NAME

Net::Daemon - Perl extension for portable daemons

SYNOPSIS

# Create a subclass of Net::Daemon
require Net::Daemon;
package MyDaemon;
@MyDaemon::ISA = qw(Net::Daemon);

sub Run ($) {
  # This function does the real work; it is invoked whenever a
  # new connection is made.
}

DESCRIPTION

Net::Daemon is an approach for writing daemons that are both portable and simple. It is based on the Thread package of Perl 5.005.

The Net::Daemon class is an abstract class that offers methods for the most common tasks a daemon needs: Starting up, logging, accepting clients, authorization and doing the true work. You only have to override those methods that aren't appropriate for you, but typically inheriting will safe you a lot of work anyways.

Constructors

$server = Net::Daemon->new($attr, $options);

$connection = $server->Clone($socket);

Two constructors are available: The new method is called upon startup and creates an object that will basically act as an anchor over the complete program. It supports command line parsing via Getopt::Long (3).

Arguments of new are $attr, an hash ref of attributes (see below) and $options an array ref of options, typically command line arguments (for example \@ARGV) that will be passed to Getopt::Long::GetOptions.

The second constructor is Clone: It is called whenever a client connects. It receives the main server object as input and returns a new object. This new object will be passed to the methods that finally do the true work of communicating with the client. Communication occurs over the socket $socket, Clone's argument.

Possible object attributes and the corresponding command line arguments are:

debug (--debug)

Used for turning debuging mode on.

facility (--facility)

Facility to use for Sys::Syslog (3) (Unix only). The default is daemon.

forking

Creates a forking daemon instead of using the Thread library (Unix only). There are two good reasons for using fork(): You have no multithreaded Perl or you need to simplify porting existing applications.

localaddr (--localaddr)

By default a daemon is listening to any IP number that a machine has. This attribute allows to restrict the server to the given IP number.

localport (--localport)

This attribute sets the port on which the daemon is listening.

options

Array ref of Command line options that have been passed to the server object via the new method.

parent

When creating an object with Clone the original object becomes the parent of the new object. Objects created with new usually don't have a parent, thus this attribute is not set.

pidfile (--pidfile)

If your daemon creates a PID file, you should use this location.

socket

The socket that is connected to the client; passed as $client argument to the Clone method. If the server object was created with new, this attribute can be undef, as long as the Bind method isn't called. Sockets are assumed to be IO::Socket objects.

stderr (--stderr)

By default Logging is done via Sys::Syslog (3) (Unix) or Win32::EventLog (Windows NT). This attribute allows logging to be redirected to STDERR instead.

version (--version)

Supresses startup of the server; instead the version string will be printed and the program exits immediately.

Note that most of these attributes (facility, forking, localaddr, localport, pidfile, version) are meaningfull only at startup. If you set them later, they will be simply ignored. As almost all attributes have appropriate defaults, you will typically use the localport attribute only.

Command Line Parsing

my($optionsAvailable) = Net::Daemon->Options();

print Net::Daemon->Version(), "\n";

Net::Daemon->Usage();

The Options method returns a hash ref of possible command line options. The keys are option names, the values are again hash refs with the following keys:

template

An option template that can be passed to Getopt::Long::GetOptions.

description

A description of this option, as used in Usage

The Usage method prints a list of all possible options and returns. It uses the Version method for printing program name and version.

Event logging

$server->Log($level, $format, @args);

The Log method is an interface to Sys::Syslog (3) or Win32::EventLog (3). It's arguments are $level, a syslog level like debug, notice or err, a format string in the style of printf and the format strings arguments.

Flow of control

$server->Bind();
if ($connection->Accept()) {
    $connection->Run();
} else {
    $connection->Log('err', 'Connection refused');
}


  

AUTHOR

A. U. Thor, a.u.thor@a.galaxy.far.far.away

SEE ALSO

perl(1).