Apache-ASP
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The mail hosts specified in the Net::Config file will be used as
backup smtp servers to the MailHost specified here, should this
primary server not be working.
PerlSetVar MailHost smtp.yourdomain.com.foobar
=item MailFrom
Default NONE, set this to specify the default mail address placed
in the From: mail header for the $Server->Mail() API extension,
as well as MailErrorsTo and MailAlertTo.
PerlSetVar MailFrom youremail@yourdomain.com.foobar
=item MailErrorsTo
No default, if set, ASP server errors, error code 500, that result
while compiling or running scripts under Apache::ASP will automatically
be emailed to the email address set for this config. This allows
an administrator to have a rapid response to user generated server
errors resulting from bugs in production ASP scripts. Other errors, such
as 404 not found will be handled by Apache directly.
An easy way to see this config in action is to have an ASP script which calls
a die(), which generates an internal ASP 500 server error.
The Debug config of value 2 and this setting are mutually exclusive,
as Debug 2 is a development setting where errors are displayed in the browser,
and MailErrorsTo is a production setting so that errors are silently logged
and sent via email to the web admin.
PerlSetVar MailErrorsTo youremail@yourdomain.com
=item MailAlertTo
The address configured will have an email sent on any ASP server error 500,
and the message will be short enough to fit on a text based pager. This
config setting would be used to give an administrator a heads up that a www
server error occurred, as opposed to MailErrorsTo would be used for debugging
that server error.
This config does not work when Debug 2 is set, as it is a setting for
use in production only, where Debug 2 is for development use.
PerlSetVar MailAlertTo youremail@yourdomain.com
=item MailAlertPeriod
Default 20 minutes, this config specifies the time in minutes over
which there may be only one alert email generated by MailAlertTo.
The purpose of MailAlertTo is to give the admin a heads up that there
is an error at the www server. MailErrorsTo is for to aid in speedy
debugging of the incident.
PerlSetVar MailAlertPeriod 20
=head2 File Uploads
=item FileUploadMax
default 0, if set will limit file uploads to this
size in bytes. This is currently implemented by
setting $CGI::POST_MAX before handling the file
upload. Prior to this, a developer would have to
hardcode a value for $CGI::POST_MAX to get this
to work.
PerlSetVar 100000
=item FileUploadTemp
default 0, if set will leave a temp file on disk during the request,
which may be helpful for processing by other programs, but is also
a security risk in that other users on the operating system could
potentially read this file while the script is running.
The path to the temp file will be available at
$Request->{FileUpload}{$form_field}{TempFile}.
The regular use of file uploads remains the same
with the <$filehandle> to the upload at
$Request->{Form}{$form_field}. Please see the CGI section
for more information on file uploads, and the $Request
section in OBJECTS.
PerlSetVar FileUploadTemp 0
=head1 SYNTAX
=head2 General
ASP embedding syntax allows one to embed code in html in 2 simple ways.
The first is the <% xxx %> tag in which xxx is any valid perl code.
The second is <%= xxx %> where xxx is some scalar value that will
be inserted into the html directly. An easy print.
A simple asp page would look like:
<!-- sample here -->
<html>
<body>
For loop incrementing font size: <p>
<% for(1..5) { %>
<!-- iterated html text -->
<font size="<%=$_%>" > Size = <%=$_%> </font> <br>
<% } %>
</body>
</html>
<!-- end sample here -->
Notice that your perl code blocks can span any html. The for loop
above iterates over the html without any special syntax.
=head2 XMLSubs
XMLSubs allows a developer to define custom handlers for
HTML & XML tags, which can extend the natural syntax
of the ASP environment. Configured like:
PerlSetVar XMLSubsMatch site:\w+
A simple tag like:
<site:header title="Page Title" />
can be constructed that could translate into:
sub site::header {
my $args = shift;
print "<html><head><title>$args->{title}</title></head>\n";
print "<body bgcolor=white>\n";
}
Better yet, one can use this functionality to trap
and post process embedded HTML & XML like:
<site:page title="Page Title">
... some HTML here ...
</site:page>
and then:
sub site::page {
=back
=head2 $Request Object
The request object manages the input from the client browser, like
posts, query strings, cookies, etc. Normal return results are values
if an index is specified, or a collection / perl hash ref if no index
is specified. WARNING, the latter property is not supported in
ActiveState PerlScript, so if you use the hashes returned by such
a technique, it will not be portable.
A normal use of this feature would be to iterate through the
form variables in the form hash...
$form = $Request->Form();
for(keys %{$form}) {
$Response->Write("$_: $form->{$_}<br>\n");
}
Please see the ./site/eg/server_variables.htm asp file for this
method in action.
Note that if a form POST or query string contains duplicate
values for a key, those values will be returned through
normal use of the $Request object:
@values = $Request->Form('key');
but you can also access the internal storage, which is
an array reference like so:
$array_ref = $Request->{Form}{'key'};
@values = @{$array_ref};
Please read the PERLSCRIPT section for more information
on how things like $Request->QueryString() & $Request->Form()
behave as collections.
=over
=item $Request->{Method}
API extension. Returns the client HTTP request method, as in
GET or POST. Added in version 2.31.
=item $Request->{TotalBytes}
The amount of data sent by the client in the body of the
request, usually the length of the form data. This is
the same value as $Request->ServerVariables('CONTENT_LENGTH')
=item $Request->BinaryRead([$length])
Returns a string whose contents are the first $length bytes
of the form data, or body, sent by the client request.
If $length is not given, will return all of the form data.
This data is the raw data sent by the client, without any
parsing done on it by Apache::ASP.
Note that BinaryRead will not return any data for file uploads.
Please see the $Request->FileUpload() interface for access
to this data. $Request->Form() data will also be available
as normal.
=item $Request->ClientCertificate()
Not implemented.
=item $Request->Cookies($name [,$key])
Returns the value of the Cookie with name $name. If a $key is
specified, then a lookup will be done on the cookie as if it were
a query string. So, a cookie set by:
Set-Cookie: test=data1=1&data2=2
would have a value of 2 returned by $Request->Cookies('test','data2').
If no name is specified, a hash will be returned of cookie names
as keys and cookie values as values. If the cookie value is a query string,
it will automatically be parsed, and the value will be a hash reference to
these values.
When in doubt, try it out. Remember that unless you set the Expires
attribute of a cookie with $Response->Cookies('cookie', 'Expires', $xyz),
the cookies that you set will only last until you close your browser,
so you may find your self opening & closing your browser a lot when
debugging cookies.
For more information on cookies in ASP, please read $Response->Cookies()
=item $Request->FileUpload($form_field, $key)
API extension. The FileUpload interface to file upload data is
stabilized. The internal representation of the file uploads
is a hash of hashes, one hash per file upload found in
the $Request->Form() collection. This collection of collections
may be queried through the normal interface like so:
$Request->FileUpload('upload_file', 'ContentType');
$Request->FileUpload('upload_file', 'FileHandle');
$Request->FileUpload('upload_file', 'BrowserFile');
$Request->FileUpload('upload_file', 'Mime-Header');
$Request->FileUpload('upload_file', 'TempFile');
* note that TempFile must be use with the UploadTempFile
configuration setting.
The above represents the old slow collection interface,
but like all collections in Apache::ASP, you can reference
the internal hash representation more easily.
my $fileup = $Request->{FileUpload}{upload_file};
$fileup->{ContentType};
$fileup->{BrowserFile};
$fileup->{FileHandle};
$fileup->{Mime-Header};
$fileup->{TempFile};
=item $Request->Form($name)
Returns the value of the input of name $name used in a form
with POST method. If $name is not specified, returns a ref to
a hash of all the form data. One can use this hash to
create a nice alias to the form data like:
# in global.asa
use vars qw( $Form );
sub Script_OnStart {
$Form = $Request->Form;
}
# then in ASP scripts
<%= $Form->{var} %>
File upload data will be loaded into $Request->Form('file_field'),
where the value is the actual file name of the file uploaded, and
the contents of the file can be found by reading from the file
name as a file handle as in:
while(read($Request->Form('file_field_name'), $data, 1024)) {};
For more information, please see the CGI / File Upload section,
as file uploads are implemented via the CGI.pm module. An
example can be found in the installation
samples ./site/eg/file_upload.asp
=item $Request->Params($name)
API extension. If RequestParams CONFIG is set, the $Request->Params
object is created with combined contents of $Request->QueryString
and $Request->Form. This is for developer convenience simlar
to CGI.pm's param() method. Just like for $Response->Form,
one could create a nice alias like:
# in global.asa
use vars qw( $Params );
sub Script_OnStart {
$Params = $Request->Params;
}
=item $Request->QueryString($name)
Returns the value of the input of name $name used in a form
with GET method, or passed by appending a query string to the end of
a url as in http://localhost/?data=value.
If $name is not specified, returns a ref to a hash of all the query
string data.
=item $Request->ServerVariables($name)
Returns the value of the server variable / environment variable
with name $name. If $name is not specified, returns a ref to
a hash of all the server / environment variables data. The following
would be a common use of this method:
$env = $Request->ServerVariables();
# %{$env} here would be equivalent to the cgi %ENV in perl.
=back
=head2 $Application Object
Like the $Session object, you may use the $Application object to
store data across the entire life of the application. Every
page in the ASP application always has access to this object.
So if you wanted to keep track of how many visitors there where
to the application during its lifetime, you might have a line
like this:
$Application->{num_users}++
The Lock and Unlock methods are used to prevent simultaneous
access to the $Application object.
=over
=item $Application->Lock()
Locks the Application object for the life of the script, or until
UnLock() unlocks it, whichever comes first. When $Application
is locked, this guarantees that data being read and written to it
will not suddenly change on you between the reads and the writes.
This and the $Session object both lock automatically upon
every read and every write to ensure data integrity. This
As of version 0.09, use of CGI.pm for both input and output is seamless
when working under Apache::ASP. Thus if you would like to port existing
cgi scripts over to Apache::ASP, all you need to do is wrap <% %> around
the script to get going. This functionality has been implemented so that
developers may have the best of both worlds when building their
web applications.
For more information about CGI.pm, please see the web site
http://search.cpan.org/dist/CGI/
=item Query Object Initialization
You may create a CGI.pm $query object like so:
use CGI;
my $query = new CGI;
As of Apache::ASP version 0.09, form input may be read in
by CGI.pm upon initialization. Before, Apache::ASP would
consume the form input when reading into $Request->Form(),
but now form input is cached, and may be used by CGI.pm input
routines.
=item CGI headers
Not only can you use the CGI.pm $query->header() method
to put out headers, but with the CgiHeaders config option
set to true, you can also print "Header: value\n", and add
similar lines to the top of your script, like:
Some-Header: Value
Some-Other: OtherValue
<html><body> Script body starts here.
Once there are no longer any cgi style headers, or the
there is a newline, the body of the script begins. So
if you just had an asp script like:
print join(":", %{$Request->QueryString});
You would likely end up with no output, as that line is
interpreted as a header because of the semicolon. When doing
basic debugging, as long as you start the page with <html>
you will avoid this problem.
=item print()ing CGI
CGI is notorious for its print() statements, and the functions in CGI.pm
usually return strings to print(). You can do this under Apache::ASP,
since print just aliases to $Response->Write(). Note that $| has no
affect.
print $query->header();
print $query->start_form();
=item File Upload
CGI.pm is used for implementing reading the input from file upload. You
may create the file upload form however you wish, and then the
data may be recovered from the file upload by using $Request->Form().
Data from a file upload gets written to a file handle, that may in
turn be read from. The original file name that was uploaded is the
name of the file handle.
my $filehandle = $Request->Form('file_upload_field_name');
print $filehandle; # will get you the file name
my $data;
while(read($filehandle, $data, 1024)) {
# data from the uploaded file read into $data
};
Please see the docs on CGI.pm (try perldoc CGI) for more information
on this topic, and ./site/eg/file_upload.asp for an example of its use.
Also, for more details about CGI.pm itself, please see the web site:
http://search.cpan.org/dist/CGI/
Occasionally, a newer version of CGI.pm will be released which breaks
file upload compatibility with Apache::ASP. If you find this to occur,
then you might consider downgrading to a version that works. For example,
one can install a working CGI.pm v2.78 for a working version, and to
get old versions of this module, one can go to BACKPAN at:
http://backpan.cpan.org/modules/by-authors/id/L/LD/LDS/
There is also $Request->FileUpload() API extension that you can use to get
more data about a file upload, so that the following properties are
available for querying:
my $file_upload = $Request->{FileUpload}{upload_field};
$file_upload->{BrowserFile}
$file_upload->{FileHandle}
$file_upload->{ContentType}
# only if FileUploadTemp is set
$file_upload->{TempFile}
# whatever mime headers are sent with the file upload
# just "keys %$file_upload" to find out
$file_upload->{?Mime-Header?}
Please see the $Request section in OBJECTS for more information.
=back
=head1 PERLSCRIPT
Much work has been done to bring compatibility with ASP applications
written in PerlScript under IIS. Most of that work revolved around
bringing a Win32::OLE Collection interface to many of the objects
in Apache::ASP, which are natively written as perl hashes.
New as of version 2.05 is new functionality enabled with the
CollectionItem setting, to giver better support to more recent PerlScript syntax.
This seems helpful when porting from an IIS/PerlScript code base.
Please see the CONFIG section for more info.
The following objects in Apache::ASP respond as Collections:
$Application
$Session
$Request->FileUpload *
$Request->FileUpload('upload_file') *
$Request->Form
$Request->QueryString
$Request->Cookies
$Response->Cookies
$Response->Cookies('some_cookie')
* FileUpload API Extensions
And as such may be used with the following syntax, as compared
with the Apache::ASP native calls. Please note the native Apache::ASP
interface is compatible with the deprecated PerlScript interface.
C = PerlScript Compatibility N = Native Apache::ASP
## Collection->Contents($name)
[C] $Application->Contents('XYZ')
[N] $Application->{XYZ}
## Collection->SetProperty($property, $name, $value)
[C] $Application->Contents->SetProperty('Item', 'XYZ', "Fred");
[N] $Application->{XYZ} = "Fred"
## Collection->GetProperty($property, $name)
[C] $Application->Contents->GetProperty('Item', 'XYZ')
[N] $Application->{XYZ}
## Collection->Item($name)
[C] print $Request->QueryString->Item('message'), "<br>\n\n";
[N] print $Request->{QueryString}{'message'}, "<br>\n\n";
## Working with Cookies
[C] $Response->SetProperty('Cookies', 'Testing', 'Extra');
[C] $Response->SetProperty('Cookies', 'Testing', {'Path' => '/'});
[C] print $Request->Cookies(Testing) . "<br>\n";
[N] $Response->{Cookies}{Testing} = {Value => Extra, Path => '/'};
[N] print $Request->{Cookies}{Testing} . "<br>\n";
Several incompatibilities exist between PerlScript and Apache::ASP:
> Collection->{Count} property has not been implemented.
> VBScript dates may not be used for Expires property of cookies.
> Win32::OLE::in may not be used. Use keys() to iterate over.
> The ->{Item} property does not work, use the ->Item() method.
=head1 STYLE GUIDE
Here are some general style guidelines. Treat these as tips for
best practices on Apache::ASP development if you will.
=head2 UseStrict
One of perl's blessings is also its bane, variables do not need to be
declared, and are by default globally scoped. The problem with this in
mod_perl is that global variables persist from one request to another
even if a different web browser is viewing a page.
To avoid this problem, perl programmers have often been advised to
add to the top of their perl scripts:
use strict;
$r->dir_config('AllowSessionState', 'Off');
}
return 200; # return OK mod_perl status code
}
1;
</Perl>
This will configure your environment before Apache::ASP executes
and sees the configuration settings. You can use the mod_perl
API in this way to configure Apache::ASP at runtime.
Note that the Session Manager is very robust on its own, and denial
of service attacks of the types that spiders and other web bots
normally execute are not likely to affect the Session Manager significantly.
=item How can I use $Session to store a $dbh database handle ?
You cannot use $Session to store a $dbh handle. This can
be awkward for those coming from the IIS/NT world, where
you could store just about anything in $Session, but this
boils down to a difference between threads vs. processes.
Database handles often have per process file handles open,
which cannot be shared between requests, so though you
have stored the $dbh data in $Session, all the other
initializations are not relevant in another httpd process.
All is not lost! Apache::DBI can be used to cache
database connections on a per process basis, and will
work for most cases.
=head2 Development
=item VBScript or JScript supported?
Only Perl scripting is supported with this module.
=item How is database connectivity handled?
Database connectivity is handled through perl's DBI & DBD interfaces.
In the UNIX world, it seems most databases have cross platform support in perl.
You can find the book on DBI programming at http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perldbi/
DBD::ODBC is often your ticket on Win32. On UNIX, commercial vendors
like OpenLink Software (http://www.openlinksw.com/) provide the nuts and
bolts for ODBC.
Database connections can be cached per process with Apache::DBI.
=item What is the best way to debug an ASP application ?
There are lots of perl-ish tricks to make your life developing
and debugging an ASP application easier. For starters,
you will find some helpful hints by reading the
$Response->Debug() API extension, and the Debug
configuration directive.
=item How are file uploads handled?
Please see the CGI section. File uploads are implemented
through CGI.pm which is loaded at runtime only for this purpose.
This is the only time that CGI.pm will be loaded by Apache::ASP,
which implements all other cgi-ish functionality natively. The
rationale for not implementing file uploads natively is that
the extra 100K in memory for CGI.pm shouldn't be a big deal if you
are working with bulky file uploads.
=item How do I access the ASP Objects in general?
All the ASP objects can be referenced through the main package with
the following notation:
$main::Response->Write("html output");
This notation can be used from anywhere in perl, including routines
registered with $Server->RegisterCleanup().
You use the normal notation in your scripts, includes, and global.asa:
$Response->Write("html output");
=item Can I print() in ASP?
Yes. You can print() from anywhere in an ASP script as it aliases
to the $Response->Write() method. Using print() is portable with
PerlScript when using Win32::ASP in that environment.
=item Do I have access to ActiveX objects?
Only under Win32 will developers have access to ActiveX objects through
the perl Win32::OLE interface. This will remain true until there
are free COM ports to the UNIX world. At this time, there is no ActiveX
for the UNIX world.
=head2 Support and Production
=item How do I get things I want done?!
If you find a problem with the module, or would like a feature added,
please mail support, as listed in the SUPPORT section, and your
needs will be promptly and seriously considered, then implemented.
=item What is the state of Apache::ASP? Can I publish a web site on it?
Apache::ASP has been production ready since v.02. Work being done
on the module is on a per need basis, with the goal being to eventually
have the ASP API completed, with full portability to ActiveState PerlScript
and MKS PScript. If you can suggest any changes to facilitate these
goals, your comments are welcome.
=head1 TUNING
A little tuning can go a long way, and can make the difference between
a web site that gets by, and a site that screams with speed. With
Apache::ASP, you can easily take a poorly tuned site running at
10 hits/second to 50+ hits/second just with the right configuration.
Documented below are some simple things you can do to make the
most of your site.
=head2 Online Resources
For more tips & tricks on tuning Apache and mod_perl, please see the tuning
documents at:
Stas Bekman's mod_perl guide
=head2 Turn off Debugging
Turn off system debugging by setting Debug to 0-3. Having the system
debug config option on slows things down immensely, but can be useful
when troubleshooting your application. System level debugging is
settings -3 through -1, where user level debugging is 1 to 3. User level
debugging is much more light weight depending on how many $Reponse->Debug()
statements you use in your program, and you may want to leave it on.
=head2 Memory Sparing, NoCache
If you have a lot (1000's+) of scripts, and limited memory, set NoCache to 1,
so that compiled scripts are not cached in memory. You lose about
10-15% in speed for small scripts, but save at least 10K RAM per cached
script. These numbers are very rough and will largely depend on the size
of your scripts and includes.
=head2 Resource Limits
Make sure your web processes do not use too many resources
like CPU or RAM with the handy Apache::Resource module.
Such a config might look like:
PerlModule Apache::Resource
PerlSetEnv PERL_RLIMIT_CPU 1000
PerlSetEnv PERL_RLIMIT_DATA 60:60
If ever a web process should begin to take more than 60M ram
or use more than 1000 CPU seconds, it will be killed by
the OS this way. You only want to use this configuration
to protect against runaway processes and web program errors,
not for terminating a normally functioning system, so set
these limits HIGH!
=head1 SEE ALSO
perl(1), mod_perl(3), Apache(3), MLDBM(3), HTTP::Date(3), CGI(3),
Win32::OLE(3)
=head1 NOTES
Many thanks to those who helped me make this module a reality.
With Apache + ASP + Perl, web development could not be better!
Special thanks go to my father Kevin & wife Lina for their
love and support through it all, and without whom none of it
would have been possible.
Other honorable mentions include:
!! Gregory Youngblood, Thanos Chatziathanassiou, & Tsirkin Evgeny for keeping the flame alive!
:) Doug MacEachern, for moral support and of course mod_perl
:) Helmut Zeilinger, Skylos, John Drago, and Warren Young for their help in the community
:) Randy Kobes, for the win32 binaries, and for always being the epitome of helpfulness
:) Francesco Pasqualini, for bug fixes with stand alone CGI mode on Win32
:) Szymon Juraszczyk, for better ContentType handling for settings like Clean.
:) Oleg Kobyakovskiy, for identifying the double Session_OnEnd cleanup bug.
:) Peter Galbavy, for reporting numerous bugs and maintaining the OpenBSD port.
:) Richard Curtis, for reporting and working through interesting module
loading issues under mod_perl2 & apache2, and pushing on the file upload API.
:) Rune Henssel, for catching a major bug shortly after 2.47 release,
and going to great lengths to get me reproducing the bug quickly.
:) Broc, for keeping things filter aware, which broke in 2.45,
& much help on the list.
:) Manabu Higashida, for fixes to work under perl 5.8.0
:) Slaven Rezic, for suggestions on smoother CPAN installation
:) Mitsunobu Ozato, for working on a japanese translation of the site & docs.
:) Eamon Daly for persistence in resolving a MailErrors bug.
:) Gert, for help on the mailing list, and pushing the limits of use on Win32
in addition to XSLT.
:) Maurice Aubrey, for one of the early fixes to the long file name problem.
:) Tom Lancaster, for pushing the $Server->Mail API and general API discussion.
:) Ross Thomas, for pushing into areas so far unexplored.
:) Harald Kreuzer, for bug discovery & subsequent testing in the 2.25 era.
:) Michael Buschauer for his extreme work with XSLT.
:) Dariusz Pietrzak for a nice parser optimization.
:) Ime Smits, for his inode patch facilitating cross site code reuse, and
some nice performance enhancements adding another 1-2% speed.
:) Michael Davis, for easier CPAN installation.
:) Brian Wheeler, for keeping up with the Apache::Filter times,
and pulling off filtering ASP->AxKit.
:) Ged Haywood, for his great help on the list & professionally.
:) Vee McMillen, for OSS patience & understanding.
:) Craig Samuel, at LRN, for his faith in open source for his LCEC.
:) Geert Josten, for his wonderful work on XML::XSLT
:) Gerald Richter, for his Embperl, collaboration and competition!
:) Stas Bekman, for his beloved guide, and keeping us all worldly.
:) Matt Sergeant, again, for ever the excellent XML critique.
:) Remi Fasol + Serge Sozonoff who inspired cookieless sessions.
:) Matt Arnold, for the excellent graphics !
:) Adi, who thought to have full admin control over sessions
:) Dmitry Beransky, for sharable web application includes, ASP on the big.
:) Russell Weiss again, for finding the internal session garbage collection
behaving badly with DB_File sensitive i/o flushing requirements.
:) Tony Merc Mobily, inspiring tweaks to compile scripts 10 times faster
:) Paul Linder, who is Mr. Clean... not just the code, its faster too !
Boy was that just the beginning. Work with him later facilitated better
session management and XMLSubsMatch custom tag technology.
:) Russell Weiss, for being every so "strict" about his code.
:) Bill McKinnon, who understands the finer points of running a web site.
:) Richard Rossi, for his need for speed & boldly testing dynamic includes.
:) Greg Stark, for endless enthusiasm, pushing the module to its limits.
:) Marc Spencer, who brainstormed dynamic includes.
:) Doug Silver, for finding most of the bugs.
:) Darren Gibbons, the biggest cookie-monster I have ever known.
:) Ken Williams, for great teamwork bringing full SSI to the table
:) Matt Sergeant, for his great tutorial on PerlScript and love of ASP
:) Jeff Groves, who put a STOP to user stop button woes
:) Alan Sparks, for knowing when size is more important than speed
:) Lincoln Stein, for his blessed CGI.pm module
:) Michael Rothwell, for his love of Session hacking
:) Francesco Pasqualini, for bringing ASP to CGI
:) Bryan Murphy, for being a PerlScript wiz
:) Lupe Christoph, for his immaculate and stubborn testing skills
:) Ryan Whelan, for boldly testing on Unix in the early infancy of ASP
=head1 SUPPORT
=head2 COMMUNITY
form fields
- MailErrorsHTML now uses monospaced fonts for errors. Easier on
the eyes and more informative
=item $VERSION = 2.62; $DATE="08/16/2011"
- Fixed 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' for AJAX POSTs post
Firefox 3.x
+ First sourceforge.net hosted version
+ Incremented version number to actually match SVN branch tag
=item $VERSION = 2.61; $DATE="05/24/2008"
- updated for more recent mod_perl 2 environment to trigger correct loading of modules
+ loads modules in a backwards compatible way for older versions of mod_perl 1.99_07 to 1.99_09
+ license changes from GPL to Perl Artistic License
=item $VERSION = 2.59; $DATE="05/23/2005"
+ added "use bytes" to Response object to calculate Content-Length
correctly for UTF8 data, which should require therefore at least
perl version 5.6 installed
+ updated to work with latest mod_perl 2.0 module naming convention,
thanks to Randy Kobes for patch
+ examples now exclude usage of Apache::Filter & Apache::SSI under mod_perl 2.0
=item $VERSION = 2.57; $DATE="01/29/2004"
- $Server->Transfer will update $0 correctly
- return 0 for mod_perl handler to work with latest mod_perl 2 release
when we were returning 200 ( HTTP_OK ) before
- fixed bug in $Server->URL when called like $Server->URL($url)
without parameters. Its not clear which perl versions this bug
affected.
=item $VERSION = 2.55; $DATE="08/09/2003"
- Bug fixes for running on standalone CGI mode on Win32 submitted
by Francesco Pasqualini
+ Added Apache::ASP::Request::BINMODE for binmode() being
called on STDIN after STDIN is tied to $Request object
+ New RequestBinaryRead configuration created, may be turned off
to prevent $Request object from reading POST data
++ mod_perl 2 optmizations, there was a large code impact on this,
as much code was restructured to reduce the differences between
mod_perl 1 and mod_perl 2, most importantly, Apache::compat is
no longer used
+ preloaded CGI for file uploads in the mod_perl environment
- When XSLT config is set, $Response->Redirect() should work now
Thanks to Marcus Zoller for pointing problem out
+ Added CookieDomain setting, documented, and added test to cover
it in t/cookies.t . Setting suggested by Uwe Riehm, who nicely
submitted some code for this.
=item $VERSION = 2.53; $DATE="04/10/2003"
+ XMLSubs tags with "-" in them will have "-" replaced with "_" or underscore, so a
tag like <my:render-table /> will be translated to &my::render_table() ... tags with
- in them are common in extended XML syntaxes, but perl subs cannot have - in them only.
+ Clean setting now works on output when $Response->{ContentType} begins with text/html;
like "text/html; charset=iso-8859-2" ... before Clean would only work on output marked
with ContentType text/html. Thanks to Szymon Juraszczyk for recommending fix.
--Fixed a bug which would cause Session_OnEnd to be called twice on sessions in a certain case,
particularly when an old expired session gets reused by and web browser... this bug was
a result of a incomplete session cleanup method in this case. Thanks to Oleg Kobyakovskiy
for reporting this bug. Added test in t/session_events.t to cover this problem going forward.
- Compile errors from Apache::ASP->Loader() were not being reported. They will
be reported again now. Thanks to Thanos Chatziathanassiou for discovering and
documenting this bug. Added test in t/load.t to cover this problem going forward.
+ use of chr(hex($1)) to decode URI encoded parameters instead of pack("c",hex($1))
faster & more correct, thanks to Nikolay Melekhin for pointing out this need.
(d) Added old perlmonth.com articles to ./site/articles in distribution
and linked to them from the docs RESOURCES section
(d) Updated documention for the $Application->SessionCount API
+ Scripts with named subroutines, which is warned against in the style guide,
will not be cached to help prevent my closure problems that often
hurt new developers working in mod_perl environments. The downside
is that these script will have a performance penalty having to be
recompiled each invocation, but this will kill many closure caching
bugs that are hard to detect.
- $Request->FileUpload('upload_file', 'BrowserFile') would return
a glob before that would be the file name in scalar form. However
this would be interpreted as a reference incorrectly. The fix
is to make sure this is always a scalar by stringifying
this data internally. Thanks to Richard Curtis for pointing
out this bug.
=item $VERSION = 2.51; $DATE="02/10/2003"
+ added t/session_query_parse.t test to cover use of SessionQueryParse
and $Server->URL APIs
- Fixed duplicate "&" bug associated with using $Server->URL
and SessionQueryParse together
+ Patch to allow $Server->URL() to be called multiple times on the same URL
as in $Server->URL($Server->URL($url, \%params), \%more_params)
(d) Added new testimonials & sites & created a separate testimonials page.
- SessionQueryParse will now add to & to the query strings
embedded in the HTML, instead of & for proper HTML generation.
Thanks to Peter Galbavy for pointing out and Thanos Chatziathanassiou
for suggesting the fix.
- $Response->{ContentType} set to text/html for developer error reporting,
in case this was set to something else before the error occured.
Thanks to Philip Mak for reporting.
- Couple of minor bug fixes under PerlWarn use, thanks Peter Galbavy
for reporting.
+ Added automatic load of "use Apache2" for compat with mod_perl2
request objects when Apache::ASP is loaded via "PerlModule Apache::ASP"
Thanks to Richard Curtis for reporting bug & subsequent testing.
- When GlobalPackage config changes, but global.asa has not, global.asa
will be recompiled anyway to update the GlobalPackage correctly.
Changing GlobalPackage before would cause errors if global.asa was
already compiled.
++ For ANY PerlSetVar type config, OFF/Off/off will be assumed
to have value of 0 for that setting. Before, only a couple settings
had this semantics, but they all do now for consistency.
- Fix for InodeNames config on OpenBSD, or any OS that might have
a device # of 0 for the file being stat()'d, thanks to Peter Galbavy
for bug report.
++ Total XSLT speedups, 5-10% on large XSLT, 10-15% on small XSLT
+ bypass meta data check like expires for XSLT Cache() API use
because XSLT tranformations don't expire, saves hit to cache dbm
for meta data
+ use of direct Apache::ASP::State methods like FETCH/STORE
in Cache() layer so we don't have to go through slower tied interface.
This will speed up XSLT & and include output caching mostly.
+ minor optimizations for speed & memory usage
=item $VERSION = 2.29; $DATE="11/19/2001";
+Added some extra help text to the ./cgi/asp --help message
to clarify how to pass arguments to a script from the command line.
+When using $Server->Mail() API, if Content-Type header is set,
and MIME-Version is not, then a "MIME-Version: 1.0" header will be sent
for the email. This is correct according to RFC 1521 which specifies
for the first time the Content-Type: header for email documents.
Thanks to Philip Mak for pointing out this correct behavior.
+Made dependent on MLDBM::Sync version .25 to pass the taint_check.t test
+Improved server_mail.t test to work with mail servers were relaying is denied
+Added <html><body> tags to MailErrorsTo email
--Fixed SessionCount / Session_OnEnd bug, where these things were not
working for $Sessions that never had anything written to them.
This bug was introduced in 2.23/2.25 release.
There was an optimization in 2.23/2.25 where a $Session that was never
used does not write its state lock file & dbm files to disk, only if
it gets written too like $Session->{MARK}++. Tracking of these NULL $Sessions
then is handled solely in the internal database. For $Session garbage
collection though which would fire Session_OnEnd events and update
SessionCount, the Apache::ASP::State->GroupMembers() function was just
looking for state files on disk ... now it looks in the internal database
too for SessionID records for garbage collection.
Added a test at ./t/session_events.t for these things.
+Some optimizations for $Session API use.
+Added support for XSLT via XML::LibXSLT, patch courtesy of Michael Buschauer
-Got rid of an warning when recompiling changing includes under perl 5.6.1...
undef($code) method did not work for this perl version, rather undef(&$code) does.
Stopped using using Apache::Symbol for this when available.
-Make Apache::ASP script run under perl taint checking -T for perl 5.6.1...
$code =~ tr///; does not work to untaint here, so much use the slower:
$code =~ /^(.*)$/s; $code = $1; method to untaint.
-Check for inline includes changing, included in a dynamic included
loaded at runtime via $Response->Include(). Added test case for
this at t/include_change.t. If an inline include of a dynamic include
changes, the dynamic include should get recompiled now.
-Make OK to use again with PerlTaintCheck On, with MLDBM::Sync 2.25.
Fixed in ASP.pm, t/global.asa, and created new t/taint_check.t test script
+Load more modules when Apache::ASP is loaded so parent will share more
with children httpd:
Apache::Symbol
Devel::Symdump
Config
lib
MLDBM::Sync::SDBM_File
+When FileUploadMax bytes is exceeded for a file upload, there will not
be an odd error anymore resulting from $CGI::POST_MAX being triggered,
instead the file upload input will simply be ignored via $CGI::DISABLE_UPLOADS.
This gives the developer the opportunity to tell the user the the file upload
was too big, as demonstrated by the ./site/eg/file_upload.asp example.
To not let the web client POST a lot of data to your scripts as a form
of a denial of service attack use the apache config LimitRequestBody for the
max limits. You can think of PerlSetVar FileUploadMax as a soft limit, and
apache's LimitRequestBody as a hard limit.
--Under certain circumstances with file upload, it seems that IsClientConnected()
would return an aborted client value from $r->connection->aborted, so
the buffer output data would not be flushed to the client, and
the HTML page would return to the browser empty. This would be under
normal file upload use. One work-around was to make sure to initialize
the $Request object before $Response->IsClientConnected is called,
then $r->connection->aborted returns the right value.
This problem was probably introduced with IsClientConnected() code changes
starting in the 2.25 release.
=item $VERSION = 2.27; $DATE="10/31/2001";
+ Wrapped call to $r->connection->fileno in eval {} so to
preserve backwards compatibility with older mod_perl versions
that do not have this method defined. Thanks to Helmut Zeilinger
for catching this.
+ removed ./dev directory from distribution, useless clutter
+ Removed dependency on HTTP::Date by taking code into
Apache::ASP as Apache::ASP::Date. This relieves
the dependency of Apache::ASP on libwww LWP libraries.
If you were using HTTP::Date functions before without loading
"use HTTP::Date;" on your own, you will have to do this now.
+ Streamlined code execution. Especially worked on
$Response->IsClientConnected which gets called during
a normal request execution, and got rid of IO::Select
dependency. Some function style calls instead of OO style
calls where private functions were being invokes that one
would not need to override.
- Fixed possible bug when flushing a data buffer where there
is just a '0' in it.
+ Updated docs to note that StateCache config was deprecated
as of 2.23. Removed remaining code that referenced the config.
+ Removed references to unused OrderCollections code.
- Better Cache meta key, lower chance of collision with
unrelated data since its using the full MD5 keyspace now
+ Optimized some debugging statements that resulted
from recent development.
+ Tie::TextDir .04 and above is supported for StateDB
and CacheDB settings with MLDBM::Sync .21. This is good for
CacheDB where output is larger and there are not many
versions to cache, like for XSLTCache, where the site is
mostly static.
+ Better RESOURCES section to web site, especially with adding
some links to past Apache::ASP articles & presentations.
=item $VERSION = 2.25; $DATE="10/11/2001";
+ Improved ./site/apps/search application, for better
search results at Apache::ASP site. Also, reengineered
application better, with more perl code moved to global.asa.
Make use of MLDBM::Sync::SDBM_File, where search database
before was engineering around SDBM_File's shortcomings.
- Fix for SessionSerialize config, which broke in 2.23
=item $VERSION = 2.19; $DATE="7/10/2001";
+update docs in various parts
+added ./make_httpd/build_httpds.sh scripts for quick builds
of apache + mod_perl + mod_ssl
++plain CGI mode available for ASP execution.
cgi/asp script can now be used to execute ASP
scripts in CGI mode. See CGI perldoc section for more info.
The examples in ./site/eg have been set up to run
in cgi mode if desired. Configuration in CGI section
only tested for Apache on Linux.
-Fixed some faulty or out of date docs in XML/XSLT section.
+added t/server_mail.t test for $Server->Mail(), requires
Net::SMTP to be configured properly to succeed.
+Net::SMTP debugging not enabled by Debug 1,2,3 configs,
not only when system debugging is set with Debug -1,-2,-3
However, a Debug param passed to $Server->Mail() will
sucessfully override the Debug -1,-2,-3 setting even
when its Debug => 0
-Check for undef values during stats for inline includes
so we don't trigger unintialized warnings
+Documented ';' may separate many directories in the IncludesDir
setting for creating a more flexible includes search path.
=item $VERSION = 2.17; $DATE="6/17/2001";
+Added ASP perl mmm-mode subclass and configuration
in editors/mmm-asp-perl.el file for better emacs support.
Updated SYNTAX/Editors documentation.
+Better debugging error message for Debug 2 or 3 settings
for global.asa errors. Limit debug output for lines
preceding rendered script.
-In old inline include mode, there should no longer
be the error "need id for includes" when using
$Response->Include() ... if DynamicIncludes were
enabled, this problem would not have likely occured
anyway. DynamicIncludes are preferrable to use so
that compiled includes can be shared between scripts.
This bug was likely introduced in version 2.11.
-Removed logging from $Response->BinaryWrite() in regular
debug mode 1 or 2. Logging still enabled in system Debug mode, -1 or -2
-Removed other extra system debugging call that is really not
necessary.
=item $VERSION = 2.15; $DATE="06/12/2001";
-Fix for running under perl 5.6.1 by removing parser optimization
introduced in 2.11.
-Now file upload forms, forms with ENCTYPE="multipart/form-data"
can have multiple check boxes and select items marked for
@params = $Request->Form('param_name') functionality. This
will be demonstrated via the ./site/eg/file_upload.asp example.
=item $VERSION = 2.11; $DATE="05/29/2001";
+Parser optimization from Dariusz Pietrzak
-work around for global destruction error message for perl 5.6
during install
+$Response->{IsClientConnected} now will be set
correctly with ! $r->connection->aborted after each
$Response->Flush()
+New XSLTParser config which can be set to XML::XSLT or
XML::Sablotron. XML::Sablotron renders 10 times faster,
but differently. XML::XSLT is pure perl, so has wider
platform support than XML::Sablotron. This config affects
both the XSLT config and the $Server->XSLT() method.
+New $Server->XSLT(\$xsl_data, \$xml_data) API which
allows runtime XSLT on components instead of having to process
the entire ASP output as XSLT.
-XSLT support for XML::XSL 0.32. Things broke after .24.
-XSLTCacheSize config no longer supported. Was a bad
Tie::Cache implementation. Should be file based cache
to greatly increases cache hit ratio.
++$Response->Include(), $Response->TrapInclude(),
and $Server->Execute() will all take a scalar ref
or \'asdfdsafa' type code as their first argument to execute
a raw script instead of a script file name. At this time,
compilation of such a script, will not be cached. It is
compiled/executed as an anonymous subroutine and will be freed
when it goes out of scope.
+ -p argument to cgi/asp script to set GlobalPackage
config for static site builds
-pod commenting fix where windows clients are used for
ASP script generation.
+Some nice performance enhancements, thank to submissions from
Ime Smits. Added some 1-2% per request execution speed.
+Added StateDB MLDBM::Sync::SDBM_File support for faster
$Session + $Application than DB_File, yet still overcomes
SDBM_File's 1024 bytes value limitation. Documented in
StateDB config, and added Makefile.PL entry.
+Removed deprecated MD5 use and replace with Digest::MD5 calls
+PerlSetVar InodeNames 1 config which will compile scripts hashed by
their device & inode identifiers, from a stat($file)[0,1] call.
This allows for script directories, the Global directory,
and IncludesDir directories to be symlinked to without
recompiling identical scripts. Likely only works on Unix
systems. Thanks to Ime Smits for this one.
+Streamlined code internally so that includes & scripts were
+MailFrom config option that defaults the From: field for
mails sent via the Mail* configs and $Server->Mail()
+$Server->Mail(\%mail, %smtp_args) API extension
+MailErrorsTo & MailAlertTo now can take comma
separated email addresses for multiple recipients.
-tracking of subroutines defined in scripts and includes so
StatINC won't undefine them when reloading the GlobalPackage,
and so an warning will be logged when another script redefines
the same subroutine name, which has been the bane of at least
a few developers.
-Loader() will now recompile dynamic includes that
have changed, even if main including script has not.
This is useful if you are using Loader() in a
PerlRestartHandler, for reloading scripts when
gracefully restarting apache.
-Apache::ASP used to always set the status to 200 by
default explicitly with $r->status(). This would be
a problem if a script was being used to as a 404
ErrorDocument, because it would always return a 200 error
code, which is just wrong. $Response->{Status} is now
undefined by default and will only be used if set by
the developer.
Note that by default a script will still return a 200 status,
but $Response->{Status} may be used to override this behavior.
+$Server->Config($setting) API extension that allows developer
to access config settings like Global, StateDir, etc., and is a
wrapper around Apache->dir_config($setting)
+Loader() will log the number of scripts
recompiled and the number of scripts checked, instead
of just the number of scripts recompiled, which is
misleading as it reports 0 for child httpds after
a parent fork that used Loader() upon startup.
-Apache::ASP->Loader() would have a bad error if it didn't load
any scripts when given a directory, prints "loaded 0 scripts" now
=item $VERSION = 0.18; $DATE="02/03/2000";
+Documented SessionQuery* & $Server->URL() and
cleaned up formatting some, as well as redoing
some of the sections ordering for better readability.
Document the cookieless session functionality more
in a new SESSIONS section. Also documented new
FileUpload configs and $Request->FileUpload collection.
Documented StatScripts.
+StatScripts setting which if set to 0 will not reload
includes, global.asa, or scripts when changed.
+FileUpload file handles cleanup at garbage collection
time so developer does not have to worry about lazy coding
and undeffing filehandles used in code. Also set
uploaded filehandles to binmode automatically on Win32
platforms, saving the developer yet more typing.
+FileUploadTemp setting, default 0, if set will leave
a temp file on disk during the request, which may be
helpful for processing by other programs, but is also
a security risk in that others could potentially read
this file while the script is running.
The path to the temp file will be available at
$Request->{FileUpload}{$form_field}{TempFile}.
The regular use of file uploads remains the same
with the <$filehandle> to the upload at
$Request->{Form}{$form_field}.
+FileUploadMax setting, default 0, currently an
alias for $CGI::POST_MAX, which determines the
max size for a file upload in bytes.
+SessionQueryParse only auto parses session-ids
into links when a session-id COOKIE is NOT found.
This feature is only enabled then when a user has
disabled cookies, so the runtime penalty of this
feature won't drag down the whole site, since most
users will have cookies turned on.
-StatINC & StatINCMatch will not undef Fnctl.pm flock
functions constants like O_RDWR, because the code references
are not well trackable. This would result in sporadic 500 server
errors when a changed module was reloaded that imported O_* flock
functions from Fnctl.
+SessionQueryParse & SessionQueryParseMatch
settings that enable auto parsing session ids into
URLs for cookieless sessions. Will pick up URLs in
<a href>, <area href>, <form action>, <frame src>,
<iframe src>, <img src>, <input src>, <link href>
$Response->Redirect($URL) and the first URL in
script tags like <script>*.location.href=$URL</script>
These settings require that buffering be enabled, as
Apache::ASP will parse through the buffer to parse the URLs.
With SessionQueryParse on, it will just parse non-absolute
URLs, but with SessionQueryParseMatch set to some server
url regexp, like ^http://localhost , will also parse
in the session id for URLs that match that.
When testing, the performance hit from this parsing
a script dropped from 12.5 hits/sec on my WinNT box
to 11.7 hits per second for 1K of buffered output.
The difference is .007 of my PII300's processing power
per second.
For 10K of output then, my guess is that this speed
of script, would be slowed to 6.8 hits per second.
This kind of performance hit would also slow a
script running at 40 hits per second on a UNIX box
to 31 hits/sec for 1K, and to 11 hits/sec for 10K parsed.
Your mileage may vary and you will have to test the difference
yourself. Get yourself a valid URL with a session-id in
it, and run it through ab, or Socrates, with SessionQuery
turned on, and then with SessionQueryParse set to see
the difference. SessionQuery just enables of session id
setting from the query string but will not auto parse urls.
-If buffering, Content-Length will again be set.
It broke, probably while I was tuning in the past
couple versions.
+UseStrict setting compiles all scripts including
global.asa with "use strict" turned on for catching
more coding errors. With this setting enabled,
use strict errors die during compilation forcing
Apache::ASP to try to recompile the script until
successful.
$Session->UnLock();
This method will reduce the number of ties to the $Session database
from 6 to 1 for this kind of code, and will improve the performance
dramatically.
Also, instead of using explicit $Session locking, you can
create an automatic lock on $Session per script by setting
SessionSerialize in your config to 1. The danger here is
if you have any long running scripts, the user will have
to wait for it to finish before another script can be run.
To see the number of lock/unlocks or ties/unties to each database
during a script execution, look at the last lines of debug output
to your error log when Debug is set to 1. This can help you
performance tweak access to these databases.
+Updated documentation with new config settings and
API extensions.
+Added AllowApplicationState config option which allows
you to leave $Application undefined, and will not
execute Application_OnStart or Application_OnEnd.
This can be a slight performance increase of 2-3% if
you are not using $Application, but are using $Session.
+Added $Session->Lock() / $Session->UnLock() API routines
necessary additions since access to session is not
serialized by default like IIS ASP. Also prompted
by change in locking code which retied to SDBM_File
or DB_File each lock. If you $Session->Lock / UnLock
around many read/writes, you will increase performance.
+Added StateCache config which, if set will cache
the file handle locks for $Application and an internal
database used for tracking $Session info. This caching can
make an ASP application perform up to 10% faster,
at a cost of each web server process holding 2 more
cached file handles open, per ASP application using
this configuration. The data written to or read from
these state databases is not cached, just the locking
file handles are held open.
-Added in much more locking in session manager
and session garbage collector to help avoid collisions
between the two. There were definite windows that the
two would collide in, during which bad things could
happen on a high volume site.
-Fixed some warnings in DESTROY and ParseParams()
=item $VERSION = 0.14; $DATE="07/29/1999";
-CGI & StatINC or StatINCMatch would have bad results
at times, with StatINC deleting dynamically compiled
CGI subroutines, that were imported into other scripts
and modules namespaces.
A couple tweaks, and now StatINC & CGI play nice again ;)
StatINCMatch should be safe to use in production with CGI.
This affects in particular environments that use file upload,
since CGI is loaded automatically by Apache::ASP to handle
file uploads.
This fix should also affect other seemingly random
times when StatINC or StatINCMatch don't seem to do
the right thing.
+use of ASP objects like $Response are now "use strict"
safe in scripts, while UniquePackages config is set.
+Better handling of "use strict" errors in ASP scripts.
The error is detected, and the developer is pointed to the
Apache error log for the exact error.
The script with "use strict" errors will be recompiled again. Its seems
though that "use strict" will only throw its error once, so that a script
can be recompiled with the same errors, and work w/o any use strict
error messaging.
=item $VERSION = 0.12; $DATE="07/01/1999";
-Compiles are now 10 +times faster for scripts with lots of big
embedded perl blocks <% #perl %>
Compiles were slow because of an old PerlScript compatibility
parsing trick where $Request->QueryString('hi')->{item}
would be parsed to $Request->QueryString('hi') which works.
I think the regexp that I was using had O(n^2) characteristics
and it took a really big perl block to 10 +seconds to parse
to understand there was a problem :(
I doubt anyone needed this compatibility, I don't even see
any code that looks like this in the online PerlScript examples,
so I've commented out this parsing trick for now. If you
need me to bring back this functionality, it will be in the
form of a config setting.
For information on PerlScript compatibility, see the PerlScript
section in the ASP docs.
-Added UniquePackages config option, that if set brings back
the old method of compiling each ASP script into its own
separate package. As of v.10, scripts are compiled by default
into the same package, so that scripts, dynamic includes & global.asa
can share globals. This BROKE scripts in the same ASP Application
that defined the same sub routines, as their subs would redefine
each other.
UniquePackages has scripts compiled into separate perl packages,
so they may define subs with the same name, w/o fear of overlap.
Under this settings, scripts will not be able to share globals.
-Secure field for cookies in $Response->Cookies() must be TRUE to
force cookie to be secure. Before, it just had to be defined,
which gave wrong behavior for Secure => 0.
+$Response->{IsClientConnected} set to one by default. Will
work out a real value when I upgrade to apache 1.3.6. This
value has no meaning before, as apache aborts the perl code
when a client drops its connection in earlier versions.
+better compile time debugging of dynamic includes, with
Without an output directory, script output is written to STDOUT
=item $VERSION = 0.09; $DATE="04/22/1999";
+Updated Makefile.PL optional modules output for CGI & DB_File
+Improved docs on $Response->Cookies() and $Request->Cookies()
+Added PERFORMANCE doc to main README, and added sub section
on precompiling scripts with Apache::ASP->Loader()
+Naming of CompileIncludes switched over to DynamicIncludes
for greater clarity.
+Dynamic includes can now reference ASP objects like $Session
w/o the $main::* syntax. These subs are no longer anonymous
subs, and are now compiled into the namespace of the global.asa package.
+Apache::ASP->Loader() precompiles dynamic includes too. Making this work
required fixing some subtle bugs / dependencies in the compiling process.
+Added Apache::ASP->Loader() similar to Apache::RegistryLoader for
precompiling ASP scripts. Precompile a whole site at server
startup with one function call.
+Prettied the error messaging with Debug 2.
+$Response->Debug(@args) debugging extension, which
allows a developer to hook into the module's debugging,
and only have @args be written to error_log when Debug is greater
than 0.
-Put write locking code around State writes, like $Session
and $Application. I thought I fixed this bug a while ago.
-API change: converted $Session->Timeout() and $Session->SessionID()
methods into $Session->{Timeout} and $Session->{SessionID} properties.
The use of these properties as methods is deprecated, but
backwards compatibility will remain. Updated ./eg/session.asp
to use these new properties.
+Implemented $Response->{PICS} which if set sends out a PICS-Label
HTTP header, useful for ratings.
+Implemented $Response->{CacheControl} and $Response->{Charset} members.
By default, CacheControl is 'private', and this value gets sent out
every request as HTTP header Cache-Control. Charset appends itself
onto the content type header.
+Implemented $Request->BinaryRead(), $Request->{TotalBytes},
documented them, and updated ./eg/form.asp for an example usage.
+Implemented $Response->BinaryWrite(), documented, and created
and example in ./eg/binary_write.htm
+Implemented $Server->MapPath() and created example of its use
in ./eg/server.htm
-$Request->Form() now reads file uploads correctly with
the latest CGI.pm, where $Request->Form('file_field') returns
the actual file name uploaded, which can be used as a file handle
to read in the data. Before, $Request->Form('file_field') would
return a glob that looks like *Fh::filename, so to get the file
name, you would have to parse it like =~ s/^\*Fh\:\://,
which you no longer have to do. As long as parsing was done as
mentioned, the change should be backwards compatible.
+Updated +enhanced documentation on file uploads. Created extra
comments about it as an FAQ, and under $Response->Form(), the latter
being an obvious place for a developer to look for it.
+Updated ./eg/file_upload.asp to show use of non file form data,
with which we had a bug before.
+Finished retieing *STDIN to cached STDIN contents, so that
CGI input routines may be used transparently, along side with
use of $Request->Form()
+Cleaned up and optimized $Request code
+Updated documentation for CGI input & file uploads. Created
file upload FAQ.
+Reworked ./eg/cgi.htm example to use CGI input routines
after doing a native read of STDIN.
++Added dynamic includes with <!--include file=file args=@args-->
extension. This style of include is compiled as an anonymous sub &
cached, and then executed with @args passed to the subroutine for
execution. This is include may also be rewritten as a new API
extension: $Response->Include('file', @args)
+Added ./eg/compiled_includes.htm example documenting new dynamic includes.
+Documented SSI: native file includes, and the rest with filtering
to Apache::SSI
+Turned the documentation of Filter config to value of Off so
people won't cut and paste the On config by default.
+Added SecureSession config option, which forces session cookie to
be sent only under https secured www page requests.
+Added StateDB config option allows use of DB_File for $Session, since
default use of SDBM_File is limited. See StateDB in README.
+file include syntax w/o quotes supported like <!--#include file=test.inc-->
+Nested includes are supported, with includes including each other.
Recursive includes are detected and errors out when an include has been
included 100 times for a script. Better to quit early than
have a process spin out of control. (PORTABLE ? probably not)
+Allow <!--include file=file.inc--> notation w/o quotes around file names
-PerlSetEnv apache conf setting now get passed through to
$Request->ServerVariables. This update has ServerVariables
getting data from %ENV instead of $r->cgi_env
+README FAQ for PerlHandler errors
=item $VERSION = 0.08; $DATE="02/06/1999";
++SSI with Apache::Filter & Apache::SSI, see config options & ./eg files
Currently filtering only works in the direction Apache::ASP -> Apache::SSI,
will not work the other way around, as SSI must come last in a set of filters
+SSI file includes may reference files in the Global directory, better
code sharing
- <% @array... %> no longer dropped from code.
+perl =pod comments are stripped from script before compiling, and associated
PodComments configuration options.
+Command line cgi/asp script takes various options, and allows execution
of multiple asp scripts at one time. This script should be used for
command line debugging. This is also the beginning of building
a static site from asp scripts with the -b option, suppressing headers.
+$Response->AddHeader('Set-Cookie') works for multiple cookies.
-$Response->Cookies('foo', '0') works, was dropping 0 because of boolean test
-Fixed up some config doc errors.
=item $VERSION = 0.07; $DATE="01/20/1999";
-removed SIG{__WARN__} handler, it was a bad idea.
-fixes file locking on QNX, work around poor flock porting
+removed message about Win32::OLE on UNIX platforms from Makefile.PL
-Better lock garbage collection. Works with StatINC seamlessly.
-Multiple select forms now work in array context with $Response->Form()
@values = $Response->Form('multi');
-Better CGI.pm compatibility with $r->header_out('Content-type'),
improved garbage collection under modperl, esp. w/ file uploads
=item $VERSION = 0.06; $DATE="12/21/1998";
+Application_OnStart & Application_OnEnd event handlers support.
-Compatible with CGI.pm 2.46 headers()
-Compatible with CGI.pm $q = new CGI({}), caveat: does not set params
+use strict; followed by use of objects like $Session is fine.
-Multiple cookies may be set per script execution.
+file upload implemented via CGI.pm
++global.asa implemented with events Session_OnStart and Session_OnEnd
working appropriately.
+StateDir configuration directive implemented.
StateDir allows the session state directory to be specified separately
from the Global directory, useful for operating systems with caching file
systems.
+StateManager config directive. StateManager specifies how frequently
Sessions are cleaned up, with 10 (default) meaning that old Sessions
will be cleaned up 10 times per SessionTimeout period (default 20 minutes).
+$Application->SessionCount() implemented, non-portable method.
: returns the number of currently active sessions
-STOP button fix. Users may hit STOP button during script
execution, and Apache::ASP will cleanup with a routine registered
in Apache's $r->register_cleanup. Works well supposedly.
+PerlScript compatibility work, trying to make ports smoother.
: Collection emulator, no ->{Count} property
: $.*(.*)->{Item} parsed automatically,
shedding the ->{Item} for Collection support (? better way ?)
: No VBScript dates support, just HTTP RFC dates with HTTP::Date
: Win32::OLE::in not supported, just use "keys %{$Collection}"
+./cgi/asp script for testing scripts from the command line
: will be upgraded to CGI method of doing asp
: is not "correct" in anyway, so not documented for now
but still useful
+strips DOS carriage returns from scripts automatically, so that
programs like FrontPage can upload pages to UNIX servers
without perl choking on the extra \r characters.
=item $VERSION = 0.05; $DATE="10/19/1998";
+Added PERFORMANCE doc, which includes benchmarks +hints.
+Better installation warnings and errors for other modules required.
-Turned off StatINC in eg/.htaccess, as not everyone installs Devel::Symdump
-Fixed AUTOLOAD state bug, which wouldn't let you each through state
objects, like %{$Session}, or each %$Session, (bug introduced in v.04)
+Parses ASP white space better. HTML output matches author's intent
by better dealing with white space surrounding <% perl blocks %>
-Scalar insertion code <%=$foo%> can now span many lines.
+Added include.t test script for includes.
+Script recompiles when included files change.
+Files can be included in script with
SSI <!--#include file="filename"--> syntax, needs to be
done in ASP module to allow compilation of included code and html
into script. Future chaining with Apache::SSI will allow static
html includes, and other SSI directives
=item $VERSION = 0.04; $DATE="10/14/1998";
+Example script eg/cgi.htm demonstrating CGI.pm use for output.
+Optimized ASP parsing, faster and more legible executing code
: try 'die();' in code with setting PerlSetVar Debug 2
+Cleaned up code for running with 'use strict'
-Fixed directory handle leak on Solaris, from not closing after opendir()
+StatINC overhaul. StatINC setting now works as it should, with
the caveat that exported functions will not be refreshed.
+NoState setting optimization, disallows $Application & $Session
+$Application->*Lock() functions implemented
-SoftRedirect setting for those who want scripts to keep running
after a Redirect()
+SessionSerialize setting to lock session while script is running
: Microsoft ASP style session locking
: For a session, scripts execute one at a time
: NOT recommended use, please see note.
-MLDBM can be used for other things without messing up internal use
: before if it was used with different DB's and serializers,
internal state could be lost.
( run in 0.881 second using v1.01-cache-2.11-cpan-b16cb0d3907 )