  \
               [L]
</VirtualHost>

That leaves everything in /images/ to be processed by the web server in the usual way and maps everything else to XAO::Web handler. Restart Apache and try going to just http://test.company.com/ now -- you should see the same default page as before.

And finally, here is an example of mod_perl configuration, you should use it for production grade sites. The only difference is in <Directory> block.

<VirtualHost 10.0.0.1:80>
 ServerName   test.company.com
 ServerAlias  test.company.com

 <Directory /usr/local/xao/handlers>
  Options ExecCGI
  SetHandler perl-script
  PerlHandler Apache::Registry
  PerlSendHeader Off
 </Directory>

 RewriteEngine on
 RewriteRule   ^/images/(.*)$  \
               /usr/local/xao/projects/mysite/images/$1  \
               [L]
 RewriteRule   ^/(.*)$  \
               /usr/local/xao/handlers/xao-apache.pl/mysite/$1  \
               [L]
</VirtualHost>

That is it, if you got so far your installation of XAO::Web works fine and you can move on to actually building a custom web site.

SITE DEVELOPMENT

Before you go any further it is recommended that you keep cgi-bin configuration sample from the examples above as opposed to mod_perl. Mod_perl development has its own peculiarities related to caching of modules and content and you can get back to that later. Cgi-bin based configurations are usually much easier to develop and debug.

Here is a couple of steps to start the development of a new site.

Choose a name for your site. It have to start with a lowercase letter and may contain letters, digits and underscore signs. Let's assume you've chosen "mysite" as a name.
Create a sub-directory in /usr/local/xao/projects with the name of your site (/usr/local/xao/projects/mysite in our case). This directory is the home directory of your site. Everything else below is relative to that directory. For simplicity you might want to sym-link that directory into your home directory.

Create a sub-directory named 'objects'. Place a configuration file called 'Config.pm' inside of it. There is a couple of requrements for that file:

Package name have to be 'XAO::DO::Config'.
Usually it defines an init() method that will initialize site configuration. In mod_perl environment that method will be called only once when the site is initialized for the first time. That means that init() is a good place to open connection to a database and it is recommended to do that as most of XAO modules require database connection to work properly.

Here is an example of configuration module Config.pm for "mysite" site:

# Configuration for mysite
#
package XAO::DO::Config;
use strict;
use XAO::Objects;

# Inheritance from the system Config object
#
use base XAO::Objects->load(objname => 'Config', baseobj => 1);

# Site configuration values. A lot of stuff can be stored here for
# different modules, base_url is not required, but recommended.
#
my %data=(
    base_url        => "http://test.company.com",
    base_url_secure => "http://test.company.com",
);

##
# Initializing configuration object for our site
#
sub init {
    my $self=shift;

    # Creating a database configuration object and embedding it into our
    # configuration, see below for explanation
    #
    my $fsconfig = XAO::Objects->new(
           objname  => 'FS::Config',
           odb_args => {
               dsn       => 'OS:MySQL_DBI:test_fs',
               user      => 'test',
               password  => 'test',
           }
       );
    $self->embed(fs => $fsconfig);

    # Storing configuration into embedded hash
    #
    $self->embedded('hash')->fill(\%data);

    # And finally calling base class' init() method
    #
    $self->SUPER::init();
}

1;

For the more detailed description of `embedding' and initialization process in general please refer to XAO::DO::Config.

At that point you should already be able to see your new site in your browser. Just point it to http://test.company.com/cgi-bin/xao-apache.pl/mysite/ or just http://test.company.com/ depending on your Apache configuration.

But in order to do something useful you normally need to create one more directory - 'templates'. That directory will contain all templates of your site and unless you use some extended features of XAO::Web the layout of files in this directory directly translates into URIs.

Nothing else is used by XAO::Web and usually you would also create directories like 'images' or 'static'; put your site to CVS version control or make some kind of installation tools for it. It is all up to you.

This is it. Try placing an index.html file into your 'templates' directory and go to browser to check how it appears.

AUTHORS

<am@ejelta.com> -- http://ejelta.com/xao/

XAO::Web was created and is maintained by Andrew Maltsev. Creating of XAO::Web would not be possible without valuable comments and ideas from everybody on our team and especially from Marcos Alves, Bil Drury, Brian Despain and Jason Shupe.

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