Localized ht_time?
Hi All,
Does anyone know if there is a way to get Apache::Util::ht_time() to
correctly format times based on the time zone in $ENV{TZ} the way that
POSIX::strftime() does? How 'bout getting it to use the correct language
the way POSIX::setlocale() makes POSIX::strftime() format in the correct
language?
TIA!
David
--
David E. Wheeler
Software Engineer
Salon Internet ICQ: 15726394
[EMAIL PROTECTED] AIM: dwTheory
Re: Localized ht_time?
"David E. Wheeler" wrote:
Hi All,
Does anyone know if there is a way to get Apache::Util::ht_time() to
correctly format times based on the time zone in $ENV{TZ}...
It does. Duh! Please ignore my spam.
David
Re: ht_time vs. strftime
Matt Sergeant wrote: You should still switch to Time::Object. Loading POSIX.pm still loads in the .so which contains loads of cruft for things you don't want/need. Whereas loading Time::Object is a lot smaller. Of course I'm not sure how you'd fix the isdst thing with Time::Object, since it does strftime internally... Perhaps you could add something like ht_time() has - it takes a third argument indicating whether the time passed is UTC. If it is, it uses gmtime internally, otherwise it uses localtime. And it looks like ht_time()'s implementation of gmtime() properly returns the time zone and doesn't add in DST stuff. Is that doable in Time::Object, or are you using Perl's gmtime() there? http://src.openresources.com/debian/src/web/HTML/S/ncsa_1.4.2.orig%20ncsa-1.4.2.orig%20src%20util.c.html#117 David -- David E. Wheeler Phone: (415) 645-9365 Software Engineer Fax: (415) 645-9204 Salon Internet ICQ: 15726394 [EMAIL PROTECTED] AIM: dwTheory
Re: ht_time vs. strftime
Matt Sergeant wrote: Its doable - I could add in the code for ht_time almost verbatim, although I *am* using Perl's gmtime. Could you not use the same gmtime that ht_time uses? D -- David E. Wheeler Software Engineer Salon Internet ICQ: 15726394 [EMAIL PROTECTED] AIM: dwTheory
ht_time vs. strftime
Hi All,
Can anyone tell me why these are not equivalent? Shouldn't strftime know
that the time returned from gmtime() is GMT? I'm trying to create a
library that'll use ht_time when $ENV{MOD_PERL} is true, ans strftime
otherwise. But they need to be consistent!
use Apache::Util 'ht_time';
my $t = ht_time;
print "$t\n"; # prints "Mon, 16 Oct 2000 20:33:42 GMT"
use POSIX 'strftime';
my $a = strftime("%a, %d %b %Y %T %Z", gmtime);
print "$a\n"; # prints Mon, 16 Oct 2000 21:33:42 PDT
Thanks!
David
--
David E. Wheeler
Software Engineer
Salon Internet ICQ: 15726394
[EMAIL PROTECTED] AIM: dwTheory
Re: ht_time vs. strftime
Matt Sergeant wrote:
Sadly gmtime doesn't return any component indicating the timezone. Of
course why not print out GMT instead of %Z?
Because it won't always be GMT.
Alternatively, why not use Time::Object? It implements strftime without
the overhead of POSIX.pm, and does it in XS too.
Does it know Time Zones? Here's what I've got so far. The idea is to get
$format_date to work correctly everywhere.
BEGIN {
if ($ENV{MOD_PERL}) {
use Apache::Util;
$format_date = \Apache::Util::ht_time;
} else {
use POSIX;
$format_date = sub {
POSIX::strftime($_[1] || "%a, %d %b %Y %T %Z", $_[0] ?
localtime($_[0]) : gmtime);
};
}
}
Thanks,
David
--
David E. Wheeler Phone: (415) 645-9365
Software Engineer Fax: (415) 645-9204
Salon Internet ICQ: 15726394
[EMAIL PROTECTED] AIM: dwTheory
Re: ht_time vs. strftime
Matt Sergeant wrote:
On Mon, 16 Oct 2000, David E. Wheeler wrote:
I'm confused. Why are you using gmtime then?
Because if no time is supplied, I want it to default to GMT. I'm setting
up an app in which the database will store date/time in GMT only, but
will serve it out to users in their own local timezones. So sometimes
it'll be GMT and sometimes it won't.
Does it know Time Zones?
It just does strftime, so you can do what you've got below without loading
POSIX. Plus its OO so it makes more sense (IMHO).
So %Z still won't work properly when I use gmtime.
I'm not sure I understand the correctness of this. Shouldn't it be:
gmtime($_[0] || time)
or
localtime($_[0] || time)
No, because if no time is supplied, I want UTC. If a time is supplied, I
want no alteration to that time (gmtime would correct it). The goal is
to get it to act exactly as ht_time does. Maybe this:
BEGIN {
if ($ENV{MOD_PERL}) {
use Apache::Util;
$format_date = \Apache::Util::ht_time;
} else {
use POSIX;
$format_date = sub {
POSIX::strftime($_[1] || $_[0] ? "%a, %d %b %Y %T %Z" :
"%a, %d %b %Y %T GMT", $_[0] ? localtime($_[0]) :
(gmtime)[0..7]);
};
}
}
Which also corrects for the one hour difference between them (why would
gmtime() ever return true for daylight savings??? It does!
D
--
David E. Wheeler
Software Engineer
Salon Internet ICQ: 15726394
[EMAIL PROTECTED] AIM: dwTheory
Re: Wild Proposal :)
Perrin Harkins wrote: My point was that Apache::DBI already gives you persistent connections, and when people say they want actual pooled connections instead they usually don't have a good reason for it. Let's say that I have 20 customers, each of whom has a database schema for their data. I have one Apache web server serving all of those customers. Say that Apache has forked off 20 children. Each of the customers who connects has to use their own authentication to their own schema. That means that Apache::DBI is caching 20 different connections - one per customer. Not only that, but Apache::DBI is caching 20 different connections in each of the 20 processes. Suddenly you've got 400 connections to your database at once! And only 20 can actually be in use at any one time (one for each Apache childe). Start adding new customers and new database schemas, and you'll soon find yourself with more connections than you can handle. And that's why connection pooling makes sense in some cases. David -- David E. Wheeler Software Engineer Salon Internet ICQ: 15726394 [EMAIL PROTECTED] AIM: dwTheory
Forking in mod_perl?
Hi All, Quick question - can I fork off a process in mod_perl? I've got a piece of code that needs to do a lot of processing that's unrelated to what shows up in the browser. So I'd like to be able to fork the processing off and return data to the browser, letting the forked process handle the extra processing at its leisure. Is this doable? Is forking a good idea in a mod_perl environment? Might there be another way to do it? TIA for the help! David -- David E. Wheeler Software Engineer Salon Internet ICQ: 15726394 [EMAIL PROTECTED] AIM: dwTheory
Re: Forking in mod_perl?
ed phillips wrote: Hi David, Check out the guide at http://perl.apache.org/guide/performance.html#Forking_and_Executing_Subprocess The Eagle book also covers the C API subprocess details on page 622-631. Let us know if the guide is unclear to you, so we can improve it. Yeah, it's a bit unclear. If I understand correctly, it's suggesting that I do a system() call and have the perl script called detach itself from Apache, yes? I'm not too sure I like this approach. I was hoping for something a little more integrated. And how much overhead are we talking about getting taken up by this approach? Using the cleanup phase, as Geoffey Young suggests, might be a bit nicer, but I'll have to look into how much time my processing will likely take, hogging up an apache fork while it finishes. Either way, I'll have to think about various ways to handle this stuff, since I'm writing it into a regular Perl module that will then be called from mod_perl... Thanks, David
Re: Forking in mod_perl?
ed phillips wrote: I hope it is clear that you don't want fork the whole server! Mod_cgi goes to great pains to effectively fork a subprocess, and was the major impetus I believe for the development of the C subprocess API. It (the source code for mod_cgi) is a great place to learn some of the subtleties as the Eagle book points out. As the Eagle book says, Apache is a complex beast. Mod_perl gives you the power to use the beast to your best advantage. Yeah, but I don't speak C. Just Perl. And it looks like the way to do it in Perl is to call system() and then detach the called script. I was trying to keep this all nice and tidy in modules, but I don't know if it'll be possible. Now you are faced with a trade off. Is it more expensive to detach a subprocess, or use the child cleanup phase to do some extra processing? I'd have to know more specifics to answer that with any modicum of confidence. I think I can probably evaluate that with a few tests. Thanks! David
Re: Forking in mod_perl?
Billy Donahue wrote: Now you are faced with a trade off. Is it more expensive to detach a subprocess, or use the child cleanup phase to do some extra processing? I'd have to know more specifics to answer that with any modicum of confidence. He might try a daemon coprocesses using some IPC to communicate with Apache, which is my favorite way to do it.. Yeah, I was thinking something along these lines. Don't know if I need something as complex as IPC. I was thinking of perhaps a second Apache server set up just to handle long-term processing. Then the first server could send a request to the second with the commands it needs to execute in a header. The second server processes those commands independantly of the first server, which then returns data to the browser. But maybe that's overkill. I'll have to weigh the heft of the post-request processing I need to do. Thanks for the suggestion! David
Re: Dissappearing Lexicals
Matt Sergeant wrote: On Wed, 30 Aug 2000, mgraham wrote: [snip] Personally, I've given up on package-scoped lexicals entirely, and moved everything into "use vars". It's a pain, because you lose the encapsulation and you have to declare and assign the variables separately. But it generally seems much more robust and predictable. This is a real worry for anyone using the Tie::SecureHash sort of thing to hide access to private variables. Okay, I'll try to whip up a quick example today of this issue and submit it to the list. It seems worthwhile to me to try to get this bug(?) squashed for the reason Matt brings up and others. David
Dissappearing Lexicals
Hi All, I've encounted a strange problem with our mod_perl installation. I have a library for handling DBI stuff, and store the $dbh in a package-level lexical. The $dbh is not populated until the first time a DBI call is made - which is during a request and therefore always after Apache forks. The $dbh is then used by various functions exported into other modules. However, in some of these functions, $dbh seems to be out of scope! In other words, In some functions, the $dbh works fine, while in others, it says "cannot call method 'selectcol_arrayref' on an undefined value." Sure enough, it thinks that $dbh is undefined, even though it will show up defined in other functions called just prior to or after the function that attempts to call selectcol_arrayref. I have not my'd it within the scope of the function - it is only declared at the package-level. Now, I've managed to solve the problem by simply making $dbh a package variable (use vars '$dbh';). However, the package-level lexical *was* working on Friday, but would not as of yesterday! Anyone got any ideas what the heck is happening to the value stored in $dbh? I can provide more details about the construction of my DBI library if you think that will help diagnose the problem. Details: All DBI calls are made in one request, so there's no chance of some calls being in different forks where $dbh may not yet have been defined. Also, the DBI library I've written works fine when run from the shell - it's only in mod_perl that it fails. The setup: Solaris 2.4 running Apache 1.3.12 mod_perl 1.24. DBI is version 1.14 and DBD::Oracle version 1.06. TIA! David
Can't Locate Apache::File
Hi All, I've just installed the latest version of Lincoln Stein's Apache::MP3 (nice job, Doc!), which offers support for caching MP3 ICY info. It uses Apache::File to do so. This the first time I've used Apache::File on this server, but was still surprised to find that it failed to load: [Wed Aug 23 10:14:53 2000] [error] Can't locate loadable object for module Apache::File in @INC (@INC contains: /usr/lib/perl5/5.00503/i386-linux /usr/lib/perl5/5.00503 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/i386-linux /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005 . /usr/local/apache/ /usr/local/apache/lib/perl) at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/i386-linux/mod_perl.pm line 65535 As near as I can tell, it is in fact there, and when I do % perl -le 'use Apache::File;' It seems to load just fine. The module lives in /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/i386-linux/Apache/File.pm Anyone got any idea why it can't find it? I'm running Apache 1.3.12 with mod_perl 1.24 compiled in on RedHat Linux 6.2. TIA! David
