from:"nathan"


Leon Brocard writes:
  Perhaps a port of JMS is in order.
 
 Interestingly, I've been thinking along the same lines. Spread
 (http://www.spread.org/) can be used for the publish/subscribe
 messaging domain but queueing seems to be important too. Straying a
 bit offtopic perhaps, but I wonder what would be involved...

I like the idea of P2EE.  If the goal is to provide the same features
as Java, why not just implement the Java messaging, transactions,
etc. APIs in Perl?  That is, endeavour to have the same classes and
methods as Java, to the greatest extent possible.  That'll also make
it possible for Java programmers to become Perl programmers, bwahaha.

Someone described Java beans to me as being more or less classes that
follow conventions on things like accessor names and methods to
respond to events.  Those conventions permit introspection and
interoperability between two classes that have no a priori knowledge
of each other.  I like that idea, too.  It'd be fun to see what kinds
of UI (both GUI and web) things become easier with this kind of
functionality.

Of course, we couldn't call it a Java bean.  They'd have to be Camel
droppings. :-)

Nat

Re: [OT] P2EE Redux was: Excellent article on Apache/mod_perl at eToys


Stephen Adkins writes:
 If no one suggests an appropriate list, I propose starting a p2ee group
 on SourceForge.  This gives us mailing lists and a CVS repository for the
 artifacts of the effort (which will mostly be specifications and
 documentation, with maybe some Bundle files).  I would also submit the
 list information to perl.org for inclusion in the list of lists.

We'd be glad to host it at perl.org.  If that's cool with you, I'll
ask Ask to create the mailing list and CVS repository on perl.org.
Once we have something to show, we can get a website too.

I'd imagine the CVS would include code we write, snapshots of which
would be periodically released to CPAN.  Anyway, that's for the list
once we have it.

Nat

Re: [OT] P2EE Redux was: Excellent article on Apache/mod_perl at eToys


Stephen Adkins writes:
 That would be great (as long as perl.org can host the CVS too).
 My concern was that perl.org might not be as specialized in hosting
 development teams as sourceforge.net.  Do you support viewcvs
 or similar for web browsing of the CVS repository?

cvsweb.  You can see what we've got at cvs.perl.org.  I'll ask Ask to
add the list and repository.  Cheers;

Nat

p5ee list active


The list's goal is to create the Perl 5 Enterprise Extensions.
Send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] to join.  When we've decided
on a path and start to code, I'll have a CVS repository created.

Nat

Re: perl.apache.org / apache.perl.org

2001-10-18 Thread Nathan Torkington


Ask Bjoern Hansen writes:
  I'll chew on a new layout and give you something by the end of the
  week.  Thanks,
 
 awesome! :-)

I did have something by the end of last week, just not much.  I'd
hoped to find the time to plug the holes this week, but haven't been
able to.  So here it is, woefully incomplete.

The URL is:

  http://c1853353-a.ftclns1.co.home.com/~gnat/modperl/

I've got:
 * Home page
 * About
 * Download

done.  My plan was to just go through perl.apache.org and move content
into that framework (for instance, success stories and testimonials go
as a page under 'About').

There are some web design To Do items:
 * ensure colors are part of the standard palette (right now they're
   just easy to type in hex :-)
 * contemplate CSS and enforcing standards like all links are in bold.

Nat

Re: IBM patents Template Systems?

2001-10-17 Thread Nathan Torkington

Joe Schaefer writes:
A causal reading seems to suggest that most mod_perl-based
templating systems do exactly what this patent will cover:
i.e. set up a non-HTML based website where templates
dynamically convert non-HTML files into HTML.

IANAL (and IVAGINAL too, but that's for a different time :-) but as
far as I can see, the patent applies to applications that interact
with the user to build the website. In other words, mod_perl's
character-based DIY stuff wouldn't count.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2Sect2=HITOFFp=1u=/netahtml/search-bool.htmlr=10f=Gl=50co1=ANDd=ft00s1=HTMLOS=HTMLRS=HTML

Abstract
A software tool is provided for use with a computer system for simplifying
the creation of Web sites. The tool comprises a plurality of pre-stored
templates, comprising HTML formatting code, text, fields and formulas. The
templates preferably correspond to different types of Web pages and other
features commonly found on or available to Web sites. Each feature may have
various options. To create a web site, a Web site creator (the person using
the tool to create a web site) is prompted by the tool through a series of
views stored in the tool to select the features and options desired for the
Web site. Based on these selections, the tool prompts the web site creator
to supply data to populate fields of the templates determined by the tool
to correspond to the selected features and options. Based on the identified
templates and supplied data, the tool generates the customized Web site
without the web site creator writing any HTML or other programming code.
Based on roles-based, multi-level security, certain users of the web site
may have access to certain information and others may not.

Nat

Re: perl.apache.org / apache.perl.org

2001-10-11 Thread Nathan Torkington


Stas Bekman writes:
 Everything is under CVS, and if somebody wants to come and give a
 hand to redo the site, there is no problem to give a cvs access to
 this person.

I'll chew on a new layout and give you something by the end of the
week.  Thanks,

Nat

Re: [OT] New Micro$oft vulnerability?

2001-09-21 Thread Nathan Torkington


Tim Peoples writes:
 I tried doing the s/OK/DECLINED/ thing and it didn't do the trick.  :-(
 
 I forgot to mention that this is in combination with HTML::Mason,
 but I doubt that should have any effect.

This appears to be a bug in mod_perl, partially (said, I think, Geoff
Young) fixed in the latest version but still not completely
eradicated.  I was mistaken with the OK/DECLINED change--that doesn't
make PerlSetEnv work again.

I don't have a workaround, sorry.  I don't know exactly what triggers
the problem (is it PostReadRequestHandler, is it preventing logging,
is it a 408?)  It might be that you could use a different phase of the
transaction, and work around it.  Sorry I can't be more help.

Nat

Re: [OT] New Micro$oft vulnerability?


http://www.torkington.com/vermicide.txt has a mod_perl handler to
catch the requests as soon as they arrive, and discard them with a
minimum of work to Apache.  If your web server is struggling under the
load, this might help.

The heuristic it uses for requests to ignore with prejudice is the
presence of root.exe, cmd.exe, or default.ida.  You might want to
tweak the regexp if those files are part of your web site :-)

Yes, it's ugly to put the code into your httpd.conf.  Consider this a
visual reminder to take it out once the worm scare has passed.

Nat

Re: [OT] New Micro$oft vulnerability?


[Apologies if you get this twice--mailed it first from my oreilly.com
account, which may not be the address subscribed to this list]

http://www.torkington.com/vermicide.txt has a mod_perl handler to
catch the requests as soon as they arrive, and discard them with a
minimum of work to Apache.  If your web server is struggling under the
load, this might help.

The heuristic it uses for requests to ignore with prejudice is the
presence of root.exe, cmd.exe, or default.ida.  You might want to
tweak the regexp if those files are part of your web site :-)

Yes, it's ugly to put the code into your httpd.conf.  Consider this a
visual reminder to take it out once the worm scare has passed.

Nat

Re: [OT] New Micro$oft vulnerability?


Tim Peoples writes:
 This 'Apache::Vermicide' module, installed as a 'PerlPostReadRequestHandler',
 seems to be preventing any 'PerlSetEnv' directives from being parsed out
 of a '.htaccess' file (or equivalent).  IOW, the ENV vars aren't getting
 set properly.
 
 I'm investigating how to remedy this issue.

Whoops!  Returning OK terminates the PostReadRequest phase,
apparently.  Changing that to return DECLINED made PerlSetEnv work
again.  Sorry,

Nat

Re: [OT] New Micro$oft vulnerability?


Tim Peoples writes:
 I tried doing the s/OK/DECLINED/ thing and it didn't do the trick.  :-(

You're right, it was the restart that did it.  OK/DECLINED makes no
difference in that handler.

I'm seeing, with or without my handler, the PerlSetEnv stuff only
happening once per connection rather than once per request.

That is, the first time I hit a printenv page, I see the envariables.
The second, third, etc. times I don't.  Unless I wait a while, in
which case my browser closes the persistent connection to the server,
and then the next load of the printenv page displays the variables
again.

As I say, this happens regardless of whether or not I enable the
PostReadRequest handler.

 I forgot to mention that this is in combination with HTML::Mason,
 but I doubt that should have any effect.

I'm seeing it in mod_perl 1.22 on Apache 1.3.12 on FreeBSD, without
Mason.

Nat

POST params with Location

2001-09-10 Thread Nathan Wiger


Hey all-

I'm beating my head against this issue, and I can't seem to figure it
out. The problem is I have a Location block with a PerlHandler for a
ticketing system app I'm writing:

Location /tickets
SetHandler perl-script
PerlHandler Apache::TicketSystem
/Location

I'm using Apache::Request to access the params with this simple code:

sub handler {
my $r = Apache::Request-new(shift());
my %args = %{ $r-param };

# more code ...
}

When I call the app with GET params, everything works fine. When I use
POST, though, I don't get anything in %args. Reading the manpage for
Apache::Request it looks like I should automatically get the params, ala
CGI.pm. Oh yeah, and CGI.pm doesn't work either, so it doesn't seem to
be an Apache::Request problem. 

Am I doing something wrong? Does Location not support POST params? All
the packages are at the latest rev as far as I'm aware.

   perl 5.6.1
   apache 1.3.20
   mod_perl 1.25
   libapreq 0.33

Thanks for any help.

-Nate

-- 
Nathan Wiger
Sysadmin and Perl Hacker
Sun Microsystems

Re: POST params with Location (solved)

2001-09-10 Thread Nathan Wiger


Tom Servo wrote:
 
 There could be something I'm missing here, but I believe you need to use
 $r-content() to get POST arguments.   Beware though, that once you call
 content() you can't call it again, so hang onto whatever comes out of it.
 
 Also...isn't it $r-args() or am I just completely missing something here?

Yeah, but if you use Apache::Request then you get a param() method which
works just like CGI.pm's. That is, it transparently gives you your
params whether they're POST/GET/whatever. It also works really nicely
with uploads.

Anyways, it was a stoopid mistake, which you hit on in your reply. I had
a module using a module using a module which was using CGI. Once I
wrapped it in a check for MOD_PERL everything works.

Thanks,
Nate

Apache::ConfigFile just uploaded

2001-09-07 Thread Nathan Wiger


Hey all-

So, about 2 years after I originally discussed it here, I finally put
the finishing touches on Apache::ConfigFile and uploaded it to CPAN. It
is available in my CPAN directory:

   http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/N/NW/NWIGER/

This modules does the following:

   - Gives you offline access to any Apache style config file

   - Provides methods for accessing config commands and sections

   - Provides a dir_config() which gives you access to PerlSetVar
 declarations by name, just like mod_perl

   - Properly expands Include directives and handles paths
 relative to ServerRoot

   - Handles multiple declarations for the same context (for
 example, multiple VirtualHost definitions)

   - Provides autoloaded methods for common core functions, such
 as server_root()

   - Also has several options which can be used to extend the
 Apache/NCSA syntax, so that you can write a custom config
 module for your own applications and use this module to
 parse it.

In any case, the module is stable but I'd be shocked it is bug-free. So
if you have any comments or bugfixes I'd like to know about them. Hope
you find this useful!

-Nate

-- 
Nathan Wiger
Sysadmin and Perl Hacker
Sun Microsystems

Re: OT: Re: ApacheCon Dublin Cancelled?

2001-07-17 Thread Nathan Torkington


Matt Sergeant writes:
 I guess TPC::Hawaii is out then :-)

Don't think I haven't argued for it!

Nat

Re: OT: Re: ApacheCon Dublin Cancelled?

2001-07-16 Thread Nathan Torkington


Matt Sergeant writes:
 I doubt it's the last one we'll see fall... I suspect TPC will be a
 shadow of its former self... :(

Despite my best efforts (zillions more tracks than last year, 200+
talks, five days instead of four, all in a tanking economy), there's
going to be an OScon with TPC next year.  They're arguing about the
dates right now (June?  Or September?  June!  September!) and I can
announce them next week.  We've talked about next year, and the basic
story is that there'll be fewer tracks than this year, getting it back
to a manageable level.  I think we're going to keep it at 5 days.

Attendance at this year's conference will be down from last year, but
it's nowhere near the point where we'd say that's it, we can't do
this any more.

I'm so looking forward to going back to last year's convention size.
Organizing this year's convention (TPC+modperl+Apache+PHP+Zope+Python+
MySQL+PostgreSQL+Mozilla+Linux+OpenSource+Java+Tcl+EmergingTopics) was
threatening my sanity--too many talks to keep straight, too many
speakers to cancel at the last minute, too many different special
interests pissed off for whatever reasons.

Anyone have requests for next year?  I know everyone wants a cheaper
conference, but I've banged my head against a brick wall at O'Reilly
for four years arguing that it should be cheaper.  If you feel that
there'd be more attendees at a lower price, then I suggest you tell
that to every O'Reilly conferences person you see at TPC (except for
me :-)

Are there any requests other than price for next year?  What would you
like to see?  What could you do without?

Nat

Re: Help, no room at the inn!

2001-07-15 Thread Nathan Torkington


Jeffrey W. Baker writes:
 Because I am an Authentic 99.44 Percent Pure Jackass(tm) I haven't
 booked a room at the O'Reilly convention fast approaching.  I called
 the hotel today and all they were able to offer me were some
 overpriced suites that I don't want.  I would be very grateful if
 one of you good fellows with whom I have shared this list for so
 long, and who booked a double room for themselves, would generously
 allow me to occupy the other bed and split the room rate.

This information was valid a while ago, not sure if they still have
rooms available:

  Property Name:San Diego Bay View Thriftlodge
  Property Address: 1943 Pacific Highway 
San Diego,  California,  United States,  92101
  Property Phone Number: 619-232-7551
  Reservation Phone: 1-800-578-7878

  The ThriftLodge is 1.8 miles from the Sheraton Less than the length 
  of the airport runway in the picture. Easily walkable in 30-40 minutes 
  and even more easily bike-able. Or, with the savings one realizes from
  lodging, one could rent a car. (The airport car rental agencies are,
  ironically, about halfway between the ThriftLodge and the Sheraton,
  along the walking path.) A car would cost $20-30 per day -- far less
  than the difference in hotel rates.

  The AAA rate is $40.50 per night for a non-smoking room with a queen
  bed. There's also an EconoLodge -- same company -- within two blocks.
  It's slightly more (not a lot more) per night and has a few more 
  amenities. (See http://www.travelodge.com/ctg/cgi-bin/Travelodge.) 
  Finally, there's a Best Western that's $80-90 per night (if you get 
  a discount) in the other direction on the west side of the harbor. 
  The footpath goes there too, though it's a longer walk.

Good luck!

Nat

Re: Mod Perl Tutorials??

2001-05-26 Thread Nathan Torkington


Stas Bekman writes:
 Anyway, you can take tutorials without going to any conferences. My
 tutorials are available from http://stason.org/talks/, Nat has posted his
 tutorial's URL a few months ago and it should be available in the
 archives. I suppose you can ask other folks that deliver mod_perl
 tutorials at OSC to give you the URL of their talks.

I won't be giving my tutorial at the Open Source Convention.

I'd just like to remind folks that the course-notes are not the only
reason to attend the tutorial.  The other is the face-to-face
information exchange, which has a vastly higher bandwidth than email.
I learned more practical information listening to the mod_perl guys
drinking beer at ApacheCon than I did from the mailing list.  I heard
knowledge *emerge* from conversations (wow, it sounds like most
everyone modifies Apache::DBI for their own needs).  It was really
cool.

I point this out because this year we REALLY REALLY need attendees.
The economy is in the crapper just as we expanded to have many more
tracks and topics (splitting mod_perl off from Perl, so you can have a
dedicated room of just mod_perl for two days, is one example).  If you
can justify attending, and you can convince your boss to pay for it,
then please try to come.  I don't normally beg this shamelessly, but
if we end up with 200 attendees, it *will* affect how much of a
convention we can put on next year.

So by all means read the tutorials online, but remember that there are
lots of other reasons to attend the Open Source Convention (the big
shindig that includes The Perl Conference and the mod_perl track).

Thanks,

Nat
(oscon/tpc content planner)

Re: Object - RDBMS mapping tools and mod_perl

2001-05-10 Thread Nathan Stitt


Ray Zimmerman wrote:

 I'm looking for a good package to use for Object - RDBMS mapping in the 
 context of mod_perl and Mason. Something that will handled object 
 inheritance and nested objects, etc.
 


One that I've been meaning to try out when I get a chance is GOODS at:
http://www.ispras.ru/~knizhnik/goods.html  I've never used it and have 
never heard of anyone useing it either, but it looks intriging and has 
perl bindings.  I want to attempt to store XML trees in it, as I've yet 
to find a good free sytem for storing arbitrary XML data.


If you do attempt to use it, please let me know how it works out.


Nathan

Re: PERL.COM, ORA and Songline mailservers SUCK!

2001-05-04 Thread Nathan Torkington


Jesse Erlbaum writes:
 I've been trying for THREE DAYS to email SOMEBODY at PERL.COM about
 taking out a damn ad in their Perl.Com newsletter.

The bounces from songline and oreillynet were very bogus.  I've sent
your mail to someone high up at perl.com to figure out what's going on
and get in touch with you.  Sorry for the trouble you've had reaching
us!

Nat
(editor at O'Reilly, also [EMAIL PROTECTED] if you have any more trouble
with ORA mail servers)

Re: [OT] Apachecon folks

2001-04-11 Thread Nathan Torkington


Matt Sergeant writes:
 For what it's worth, I'm now back out from spending a week and a bit under
 the bar. What a hangover! :-)

I'd like to attest that I did see Matt away from the bar.  Sometimes
he was pool-side, and sometimes he went to Fry's with us. :-)

I can't say how much fun it was meeting the mod_perl folks
face-to-face.  I'm normally insane at TPC, so it was good to meet
everyone whose messages I've been reading for the last few years
in a more relaxed atmosphere (translation: over 21oz Guinness and
a cheesecake pizza :-)

Nat

Re: Fw: Re: [OT] ApacheCon BOF

2001-03-22 Thread Nathan Torkington


Blue Lang wrote:
 I'd like to officially vote for Maude Pearl, the 1920's Bettie Paige-ish
 dominatrix-esque mod_perl mascot.

Wow.  I've had "perl6 themes" as a background process for a while now.
SM is certainly a meme that precious few other programming languages
have made use of ...

   There's a kill() function, but don't forget your safe word!

Nat

Re: [OT] JMS-like event framework for Perl

2001-03-10 Thread Nathan Torkington


"Michael A. Nachbaur" wrote:
 
 Since today seems to be "The Day of the Off Topic(tm)", I thought I'd jump
 in with my question.
 
 Is there a event messaging framework available for Perl, similar to JMS?
 I'd like to be able to have an object registered as a handler for certain
 "events", and have perl code throw those events causing the object to be run
 automatically (publish / subscribe model).

I think there's an Event.pm, but you're probably after something like POE:

http://www.perl.com/pub/2001/01/poe.html   - intro and tutorial
http://poe.perl.org/   - homepage (down?)
http://poe.dyndns.org/ - Rocco's dialin machine

Nat

Re: [OT] JMS-like event framework for Perl

2001-03-10 Thread Nathan Torkington


jeff saenz wrote:
 Might be possible that soap is addressing messaging issues.

   Is there a event messaging framework available for Perl, similar to JMS?
   I'd like to be able to have an object registered as a handler for certain
   "events", and have perl code throw those events causing the object to be
   run automatically (publish / subscribe model).

You're right, SOAP::Lite can do these things (and more).  I was hallucinating,
thinking that you wanted to write a program in an event-driven style.

http://www.soaplite.com/
http://guide.soaplite.com/

Nat

RE: Looking for a new distro

2001-01-13 Thread Nathan Poole


We use Slackware (oi oi oi), have been since about '95, I love it :)

7.1 on a few machines, but 4.0 on most, Apache 1.3.14 and mod_perl 1.24_01
on nearly all of the important ones.

We don't have a mind-boggling load, but several machines with a whole bunch
of software/performing many different functions (including development at
the same time) run for 6 months at a time on average.

I believe there are reiserfs patches, but the only colleague I've seen try
it out had a few probs with sendmail (overlapping messages etc), but
everything else worked fine.

Cheers,

NP

-Original Message-
From: Joshua Chamas [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Sunday, 14 January 2001 9:36 AM
To: Jamie Krasnoo
Cc: Modperl
Subject: Re: Looking for a new distro


Jamie Krasnoo wrote:

 Ok, I've had it with RH 7.0. Too many problems. What Linux distro are some
 of you using with Apache 1.3.14 and mod perl 1.24_01?


I haven't used it yet, but I would eagerly be looking for
one that has reiserfs compiled in.  Is that a debian distro?

I'm sitting on a redhat 6.2 distro and fsck'ing a 20G ext2fs
raid-1 partition is not my idea of happy downtime. :(

-- Josh

_
Joshua Chamas   Chamas Enterprises Inc.
NodeWorks  free web link monitoring   Huntington Beach, CA  USA
http://www.nodeworks.com1-714-625-4051

Re: Mod_perl tutorials

2000-12-14 Thread Nathan Torkington


Gunther Birznieks writes:
 However, I am willing to concede that as a first cut, fancy slides are 
 probably not worth it because the slides will change too often. Once v1 is 
 released, then someone can transcribe the slides to PPT (or maybe a tool 
 will exist by then) as a "stable release" if they want to (probably someone 
 like me.)

Getting anything done with a mailing list full of programmers is
nearly impossible.  Everyone wants to write tools, but nobody has said
"give me the slides for a week and I'll make them better".  Instead
we're arguing about the best source format :-)

I developed the slides in a POD-like slide format that Tom
Christiansen uses.  One of his trainers developed a slide2rtf
converter, and the rtf can then be imported into PowerPoint.  That
doesn't work with StarOffice, as importing RTF immediately drops you
into the WordProcessor.

I think that my slides are pretty close to a v1.  I don't know that
the subsequent tweaks will be worth the hassle of PPT conversion.

I'd rather not revert back to the POD-like format.  Importing into PPT
is a pain in the arse.  I'd rather find someone who wants to work on
the class and say "ok, it's yours for a week--fix it".

So consider this a call to arms: anyone with StarOffice/Powerpoint
want to bang on the class?

Nat

Re: Advocacy idea ...

2000-12-14 Thread Nathan Torkington


Homsher, Dave V. writes:
 With all of the advocacy talk on the ML right now I've been
 mulling around the idea of having a "peer review" forum where one could post
 code that you are currently working on w/an explanation of what you are
 trying to accomplish and have the community review/give suggestions
 warnings, etc. or how to improve code (maybe /. style?).

http://www.perlmonks.org/ is kinda like this.  Kinda.

I like the idea.  Is there a threaded discussion package for mod_perl?

cat take23-ideas
  mod_perl application index
^D

Nat

Re: Mod_perl tutorials

2000-12-13 Thread Nathan Torkington


J. J. Horner writes:
 What is the story on these tutorials?  Is it something you can
 distribute, or did most of it come off of the top your head?

Tutorials seems like a deadend for effort.  I've had zero (0)
responses to my offer of my "Introduction to mod_perl" tutorial.

If nobody's interested in increasing the number of mod_perl
programmers through tutorials, then the only other option I can think
of is strategically-placed success stories.

I know that perl.oreilly.com is making a point of collecting Perl
success stories and is always hungry for more.  They won't convert
the unwashed there, though.

It'd sure be nice to have a WebTechniques special issue on mod_perl.
Hint, hint, Randal :-)

Nat

Re: Re[2]: Mod_perl tutorials

2000-12-13 Thread Nathan Torkington


Allen Wilson writes:
 I for one...would like to see some tutorials. I am just starting to
 use mod_perl and it hard getting a firm start.

http://prometheus.frii.com/~gnat/mod_perl is the only freely-available
tutorial that I know of.  There are a few (ahem) bugs in the code, but
the tutorial is still useful (IMHO).  I'd appreciate any feedback you
have.

Nat

Re: Mod_perl tutorials

2000-12-13 Thread Nathan Torkington


Matt Sergeant writes:
 Basically I see the distinction as news/community vs the official home
 page. The same as php3.org vs phpbuilder.

I think modperl.com should be the webpage that shows modperl to be an
active vibrant technology.  In other words, I think take23 should
really be on modperl.com.  The domain name is the killer.

Nat

Article idea: mod_perl + JSP

2000-12-12 Thread Nathan Torkington


I think the 100% Java idea has had its day.  Microsoft's .NET is a
tacit admission that in the real world Microsoft will never own 100%
of the market, so let's make things work better together.

In that vein, I'd love to see an article on mod_perl and JSP
cooperating.  That is, a website that uses both and admits that each
has its place.  I know a lot of people don't like Java (I'm one of
them), but mentioning JSP is the foot in the door to getting mindshare
back from those folks who now think that Java is the only way.

Anyone run such an installation?  Anyone want to write about their
setup and experiences?

Nat

Re: Article idea: mod_perl + JSP

2000-12-12 Thread Nathan Torkington


Perrin Harkins writes:
 Anyway, I think a better approach for getting attention from Java-minded
 people is to demonstrate that there are well-designed, carefully
 engineered sites being built in mod_perl.  Most of the articles I see
 about Perl tend to play up the "quick hack" aspect, and ignore things like
 OO design, maintainability, and scalability.  Those things are the stock
 in trade of Java articles, as a quick look through Java World will show.

That's an offer of an article? :-)

Nat

A plea for editing

2000-12-10 Thread Nathan Torkington


Please trim your replies so that there aren't two pages of quoted
material and then five lines of original response.  Sometimes I
feel like I need a map and compass to find the new message :-)

Thanks,

Nat

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Re: RFC: mod_perl advocacy project resurrection

2000-12-07 Thread Nathan Torkington


J. J. Horner writes:
 I'd be interested in something like this.

Certification is a quagmire.  If it's done well, it takes a lot of
work by the certification authority, and that makes it expensive for
those certified.  If it's done poorly, it's useless and is just a
moneymaker for the certification authority.

I think that certification is only really meaningful when you have too
many applicants and need to give the employers a sense of how good the
applicants are.  That's the Cisco and Microsoft model, even though
MCSE is a joke.  I don't see a surfeit of mod_perl programmers.  If
anything, a stark shortage.

I'd rather see us find some way to churn out perl and mod_perl
programmers.  For instance, release a beginner class on Perl and
mod_perl and have local Perlmongers lead classes.  I have my slides
from the University of Perl, which I'd contribute to such an effort
(they're pretty closely based around the Eagle book, and some of the
details should be replaced with sections on Mason et al.).

Nat

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Re: mod_perl advocacy project resurrection

2000-12-06 Thread Nathan Stitt



 ActiveState has built an Perl/Python IDE out of Mozilla:
  http://www.activestate.com/Products/Komodo/index.html

too bad it's windows only :/

It says at:
http://www.activestate.com/Products/Komodo/index.html
that it is cross platform for Windows, Linux, and Unix.

The beta they have available for downloading is win only,
but I can't imagine them not supporting the other platforms once
it's released since it's based on mozilla, which has made quite
an effort to be truely cross platform.


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Re: RFC: mod_perl advocacy project resurrection

2000-12-05 Thread Nathan Stitt


martin langhoff wrote:
 
 snip.
 Another item that we should really have is a good (and somehow
 sanctioned) RPM that replaces the apache rpm (or deb) included in broken
 distros. Then we can include in the guide and related pages a link for
 [broken-distro-name] users, so they get a suitable replacement with a
 similar config. That's an important issue, because a redhat user has
 other non-standard modules included in his rpm, such as PHP, and
 compiling a *complete* apache, with mod_perl, php and the kitchen sink
 is a daunting task -- and too high an entry price.
 
 anyway, not an easy task ... mmhhh..
 
 martin

Has anyone out there tried the apache toolbox?  It looks like an
interesting program that asks you what options you want in your apache,
then downloads, compiles and installs your apache server.  If it works
as described, it would be a good option to recommend for users with
broken rpms as you describe. It suposedly supports mod_perl, ssl, and
even php all together somehow.

I've never used it, but am planning to give it a shot next time I have
to compile a new server.

Its at: http://www.apachetoolbox.com/


Nathan Stitt
Head Programer, Chief Cook, and Bottle Washer.
Alliance Medical
http://www.allmed.net/

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Re: RFC: mod_perl advocacy project resurrection

2000-12-05 Thread Nathan Torkington


Stas Bekman writes:
 Luckily Matt has got sick of waiting for someone to work on the advocacy
 of mod_perl and he has just taken over it. Having a good informational
 site is good, but it's not enough. We need to solve the problem of people
 to find this site and wanting to use mod_perl. Solution? Spreading the
 word.

I picture only 10% of people who build web sites ever needing to use
mod_perl directly.  I think they're more likely to use the systems
that are built *in* mod_perl, like Mason, AxKit, and so on.  If
there's a with a lot of information about building web sites with
those systems, then you'll make people happy.

I'm an editor at O'Reilly now, for those who didn't know, and I am
*very* interested in a book on building websites with mod_perl
technology.  That's not the mod_perl book, nor the mod_perl guide, but
a book on using Mason and AxKit and the other solutions to build
bitching dynamic websites.  Anyone interested, contact me
([EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED]).

 1) Online zines.

The O'Reilly Network is one place to push this.  In January sometime
there'll be a new site launched that will be perfect for this type of
content.  I'll let you know more closer to the date, when *I* will
know more.

The mod_perl advocacy site should have RSS summaries available so that
updates can go into the Meerkat system (meerkat.oreillynet.com).  That
will also raise the image.

Announce the site (I think modperl.com or perl.apache.org should be
the advocacy site, which contains a pointer to the tech docs) in TPJ
and via the Perl News (news.perl.org).

ApacheWeek should mention it.

Nat

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Re: RFC: mod_perl advocacy project resurrection

2000-12-05 Thread Nathan Torkington


Paul writes:
 Any idea what it would take to get a link there from webs like tpj and
 Perl.com?

Those two I can easily make happen.  Send me email saying what you
want a link to, and what you want the link to say.

Writers for perl.com are always wanted.  Pitch your article ideas to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] and he'll work with you to make the good ones happen.

Nat

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Re: sponsoring advocacy

2000-12-05 Thread Nathan Stitt,,,


Stas Bekman wrote:

 Well, here comes a different question. Most of us have very limited
 resources on helping the project. The best scenario is when someone is
 doing mod_perl coding for his tasks at work and contributes back.
 
 But we are talking about things that require more than that. We need
 people with time on their hands to do this different work
 (articles/sites/packaging/apps/etc). But it's a time consuming thing, and
 many prefer to have some well deserved rest than work for free, even if
 they love mod_perl.
 
 So here is the question: Will you or your company support a few people to
 do full/part time advocacy which involves talking, coding, helping, and a
 lot more. Imagine that we create a group of people who will indirectly
 benefit your business by creating the man power (teaching), hype and
 acceptance by those who make decisions (media), knowledge base (articles
 and cookbooks), more extended help/support at the list level and of course
 making the product itself better thru coding.
 
 I'm interested to know two things: 
 1) whether there is an interest to sponsor such an endeavor.
 2) whether there are people interested to do the work.
 
 _
 Stas Bekman  JAm_pH --   Just Another mod_perl Hacker
 http://stason.org/   mod_perl Guide  http://perl.apache.org/guide 
 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]   http://apachetoday.com http://jazzvalley.com
 http://singlesheaven.com http://perl.apache.org http://perlmonth.com/  
 
 
 
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Re: sponsoring advocacy

2000-12-05 Thread Nathan Stitt


Nathan Stitt attmpted to write:

 Stas Bekman wrote:
 
  Well, here comes a different question. Most of us have very limited
  resources on helping the project. The best scenario is when someone is
  doing mod_perl coding for his tasks at work and contributes back.
 
  But we are talking about things that require more than that. We need
  people with time on their hands to do this different work
  (articles/sites/packaging/apps/etc). But it's a time consuming thing, and
  many prefer to have some well deserved rest than work for free, even if
  they love mod_perl.
 
  So here is the question: Will you or your company support a few people to
  do full/part time advocacy which involves talking, coding, helping, and a
  lot more. Imagine that we create a group of people who will indirectly
  benefit your business by creating the man power (teaching), hype and
  acceptance by those who make decisions (media), knowledge base (articles
  and cookbooks), more extended help/support at the list level and of course
  making the product itself better thru coding.
 
  I'm interested to know two things:
  1) whether there is an interest to sponsor such an endeavor.
  2) whether there are people interested to do the work.
 


!#@$! Mozilla!  I really did type text in my earlier reply!  Perhaps
that's what they mean when they say, 'This browser is a beta, it may eat
your email'.  Actually was a build from about a week ago, and untill now
has worked fine.. gobbles memory like crazy, but not too crashy.  And
here I was doing so good staying out of non-free with debian.  

My apologies for wasting everyone's time/bandwidth on my earlier useless
post. As I said before mozilla screwed the pooch on me,

Stas,

I (and I hope many others) would be glad to help with whatever task need
to be done to ensure mod_perl keeps/gains mindshare.  To be honest, I
had never really given a thought to what might happen if mod_perl loses
mindshare to php or java.  Although to be honest, I've never considered
php worth worrying about, as I've found it a fine language for smaller
sites, (and a horrible one for larger ones IMHO).  What gives me the
willies is some day waking up and not being able to find work except
using java servlets, or horrors .asp.

In my opinion, what we all need is a leader(s) who can plot out a plan
for web domination, put it up for critiques and flames, revise according
to the well thought out critiques and then parcel it up in small
sections for people to claim ownership off.  As you allude to, the small
parcels of work would not be all code, and therefore there would
probably be work for any skill level above rank newbie.
(and they can still test the user friendlyness of it).

As I said before I really hadn't thougth much about the need for
mindshare before today's long thread, so am still not sure how I can
contribute, but would definatly be willing to help compile a list
simular to what I outlined above, and grab a few jobs off it.

Of course choosing said leader(s) is the tricky part!  I have no idea
how to go about that.  However if someone with suitable stature could
come up with the plan, they could perhaps get a critical mass of
developers to follow.

As to a paying position hacking opensource mod_perl, that would be great
and probably pretty close to my dream job, but I'm not holding my breath
on a company picking up the tab in that fashion, and I don't think we
need to wait for it to happen either.

Nathan

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Re: Putting together the TPC mod_perl track

2000-11-12 Thread Nathan Torkington


Stas Bekman writes:
 Sorry about not mentioning all the other speakers who have added to the
 YAPC fun. Nat was there, so we will make sure to bring at least a little
 of this fun to TPC. I know that people pay a lot of money to attend TPC,
 compared to YAPC, but I doubt that people would complain about a few
 laughs. Nat?

Laughs, yes.  Chaos, no.  The Perl Golf from this year taught me that.
Chaos works well at a YAPC.  People get tetchy about it when they pay
TPC rates for a conference.

Nat

Re: Putting together the TPC mod_perl track

2000-11-01 Thread Nathan Torkington


Matt Sergeant writes:
 Since its getting towards the end of the year, should we be thinking of
 putting together a mod_perl track for TPC?

I've got a room allocated to mod_perl for two days of conference at
the next OScon.  With this group's blessing I'd like to call it "the
mod_perl conference", as nobody else is offering mod_perl this kind of
exposure.  It'll be mentioned in TPC advertising, but it won't be a
Perl or Apache track of the conference: it'll be labelled and promoted
as mod_perl only.

The low-hanging fruit (obvious topics) will be:
 * Doug MacEachern on mod_perl 2
 * Matt on AxKit (also likely to make an appearance in the XML track)
 * Brian on AO (please please dark gods let AO come to fruition)
 * talk(s) on how to do good things with Apache::ASP
 * mod_perl + backhand = ass-kicking
 * Tips for developing or tuning HTML::Mason sites
 * Case studies showing how big companies use mod_perl

This latter is an important part of the Perl conference.  Many
companies who would never 'fess up to using Perl seem quite happy
to send employees to speak at conferences.  Their talks end up as
a big advertisement for Perl, and lets us name-drop the company as
a Perl user.  I see no reason why the same shouldn't happen with
mod_perl.

Nat

Re: Putting together the TPC mod_perl track

2000-11-01 Thread Nathan Torkington


I wrote:
 I've got a room allocated to mod_perl for two days of conference at
 the next OScon

Man, that'll teach me to open my big mouth :-)

OScon is O'Reilly's Open Source Convention.  Next year it will be
in San Diego.  See http://conferences.ora.com/ for a link to this
year's OScon.  OScon has several tracks on things like Apache, 
Python, PHP, etc., as well as The Perl Conference.

I don't have a layout or blurb for this year's convention, because
we're still planning it.  The layout of tracks is gelling.  The CFP is
supposed to go out in a week's time, a target that may or may not be
reached.

Nat

Re: Putting together the TPC mod_perl track

2000-11-01 Thread Nathan Torkington


Perrin Harkins writes:
 I may be able to offer something on how we use mod_perl at eToys.  We
 recently rewrote our codebase to take better advantage of mod_perl and are
 using some fun OO stuff, as well as a bunch of scalability tricks.
 
 I was also thinking about presenting a comparison of templating methods
 and modules.

That'd be really cool.  We'll post a CFP as soon as we know exactly
what's going on.  The CFP will explain just what information we want
(probably title, brief description, outline, and author information).

Thanks,

Nat

Re: Producing an error page

2000-08-23 Thread Nathan Vonnahme



 -Original Message-
 From: Jay Strauss [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]

 I've tried the suggestions so far:

 cgi::carp
 http://perl.apache.org/guide/snippets.html#Redirecting_Errors_to_t
 he_Client
 BEGIN { print "Content-Type: text/plain\n\n"; *STDERR = *STDOUT }

Jay,

Below is a module I wrote for doing what you want.  It'll need some name
changing, but the POD at the bottom should explain mostly how to use it.  
One feature is that you can give it a list of "developer" IP addresses
that should see the Perl errors, while other people get a nice bug report
form.  It even works with mod_perl, but beware:  once you use it on one
Registry CGI, all your mod_perl CGIs handle their errors this way.

I don't think I've done everything the most proper or best way but it has
worked in a production environment for a year or so.  I'd welcome comments
or encouragement to put it in CPAN.

Cheers,
nathan
~~~~~
Nathan Vonnahme [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://enteuxis.org/nathan  http://thethirdsector.com


# $Id: CGI_errors.pm,v 1.3 1998/08/26 01:53:55 nathanv Exp $

#  Enteuxis::CGI_errors

# improve CGI error-reporting!  Give an intelligible message to someone on a 
development machine, 
#  or a bug report form to a user and an email report to $alert_email.
#
#  see the pod documentation at the bottom for more...
#
# Copyright 1998 Internet Alaska, Inc.
# 
# written by [EMAIL PROTECTED]


package Enteuxis::CGI_errors;

use vars qw(@ISA @EXPORT $VERSION);
require Exporter;
@ISA = Exporter;
@EXPORT = qw(setup_CGI_errors);

$VERSION = sprintf("%d.%02d", q$Revision: 1.3 $ =~ /(\d+)\.(\d+)/);


use strict;
use CGI::Carp;

my $mailprog = '/usr/lib/sendmail';
my $FORMMAIL_URL = 'http://www.alaska.net/cgi-bin/FormMail.pl';
my $default_email = 'nathan\@enteuxis.org';

my @dev_machines = (
'208.151.124.132',
'inferno.infoinsights.com',
);

my @warnings = ();

sub setup_CGI_errors {
$| = 1;
my $alert_email = shift || $default_email;

$main::SIG{'__WARN__'} = sub {
push @Enteuxis::CGI_errors::warnings, @_ ;
};

$main::SIG{'__DIE__'} = sub {
my $mesg;
# set $header to a valid HTTP header
my $header = "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

if ( ! $ENV{REMOTE_HOST} ||
 (join " ", @dev_machines) =~ /\b$ENV{REMOTE_HOST}\b/ ) {
$mesg = "h1SCRIPT ERROR/h1\n";

$mesg .= "h2WARNINGS:/h2\nul\n";
foreach ( @Enteuxis::CGI_errors::warnings ) { $mesg .= 
"li$_\n"; }
$mesg .= "/ul\nbrhr";
$mesg .= "h2DIE MESSAGE:/h2ulli @_/ulbr";

my($package,$file,$line) = caller();
$mesg .= "bDied/b in $package at $file line $line.\n";

print STDOUT $header . $mesg;
exit;
}
else {
my $url = 
"$ENV{SERVER_URL}$ENV{SCRIPT_NAME}$ENV{PATH_INFO}?$ENV{QUERY_STRING}";
$mesg = qq[
html
headtitleScript Error/title/head
body bgcolor=#ff

h1SCRIPT ERROR/h1

Congratulations!  You've found a bug!  Our staff have been notified and the problem 
should be fixed soon.\n
We'd like it if you can also send us a short description of what you were trying to 
do:hr
form action="$FORMMAIL_URL" method="POST"
input type=hidden name="recipient" value="$alert_email"
input type=hidden name="subject" value="broken CGI comment"
input type=hidden name="the URL in question" value="$url"
Your name (optional)input type=text name="realname" value=""br
Your email address (optional)input type=text name="email" value="\@alaska.net"br
What were you trying to do? textarea name="comment" rows=3 cols=40 
wrap="virtual"/textarea
input type=submit value="mail comments"
/formhr
/body/html
\n\n];
open ERRMAIL, "|$mailprog -t" or die "couldn't open mail pipe- 
$!";
print ERRMAIL "To: $alert_email\n", 
  "From: the.web.server\n", 
  "Subject: $ENV{SCRIPT_NAME} is 
broken!\n\n";

print ERRMAIL "The CGI at $url died!\n\n";
print ERRMAIL "WARNINGS:\n", join( "\n",
@Enteuxis::CGI_errors::warnings ), "\n\n";
print ERRMAIL "DIE MESSAGE:\n@_

Re: ignore header_only()?

2000-08-04 Thread Nathan Torkington


Thanks for the speedy response.  You've now emboldened me to ask my
second question: sometimes I see people not calling send_http_header()
and yet their HTML still comes through.  Does mod_perl sometimes
automatically call this for you?

Nat

Re: ORA conference

2000-07-14 Thread Nathan Torkington


Ask Bjoern Hansen writes:
 We have a mod_perl BOF the 19th from 8-9pm (that's 20-21 for the
 rest of us) - http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/w/bofs.html - which
 means that we have to stay sober enough to at least remember what
 time it is while we drink VA Linux's beer. :-)  
 http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/w/evening_events.html

I tried but failed to get this changed this year.  I will try harder
to change it for 2001.  The BOFs should be a 6:30-8:30 type of deal,
rather than 8:30-late.  We'll get there.

Nat

Re: Apache::Session::Object

2000-07-07 Thread Nathan Wiger


Perrin-

 modifying Apache::Session to support both interfaces and sending Jeffrey
 the patch. 

This is a good suggestion. I'll try modifying Apache::Session first and
sending Jeff the patch. If he doesn't want to integrate it I'll package
it as a separate module.

-Nate

Apache::Session::Object

2000-07-06 Thread Nathan Wiger


Hi-

I've created an object interface to Apache::Session. It's a simple
module that I've called Apache::Session::Object (seemed pretty
intuitive) that presents the following interface:

   # Create new session using the default File store
   use Apache::Session::Object;
   my $session = new Apache::Session::Object;

   my $id = $session-session_id;   # get session_id
   $session-{visa_number} = "4441 2001 2039 1100";
   $session-param('visa_number') = "4441 2001 2039 1100";   # same


   # Open existing session in the DB_File store
   use Apache::Session::Object;
   my $session2 = new Apache::Session::Object
($id, {Store = 'DB_File', Transaction = 1});

   print $session2-_session_id;# leading _ ok
   
   # yet another way to skin the same cat
   $session-visa_number("4441 2001 2039 1100");
   print $session2-visa_number;
   
 
Any comments on this? I wanted to write it to make a more consistent
interface with the other modules. It might also make sense to integrate
this with the existing Apache::Session module. The module itself is
pretty simple, just playing some tricks with new() and AUTOLOAD() to
provide a virtual OOP interface.

Thanks,
Nate

Possible mod_perl or ??? bug?

2000-06-29 Thread Nathan Wiger


Hi all-

On a totally different subject, I've been experiencing problems with the
interaction between CGI::Carp and Apache::Session. I find that in a
mod_perl context, if I import CGI::Carp before I import Apache::Session,
then I run into the following error:

[Thu Jun 29 13:14:03 2000] [error]  (in cleanup) Can't use an undefined
value as a symbol reference at
/apache/perl/lib/site_perl/5.005/Apache/Session/Lock/File.pm line 109.

This happens if I use "PerlModule" in httpd.conf or "use" in the script
to import them. If you reverse the order, importing Apache::Session
before CGI::Carp, then everything's ok! This also only happens under
mod_perl - under a normal CGI context it works just fine. Strange.

The code this is referencing is this:

   sub release_all_locks  {
 my $self= shift;
 my $session = shift;
 
 flock($self-{fh}, LOCK_UN);  --- line 109
 
 if ($self-{opened}) {
 close $self-{fh} || die $!;
 }
 
 $self-{opened} = 0;
 $self-{read}   = 0;
 $self-{write}  = 0;
   }

So something is screwing up the $self that should be passed to
Apache::Session::Lock::File::release_all_locks() by DESTROY(). Since
this only seems to happen when these two modules play together, it's
been difficult for me to try and find what the problem is. Anyone have
any ideas or see a similar thing on their systems? My config is mod_perl
1.24 / Apache 1.3.12 / Solaris 8.

Thanks,
Nate

Re: Apache::Config module

2000-06-29 Thread Nathan Wiger


James-

You and are are saying the same thing, just with different terminology.
I agree completely. :-)

-Nate

James G Smith wrote:
 
 Nathan Wiger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
   UseCanonicalName   On# = 1
   UseCanonicalName   Off   # = 0
   #UseCanonicalName  On# = undef (commented out)
 
 That way, the logic in your script/module/whatever can set a default
 value:
 
if ( ! defined($conf-{usecanonicalname}) ) {
   # not specified, set default(s)
} elsif ( ! $conf-{usecanonicalname} ) {
   # explicitly turned off
} else {
   # explicitly turned on
}
 
 I think I would prefer it not exist in the hash if it is commented out in the
 config file (the same as not existing in the config file).  Then
 
   UseCanonicalName   On# = 1
   UseCanonicalName   Off   # = 0
   UseCanonicalName # = undef
   #UseCanonicalName  On# = non-existant (commented out)
 
 Otherwise, we can't distinguish between the last two possibilities.
 --
 James Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED], 979-862-3725
 Texas AM CIS Operating Systems Group, Unix

Re: Apache::Config module

2000-06-29 Thread Nathan Wiger


 NW] In any case, I have several questions:
 NW]
 NW] 1. Does a module like this exist anywhere? 
 
 You may want to take a look at AppConfig module. It does provide
 generic capability to parse various kinds of config file. But I'll
 be a happy user to have more spesific Apache related in this regard.

Yeah, I checked out AppConfig, and I actually emailed the author about
modifying it a little so I could use it as a base class possibly for
Apache::Config. Unfortunately, I haven't heard anything back yet.
AppConfig would be a great base class, the only problem is that:

# it handles comments like this

 # but not like this

that's the only sticking point to not being able to extend AppConfig.
Hopefully I'll hear something back from him. The fix is just the
addition of a \s* to a regexp.

 Apache::Config will be sufficient, IMHO, as later someone might
 write another module, say Apache::Config::Deploy, that syncronize
 the configuration of some httpds across some networks.

Not bad - I like the idea for an extension.

I'll keep plugging away on it then, hopefully the author of AppConfig
will get back to me as that would help save some work, but regardless
the parsing of the httpd.conf is not really that hard in and of itself.
I'll use the name Apache::Config unless I hear otherwise.

Thanks again to everyone who responded for their input!

-Nate

Apache::Config module

2000-06-27 Thread Nathan Wiger


Hi all-

I've written a module that can parse the Apache httpd.conf config file
(and in fact any Apache-like config file). It will take a set of
directive like:

 ServerName www.mydomain.com
 UseCanonicalName   Off
 
And parse it case-insensitively, returning a ref to a hash:

my $ac = new Apache::Config;
my $conf = $ac-readconf($configfile);
print $conf-{servername};   # = "www.mydomain.com";
print $conf-{usecanonicalname}; # = 0   (not undef so can test
 #for defined() still)

I am also finishing up the ability to parse within contexts, such as
Directory and Location. I am still unsure of the interface, I have
two ideas:
 
1. multi-level hash, i.e.
  $conf-{"directory /"}-{sethandler}
 
2. individual functions, i.e.
  $conf-directory("/")-{sethandler}

If anyone has any input, I'm all ears. Right now I'm leaning towards the
second one, if I can get it working. The first one is really flexible
and easy, the problem is that it's difficult to search. The second one
helps with this issue, but the downside is that new functions have to be
added if new Apache contexts are defined. I'm trying to play some tricks
with the AutoLoader ala Shell to get new functions defined on the fly.
If anyone has good ideas for a better interface, I'd also like to hear
them.

In any case, I have several questions:
 
1. Does a module like this exist anywhere?  I saw Doug's
   Apache::httpd_conf, but this only takes care of writing
   a very minimal config file. I looked thru all the
   Apache:: modules but didn't see one.
 
2. Is the name Apache::Config a good name for this module?
   It seems like the obvious choice to me, and doesn't
   look like it's taken. I've also played around with
   Apache::ConfigFile and Apache::ReadConf, either of
   which I'm open to as well (or other suggestions?).

I'm aware of the Apache and Apache::Constants modules, which do provide
Apache API methods for getting to this data that work great for
mod_perl. My goal with this module was to make it general enough to be
used to parse any Apache-style config file. That way, if you wanted (a)
write a CGI script outside of mod_perl that used httpd.conf data, or (b)
wrote a custom (maybe non-web) app that used an Apache-like config file,
you could get at the data quickly. In this way it would be like
Apache::Session, where it can work either in a CGI or mod_perl context.
 
Thanks for your help and input.

-Nate

Re: Apache::Config module

2000-06-27 Thread Nathan Wiger


James-

 You might want to reconsider the usecanonicalname setting.  The hash element
 should exist if and only if it appears in the configuration file.  It should
 be defined if and only if it has an argument in the configuration file.
 
 Thus, the following results:
 
 UseCanonicalName
 results in $conf-{usecanonicalname} == undef
 
 UseCanonicalName  Off
 results in $conf-{usecanonicalname} == 0
 
 Then use existance in the hash array to test existance in the configuration
 file.  You may have already been thinking along this line.  If so, then I'm
 only clarifying a point...

You're exactly right - that's why I make a distinction between 0, 1, and
undef, so:

  UseCanonicalName   On# = 1
  UseCanonicalName   Off   # = 0
  #UseCanonicalName  On# = undef (commented out)

That way, the logic in your script/module/whatever can set a default
value:

   if ( ! defined($conf-{usecanonicalname}) ) {
  # not specified, set default(s)
   } elsif ( ! $conf-{usecanonicalname} ) {
  # explicitly turned off
   } else {
  # explicitly turned on
   }

This lets you default to any value you want (on or off). Does this help
clarify?

Regarding this:

 Perhaps
 
  3. multi-level hash, i.e.
$conf-{directory}-{'/'}-{sethandler}
 
 This is, afaik, more in-line with what the Perl.../Perl sections do.  I
 would suggest making it so the output of this module could easily be fed into
 the mod_perl configuration engine in the Perl sections.  This gives us the
 ease of the second example with the programming simplicity of the first (i.e.,
 no new functions).

I actually like this alot. My question would be how to parse something
that didn't have one element, or that had multiple ones, for example I
can envision:

Perl /Perl
SomeContext "/a" "/b" /SomeContext

The first one exists, while the second one is (as far as I'm aware) only
theoretical. However, should they be solved as:

$conf-{perl}-{somesetting}
$conf-{somecontext}-{'/a'}-{'/b'}-{somesetting}

Input???  I just want to plan this out from the start so that as things
are added later the syntax and/or structures don't get unwieldy. I don't
want to change the "API" to such a module once it's out there.

Thanks again for the feedback.

-Nate

Re: gensym()

2000-04-24 Thread Nathan Torkington


Matt Sergeant writes:
 Nope, but often I do use the TomC "my $fh = do { local *FH; };" method,
 because I hate those ugly HANDLE capital letters everywhere - they use up
 more bytes than lower case ones... ;-)

When you have 5.6.0, it's even easier:

  my $fh;
  open($fh, " foobar") or die;
  # $fh autovivified to a filehandle

Whee!  You can even use the 3-arg open for maximum delight.

Nat

Re: [summary] holding a mod_perl conference

2000-04-20 Thread Nathan Torkington


Stas Bekman writes:
 Therefore a possible solution, as offered by both conference organizers,
 is to have a dedicated mod_perl track this summer in Monterey and in

Close, but not quite.  It's too late to adjust the July 2000
conference (layout was finalized around March 1), but we are all
systems go to have a separate mod_perl track in 2001.  Can't wait.

Nat

Re: [RFC] holding a mod_perl conference


I guess I'm not sure why mod_perl needs a conference of its own.
Would a mod_perl track as part of the O'Reilly Open Source Conference
work for you?  That way you wouldn't need to kill a member of the
community by pushing organization onto them, as O'Reilly's (excellent)
conference organization folks can do the hotels, A/V, catering, and
other logistics.

Nat

Re: [RFC] holding a mod_perl conference


I said:
 I guess I'm not sure why mod_perl needs a conference of its own.
 Would a mod_perl track as part of the O'Reilly Open Source Conference
 work for you?  That way you wouldn't need to kill a member of the
 community by pushing organization onto them, as O'Reilly's (excellent)
 conference organization folks can do the hotels, A/V, catering, and
 other logistics.

And if this isn't acceptable, I could always have a word in the
O'Reilly folks' ears about having a mod_perl conference as a
standalone event, at a different time and place from the Open Source
conference.  The problem with standalone conferences is that you need
to have reasonably high attendance before they pay for the logistical
work and equipment hire needed to put them on.  "Reasonably high"
could be anywhere from 200 to 500 depending on the hotel, speakers
fees, tutorial attendance, number of parallel tracks, etc.

It's much less ambitious to start with a track or two devoted to
mod_perl at the Open Source conference, and then fork it off into a
separate conference if the attendance at those tracks shows there's
the interest to justify it.

Nat

Re: [RFC] holding a mod_perl conference


Jeff D. 'Spud (Zeppelin)' Almeida writes:
 1) I don't think getting 200 people to attend a mod_perl conference is
 particularly ambitious at all, especially if it's held in a manner
 convenient for people to attend.  20,000 people went to Linux World in New
 York, and it wasn't THAT great of a show If you hold a conference
 where you already have a fairly thick concentration of mod_perl
 developers, and you get the right people to speak, people WILL come.

Right, I think 200 people is very do-able.  I think you're fooling
yourself if you think that Linux World is anywhere comparable to a
mod_perl conference.  It's beyond apples and oranges.  It's peas and
watermelons.

 2) What people are saying isn't that we want a huge, IDG-ish production
 with tracks and a tradeshow floor and catered water and soundsystems and
 skirted tables.  Several people have said they would rather have something
 along the YAPC model... a small, productive session, perhaps better suited
 for the conference facilities of a University than those of a hotel.  If
 ever there was something calling for the "KISS" mantra, it was this con. :)

Right.  But I'm saying that putting on a YAPC conference blows the
organizer's mind.  Kevin Lenzo, the YAPC organizer, had to worry about
food, tracks, sound systems, projectors, rooms, accomodation, and
printed proceedings.  These problems didn't go away because YAPC was
on a smaller scale, and in some ways they became more of a problem
because there was one person doing the organization and he had to
handle it all.  I'm not saying that a YAPC-style conference can't be
done, I'm just saying that it's not as easy as it sounds.

 Would we appreciate logistial support from O'Reilly? Of course.  Do we
 want this con to be large enough to have to worry about revenue models?
 Not particularly. 

Actually, O'Reilly is pretty mellow about revenue too.  They're
willing, unlike a lot of companies, to put in time building and
promoting conferences.  They don't expect wild successes initially.  I
know this because of my work with them on the Perl conference, which
has certainly never been a cash cow.

I'm not forcing an O'Reilly conference on anybody, and I don't even
have the authority to promise it.  I just have the ears of the right
people and could suggest that they work with the mod_perl community
to put on a conference.

Frankly, I think your Route of Least Pain (coincidentally also the
Route Most Likely to Succeed) is to have separate mod_perl tracks at
the Open Source conference.  You'll get rooms dedicated entirely to
mod_perl, you (or Doug or whoever the program chair is) can put
whatever talks you want in there, you can have your own tutorials.

You can even have a room during tutorials for the folks *behind*
mod_perl (Doug, Staks, Vivek, etc.) to meet and hammer out future
directions and development issues.  When I spoke with the conference
folks last week, they were keen to get more into helping the
developers of the open source tools meet and plan.  There was a
some-random-java-technology developers meeting at the O'Reilly Java
conference, where the folks writing the code that others use got to
meet and iron out tricky issues.  They had a recorder, whiteboards,
the whole nine yards.

I'm sure that such a track might even be called a conference in the
materials, if you wanted that cachet.

Ok, I'm going to shut up now unless people actually ask me a question.
I'm sure you all think I'm some kind of O'Reilly stooge.

Nat

Re: [RFC] holding a mod_perl conference


Jason Bodnar writes:
 I guess my big problem with the ORA conference last year was that all the
 tutorials I attended last year tried to cover the basics and didn't lead
 enough time for in-depth informaiton.

Yup, I agree.  The level of the material offered, though, is in the
hands of the program chair.  So when I put together the Perl
conference tutorials, I try to make sure that at any one time there's
something that *I* would like to see, as well as something that a less
advanced (more intermediate) programmer might want to attend.  So this
year there's Damian Conway's "making your mind go boom with OO in Perl"
talks, as well as MjD's hardcore Perl.

The modperl program chair could decide to have a "how to get started"
tutorial as well as a "popping the hood and attacking the transmission
with a wrench" tutorial.  In fact, I hope that'd happen.  In some ways
the program chair is limited to the tutorials that people offer: if
nobody is interested in giving a tutorial on pushing Mason to its
limits, it can't be offered.

By the way, now's the time to start thinking of topics and tutorials
and other material for the 2001 conference.  The earlier the program
chair can start hounding folks for talks and tutorials, the better.

Nat

Re: [RFC] holding a mod_perl conference


Jeff D. 'Spud (Zeppelin)' Almeida writes:
 I don't know why it is that we (as a computer industry) feel
 compelled to attach grossly overinflated registration fees to our
 professional meetings, but the ones that don't have them (like YAPC)
 tend to be better-appreciated.

The registration fee is set based on the costs of producing it.  TPC
has higher marketing, organization, and execution costs than YAPC did.
TPC could then afford to help speakers get to the conference--many of
the more remote Perl gods were helped with their travel to the early
TPCs.

YAPC is cheaper, and is fun in its own right, but it was a completely
different experience to TPC.  Both, IMHO, were fun.  YAPC was more
intimate and I had the feeling of excitement that it was being done on
the wire by folks just like me.  At TPC I enjoyed the crowds, the huge
variety of people I could talk to, the ability to sit back and put
myself in someone else's hands, the resort atmosphere.  One wasn't, I
don't think, better than the other.  They both pleased me in different
ways.

The easiest way to avoid the Open Source Conference registration fee
is to be a speaker.  I really strongly encourage *everyone* who does
fun and interesting mod_perl things to submit proposals for talks and
tutorial to the next conference.  Speakers and tutors are comped
registration.  Tutors even get *paid*.  Imagine: being paid to fly to
Monterey in July and hang out with a bunch of mod_perlers 

Nat

Re: [RFC] holding a mod_perl conference