/ 
BS-HTTPD-0.02
/ BS::HTTPD

NAME

BS::HTTPD - A simple lightweight event based web (application) server

VERSION

Version 0.02

SYNOPSIS

use BS::HTTPD;

my $httpd = BS::HTTPD->new (port => 9090);

$httpd->reg_cb (
   _ => sub {
      my ($httpd, $req) = @_;

      $req->o ("<html><body><h1>Hello World!</h1>");
      $req->o ("<a href=\"/test\">another test page</a>");
      $req->o ("</body></html>");
      $req->respond;
   },
   _test => sub {
      my ($httpd, $req) = @_;

      $req->o ("<html><body><h1>Test page</h1>");
      $req->o ("<a href=\"/\">Back to the main page</a>");
      $req->o ("</body></html>");
      $req->respond;
   },
);

DESCRIPTION

This module provides a simple HTTPD for serving simple web application interfaces. It's completly event based and independend from any event loop by using the AnyEvent module.

It's HTTP implementation is a bit hacky, so before using this module make sure it works for you and the expected deployment. Feel free to improve the HTTP support and send in patches!

I mainly wrote this module to provide a HTTP interface in BS. However, it doesn't depend on BS and it can be used to extend any application with a (simple) web interface.

The documentation is currently only the source code, but next versions of this module will be better documented hopefully. See also the samples/ directory in the BS::HTTPD distribution for basic starting points.

BS::HTTPD even comes with some basic AJAX framework/helper.

FEATURES

  • support for GET and POST requests

  • processing of x-www-form-urlencoded and multipart/form-data encoded form parameters

  • ajax helper and javascript output functions in BS::HTTPD::Appgets

  • support for chunked encoding output to the HTTP client

METHODS

The BS::HTTPD class inherits directly from BS::HTTPD::HTTPServer which inherits the event callback interface from BS::Event.

Event callbacks can be registered via the BS::Event API (see the documentation of BS::Event for details).

For a list of available events see below in the EVENTS section.

new (%args)

This is the constructor for a BS::HTTPD object. The %args hash may contain one of these key/value pairs:

port => $port

The TCP port the HTTP server will listen on.

EVENTS

Every request goes to a specific URL. After a (GET or POST) request is received the URL is split at the '/' characters and joined again with '_' characters. After that the event with the name of the converted URL is invoked, this means that if you get a request to the url '/test/bla' the even _test_bla is emitted, you can register a callback for that URL like this:

$httpd->reg_cb (
   _test_bla => sub {
      my ($httpd, $req) = @_;

      $req->respond ([200, 'ok', { 'Content-Type' => 'text/html' }, '<h1>Test</h1>' }]);
   }
);

The first argument to such a callback is always the BS::HTTPD object itself. The second argument ($req) is the BS::HTTPD::Request object for this request. It can be used to get the (possible) form parameters for this request or the transmitted content and respond to the request.

Also every request also emits the request event, with the same arguments and semantics, you can use this to implement your own request multiplexing.

CACHING

Any response from the HTTP server will have Cache-Control set to max-age=0 and also the Expires header set to the Date header. Meaning: Caching is disabled.

If you need caching or would like to have it you can send me a mail or even better: a patch :)

AUTHOR

Robin Redeker, <elmex at ta-sa.org>

BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature requests to bug-bs-httpd at rt.cpan.org, or through the web interface at http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=BS-HTTPD. I will be notified, and then you'll automatically be notified of progress on your bug as I make changes.

SUPPORT

You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.

perldoc BS::HTTPD

You can also look for information at:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

COPYRIGHT & LICENSE

Copyright 2008 Robin Redeker, all rights reserved.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.