> > Anyway, what you should do is create a constructor:
> >
> > sub new {
[snip]
>
> You mean like this code segment that I included in my original post
> just below the handler code :)
>
> sub init {
[snip]
Ah yes, but you called your's "init", which is quite misleading to those of
us who tend not to pay attention.
> Wait a second. I have a startup.pl, and inside that I have the lines:
>
> use Exchange::Account::My;
> my $account_interface = Exchange::Account::My->init;
>
> Won't that do what I need it to do? When the root process forks off
> children, won't a complete copy of $account_interface go with it, with
> everything all set and ready to go?
>
I wouldn't think that this would be the case, but I may be mistaken. Since
you've declared $account_interface with 'my', that variable should only be
available within the scope of the startup.pl script. Even if you went with
use vars qw($account_interface);
I still don't think that it would be available in the Exchange::Account::My
namespace.
> Except for calling the contructor with every call of the handler,
> I think I've done everything right. Isn't the part of idea behind
> mod_perl handlers that one _doesn't_ have to call the contructor
> _every_ time the handler gets called? Otherwise invites massive
> overhead.
Is a bless really massive overhead? I can't say as I've ever had a problem
calling the constructor with every request (at least with simple objects).
> Obviously, what I'm doing doesn't work. But could someone show me
> how to call the constructor just once in in a childs lifetime?
startup.pl is not the place to do this - it gets called at server start-up
(or restart), not child initialization. What you could do is create a
ChildInitHandler for this class, which sets a global variable within your
package:
use vars qw($SELF);
sub configure {
my ($class) = shift;
Apache->push_handlers( PerlChildInitHandler =>
sub {
# use that weird "init" constructor name
$SELF = $class->init(@_);
}
);
}
You can then change your handler to not use the $$ prototype, but get an
object reference from $SELF:
sub handler {
my $q = shift;
my $self = $SELF;
# the rest of your code as is...
}
In your startup.pl, you'd have:
use Exchange::Account::My;
Exchange::Account::My->configure();
I haven't tested that. As I said, I've never had call to create the object
only upon child initialization. I'll be the first to admit that I'm
relatively new to the mod_perl thing, so there may be an easier or more
elegant way to do this, but that ought to work. Hope that helps.
Chris
