NAME
Apache::PAR - Perl extension for including Perl ARchive files in a mod_perl (1.x or 2.x) environment.
SYNOPSIS
Inside Apache configuration:
<IfDefine MODPERL2>
PerlModule Apache::ServerUtil
</IfDefine>
PARDir /path/to/par/archive/directory
...
PARFile /path/to/a/par/file.par
...
PerlModule Apache::PAR
Inside a web.conf file:
Alias /myapp/static/ ##PARFILE##/
<Location /myapp/static>
SetHandler perl-script
PerlHandler Apache::PAR::Static
PerlSetVar PARStaticDirectoryIndex index.htm
PerlAddVar PARStaticDirectoryIndex index.html
PerlSetVar PARStaticDefaultMIME text/html
</Location>
Alias /myapp/cgi-perl/ ##PARFILE##/
<Location /myapp/cgi-perl>
Options +ExecCGI
SetHandler perl-script
PerlHandler Apache::PAR::Registry
</Location>
Alias /myapp/cgi-run/ ##PARFILE##/
<Location /myapp/cgi-run>
Options +ExecCGI
SetHandler perl-script
PerlHandler Apache::PAR::PerlRun
</Location>
PerlModule MyApp::TestMod
Alias /myapp/mod/ ##PARFILE##/
<Location /myapp/mod>
SetHandler perl-script
PerlHandler TestMod
</Location>DESCRIPTION
Apache::PAR is a framework for including Perl ARchive files in a mod_perl (1.x or 2.x) environment. It allows an author to package up a web application, including configuration, static files, Perl modules, and Registry and PerlRun scripts to include in a single file. This archive can then be moved to other locations on the same system or distributed, and loaded with a single set of configuration options in the Apache configuration.
These modules are based on PAR.pm by Autrijus Tang and Archive::Zip by Ned Konz, as well as the mod_perl modules. They extend the concept of PAR files to mod_perl, similar to how WAR archives work for Java. An archive (which is really a zip file), contains one or more elements which can be served to clients making requests to an Apache web server. Scripts, modules, and static content should then be able to be served from within the .par archive without modifications.
Apache::PAR itself performs the work of specifying the location of PAR archives and allowing the loading of modules from these archives. The files and paths can be specified at load time. Once an archive has been located, an optional web.conf (filename configurable) is then loaded and included into the main web configuration. Once Apache::PAR has been loaded, Perl Apache modules within these .par files can then be loaded.
The following steps are performed on any .par files which are found within either a PARDir or PARFile variable:
The .par file is loaded with PAR.pm, making any modules defined within it visible to Apache
Apache::PAR checks for the existence of a web.conf file within each .par archive and, if found, includes that configuration into the main Apache configuration.
Some things to note:
PerlSetVar configuration for PARDir and PARFile MUST be before the PerlModule Apache::PAR line in the Apache configuration. Any PARDir and PARFile variables after the PerlModule line will be ignored.
The arguments for PARDir and PARFile can be either an absolute path, or a relative path from Apache's server_root. For example, if your Apache's server_root is /usr/local/apache, and you would like to load .par files from a parfiles/ subdirectory, use: PerlSetVar PARDir parfiles/
This will then look for .par files in the /usr/local/apache/parfiles directory.
The name of the configuration file which is loaded is configurable via PARConf (default is 'web.conf'. For example, to set the include filename to 'include.conf' for all .par files: PerlSetVar PARConf include.conf
The extensions used when searching for .par archives in any PARDir is set using the PARExt variable in the Apache configuration (the default is 'par'). For example, to set the par extension to 'zip': PerlSetVar PARExt zip
There is currently no way to limit which .par archive a module is loaded out of. To ensure that the correct module is being loaded, I suggest the following convention: begin module names with the name of the archive. For instance, a MailForm module within the MyApp.par archive should be named MyApp::MailForm
Currently, which directory inside a .par archive modules are loaded out of is not configurable, and is the same as defined in PAR.pm:
- 1. /
- 2. /lib/
- 3. /arch/
- 4. /i386-freebsd/ # i.e. $Config{archname}
- 5. /5.8.0/ # i.e. $Config{version}
- 6. /5.8.0/i386-freebsd/ # both of the above
EXPORT
None by default.
AUTHOR
Nathan Byrd, <nathan@byrd.net>
SEE ALSO
perl.
PAR.
Apache::PAR::Registry, Apache::PAR::PerlRun, and Apache::PAR::Static.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright 2002 by Nathan Byrd, <nathan@byrd.net>.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.