In the content serving phase I have a Database services object which
manages all access to/from the database. The DB::Services object is
created the first time the handler is hit; the $dbs is made available by
creating a symtab entry, so all my Mason components can get at the database
easily.
I also have a couple of Authen and Authz handlers (ala Apache::AuthCookie),
and I would like to have access to the services object there as well. I
could just create another DB::Services object, but there is quite a bit of
overhead associated with having a Services object in memory, hence I would
like to have a single Services object per Apache process.
Since the auth phases occur before content serving, I would have to create
the DB::Services object in the Auth/Authz handler, and then obtain access
to it in the Mason handler.
So, I think I would do something like this:
Create the DB::Services object in the authentication phase if it hasn't
already been created. (the Services object has to be created in the
auth/authz phase, since that's before the phase in which Mason runs) Once
it's been created, then do something like:
local *HTML::Mason::Commands::dbs = \$dbs;
thus making the DBS available to Mason. By the time the Mason handler
get's invoked, a $dbs is already in the right namespace, and is therefore
ready to use. Any access to $dbs from the actual handler could be obtained
by explicitly referencing the $dbs object via the package global name.
I guess another way of doing it would be to turn the $dbs class into a
Singleton, and provide a class method to get at the instance:
DB::Services->set_uri( 'dbi:Oracle:XXXX' );
DB::Services->set_userid( 'foo' );
DB::Services->set_password( 'bar' );
DB::Services->set_options( { ... } );
my $dbs = DB::Services->get_instance;
get_instance() would create the backing object the first time, then
returned the cached object on subsequent calls.
Thoughts?
Cheers!
-klm.
-------------------------------------------
Ken Miller, Consultant
Shetland Software Services Inc.
