Last month, I talked a bit about mod_perl, and how I used it extensively on my web server. But I was reminded by a few of my reviewers that I’ve yet to provide a good overview of mod_perl in any of my columns! Time to fix that.
Last month, I talked a bit about mod_perl, and how I used it extensively on my web server. But I was reminded by a few of my reviewers that I’ve yet to provide a good overview of mod_perl in any of my columns! Time to fix that.
As its name suggests, mod_perl is an Apache module that can be added to a statically- or dynamically-linked Apache server, or can be added later via the APXS mechanism. Generally, if your flavor of Linux has Apache, you probably have simple instructions for adding mod_perl already available. Macintosh computers running OS X already have mod_perl built-in, and there are a number of pre-built versions of Apache with mod_perl for Windows machines as well.
The Apache server goes through a number of phases when it processes an incoming request: it parses the incoming data stream; it determines what resource is being requested by the URL; it controls access, authentication, and authorization; it determines the MIME type of the response; it serves the content; and it logs what happened.
Most mod_whatevers apply to only one phase of the Apache process. For example, mod_cgi, which handles CGI scripts, deals exclusively with the content phase, and mod_auth_dbm deals with authentication using DBM files during the authentication phase. But mod_perl can alter the behavior of all phases of the request! In other words, mod_perl exposes nearly the entire Apache programming interface to Perl code so that Perl programmers can extend and embed complex behaviors easily….
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