NAME

CGI::Application::Plugin::Config::General - Add Config::General Support to CGI::Application

VERSION

Version 0.07

NOTE

This module is obsolete and has now been superceded by CGI::Application::Plugin::Config::Context.

SYNOPSIS

Simple Access to Configuration

use base 'CGI::Application';
use CGI::Application::Plugin::Config::General;

sub cgiapp_init {
    my $self = shift;

    # Set config file and other options
    $self->conf->init(
        -ConfigFile => 'app.conf',
    );
}

sub my_run_mode {
    my $self = shift;

    # get entire configuration
    my %conf = $self->conf->getall;

    # get entire configuration (as a reference)
    my $conf = $self->conf->getall;

    # get single config parameter
    my $value = $self->conf->param('some_value');

    # get underlying Config::General::Match object
    my $obj = $self->conf->obj;
}

Configuration Based on URL or Module

You can match a configuration section to the request URL, or to the module name. For instance, given the following configuration file:

admin_area    = 0

<AppMatch ^MyApp::Admin>
    admin_area = 1
    title      = Admin Area
</AppMatch>

<Location /cgi-bin/feedback.cgi>
    title      = Feedback Form
</Location>

The configuration will depend on how the script is called:

# URL:      /cgi-bin/feedback.cgi?rm=add
# Module:   MyApp::Feedback

print $self->conf->param('admin_area');  # 0
print $self->conf->param('title');       # 'Feedback Form'

# URL:      /cgi-bin/admin/users.cgi
# Module:   MyApp::Admin::Users

print $self->conf->param('admin_area');  # 1
print $self->conf->param('title');       # 'Admin Area'

Matching Configuration based on a Virtual Host

This module can also pick a configuration section based on the current virtual-host:

# httpd.conf
<VirtualHost _default_:8080>
    SetEnv SITE_NAME REDSITE
</VirtualHost>

# in app.conf
<Site BLUESITE>
    background = blue
    foreground = white
</Site>

<Site REDSITE>
    background = red
    foreground = pink
</Site>

<Site GREENSITE>
    background = darkgreen
    foreground = lightgreen
</Site>

DESCRIPTION

This module allows you to easily access configuration data stored in Config::General (i.e. Apache-style) config files.

You can also automatically match configuration sections to the request URL, or to the module name. This is similar to how Apache dynamically selects a configuration by matching the request URL to e.g. <Location> and <LocationMatch> sections.

You can also select configuration sections based on Virtual Host or by a variable you set in an .htaccess file. This allows you to share a single application between many virtual hosts, each with its own unique configuration. This could be useful, for instance, in providing multiple themes for a single application.

Simple access to Configuration

This module provides a conf method to your CGI::Application object. First, you initialize the configuration system (typically in your cgiapp_init method):

$self->conf->init(
    -ConfigFile => 'app.conf',
);

The configuration file is parsed at this point and is available from this point on.

Then, within your run-modes you can retrieve configuration data:

# get entire configuration
my %conf = $self->conf->getall;
my $value = $conf{'some_value'};

# get entire configuration (as a reference)
my $conf = $self->conf->getall;
my $value = $conf->{'some_value'};

# get single config parameter
my $value = $self->conf->param('some_value');

Multiple named Configurations

You can use more than one configuration by providing a name to the conf method:

$self->conf('database')->init(
    -ConfigFile => 'app.conf',
);
$self->conf('application')->init(
    -ConfigFile => 'app.conf',
);

...

my %db_config  = $self->conf('database')->getall;
my %app_config = $self->conf('application')->getall;

Configuration based on URL or Module

Within your configuration file, you can provide different configurations depending on the current URL, or on the package name of your application.

<Site>

Matches against the SITE_NAME environment variable, using an exact match.

# httpd.conf
<VirtualHost _default_:8080>
    SetEnv SITE_NAME REDSITE
</VirtualHost>

# in app.conf
<Site BLUESITE>
    background = blue
    foreground = white
</Site>

<Site REDSITE>
    background = red
    foreground = pink
</Site>

<Site GREENSITE>
    background = darkgreen
    foreground = lightgreen
</Site>

You can use name your sections something other than <Site>, and you can use a different environment variable than SITE_NAME. See "Notes on Site Matching", below.

<App>

Matches the Package name of your application module, for instance:

<App ABC_Books::Admin>
    ...
</App>

The match is performed hierachically, like a filesystem path, except using :: as a delimiter, instead of /. The match is tied to the beginning of the package name, just like absolute paths. For instance, given the section:

<App Site::Admin>
    ...
</App>

the packages Site::Admin and Site::Admin::Users would match, but the packages My::Site::Admin and Site::Administrative would not.

<AppMatch>

Matches the package name of your application module, using a regular expression. The expression is not tied to the start of the string. For instance, given the section:

<AppMatch Site::Admin>
    ...
</AppMatch>

The following packages would all match: Site::Admin, Site::Admin::Users, My::Site::Admin, MySite::Admin, Site::Administrative.

<Location>

Matches hierarchically against the request URI, including the path and the PATH_INFO components, but excluding the scheme, host, port and query string.

So, for instance with the following URL:

http://bookstore.example.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi/fiction/?rm=list

The Location would be:

/cgi-bin/category.cgi/fiction/

Internally, the location is obtained by calling the url method of the query object (which is usually either a CGI or CGI::Simple object):

$path = $webapp->query->url('-absolute' => 1, '-path_info' => 1);

<LocationMatch>

Matches against the request URI, using a regular expression.

Section Merge Order

The sections are matched in the following order:

Site:         <Site>
Package Name: <App>      and <AppMatch>
URL:          <Location> and <LocationMatch>

When there is more than one matching section at the same level of priority (e.g. two <Location> sections, or both an <App> and an <AppMatch> section), then the sections are merged in the order of shortest match first.

Values in sections matched later override the values in sections matched earlier.

The idea is that the longer matches are more specific and should have priority, and that URIs are more specific than Module names.

Section Nesting

The sections can be nested inside each other. For instance:

<Site BOOKSHOP>
    <Location /admin>
        admin_books = 1
    </Location>
</Site>

<Location /admin>
    <Site RECORDSHOP>
        admin_records = 1
    </Site>
</Location>

<App Bookshop::>
    <App Admin::>
    </App>
</App>

By default, the sections can be nested up to two levels deep. You can change this by setting the -NestingDepth parameter to init.

Merging Configuration Values into your Template

You can easily pass values from your configuration files directly to your templates. This allows you to associate HTML titles with URLs, or keep text like copyright notices in your config file instead of your templates:

copyright_notice    =  Copyright (C) 1492 Christopher Columbus

<Location /about>
    title = "Manifest Destiny, Inc. -  About Us"
</Location>

<Location /contact>
    title = "Manifest Destiny, Inc. - Contact Us"
</Location>

If you use HTML::Template, you use the associate method when you load the template:

$self->load_template(
    'template.tmpl',
    'associate' => $self->conf,
);

If you use Template::Toolkit (via the CGI::Application::Plugin::TT module), you can accomplish the same thing by providing a custom tt_pre_process method:

sub tt_pre_process {
    my $self            = shift;
    my $template        = shift;
    my $template_params = shift;

    my $config = $self->conf->getall
    foreach (keys %$config) {
        unless (exists $template_params->{$_}) {
            $template_params->{$_} = $config->{$_};
        }
    }
}

NOTE: If you plan to merge data directly from your config files to your templates, you should consider keeping your database passwords and other sensitive data in a separate configuration file, in order to avoid accidentally leaking these data into your web pages.

METHODS

init

Initializes the plugin. The only required parameter is a config file:

$self->conf->init(
    -ConfigFile => 'app.conf',
);

The other paramters are described below:

-ConfigFile

The path to the configuration file to be parsed.

-Options

Any additional Config::General::Match options. See the documentation to Config::General and Config::General::Match for more details.

-CacheConfigFiles

Whether or not to cache configuration files. Enabled, by default. This option is only really useful in a persistent environment such as mod_perl. See "Config File Caching" under "ADVANCED USAGE", below.

-StatConfig

If config file caching is enabled, this option controls how often the config files are checked to see if they have changed. The default is 60 seconds. This option is only really useful in a persistent environment such as mod_perl. See "Config File Caching" under ADVANCED USAGE, below.

-SiteSectionName

Change the name of the <Site> section to something else. For instance, to use sections named <VirtualHost>, use:

-SiteSectionName => 'VirtualHost'

-SiteVar

Change the name of the SITE_NAME environment variable used to match against <Site> sections. For instance To change this name to HTTP_HOST, use:

-SiteVar => 'HTTP_HOST',

-NestingDepth

The number of levels deep that sections can be nested. The default is two levels deep.

See "Section Nesting", above.

You can initialize the plugin from within your instance CGI script:

my $app = WebApp->new();
$app->conf->init(-ConfigFile => '../../config/app.conf');
$app->run();

Or you can do so from within your cgiapp_init method within the application:

sub cgiapp_init {
    my $self = shift;
    $self->conf->init(
        -ConfigFile => "$ENV{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/../config/app.conf"
    );
}

getall

Gets the entire configuration as a hash or hashref:

my %config = $self->conf->getall;  # as hash
my $config = $self->conf->getall;  # as hashref

Note that the following two method calls will return different results:

my %config = $self->conf->getall;       # parsed config
my %config = $self->conf->obj->getall;  # raw config

In the first case, the matching based on URI, Module, etc. has already been performed. In the second case, you get the raw config with all of the <Location>, <App>, etc. sections intact.

param

Allows you to retrieve individual values from the configuration.

It behvaves like the param method in other classes, such as CGI, CGI::Application and HTML::Template:

$value      = $self->conf->param('some_key');
@all_keys   = $self->conf->param();

obj

Provides access to the underlying Config::General::Match object.

You can access the raw unparsed configuration data by calling

my $config = $self->conf->obj->getall;  # raw config

See the note under getall, above.

In future versions of this module, certain caching strategies may prevent you from accessing the underlying Config::General::Match object in certain situations.

get_current_config ($name)

This is a class method which returns the current configuration object.

my $conf = CGI::Application::Plugin::Config::General->get_current_config;
print $conf->{'title'};

my %db_conf = CGI::Application::Plugin::Config::General->get_current_config('db');
print $db_conf{'username'};

This method is most useful in situations where you don't have access to the CGI::Application object, such within a Class::DBI class. See "Access to Configuration information from another Class" for an example.

Note that get_current_config returns the configuration hash (or hashref) directly, and does not give you access to the object itself. It is the equivalent of calling $self->conf->getall.

ADVANCED USAGE

Usage in a Persistent Environment such as mod_perl

The following sections describe some notes about running this module under mod_perl:

Config File Caching

By default each config file is read only once when the conf object is first initialized. Thereafter, on each init, the cached config is used.

This means that in a persistent environment like mod_perl, the config file is parsed on the first request, but not on subsequent requests.

If enough time has passed (sixty seconds by default) the config file is checked to see if it has changed. If it has changed, then the file is reread.

If you are using Config::General version 2.28 or greater, then you can safely use the include feature of Config::General and all included files will be checked for changes along with the main file.

To disable caching of config files pass a false value to the -CacheConfigFiles parameter to init, e.g:

$self->conf->init(
    -ConfigFile           => 'app.conf',
    -CacheConfigFiles     => 0,
);

To change how often config files are checked for changes, change the value of the -StatConfig paramter to init, e.g.:

$self->conf->init(
    -ConfigFile => 'app.conf',
    -StatConfig => 1, # check the config file every second
);

Internally the configuration cache is implemented by a hash, keyed by the absolute path of the configuration file. This means that if you have two web applications that use the same configuration file, they will use the same cache.

This would only matter if you wanted to use different Config::General or Config::General::Match options for different applications running in the same process that use the same config file.

PerlSetVar instead of SetEnv

For a (slight) performance improvement, you can use PerlSetVar instead of SetEnv within a <VirtualHost>:

# httpd.conf
<VirtualHost _default_:8080>
    PerlSetVar SITE_NAME REDSITE
</VirtualHost>

Notes on Site Matching

Renaming `<Site>` or `SITE_NAME`

Normally, the environment variable SITE_NAME is matched to <Site> section.

You can change these with the -SiteSectionName and -SiteVar parameters to init:

$self->conf->init(
    -ConfigFile           => 'app.conf',
    -SiteSectionName      => 'Host',
    -SiteVar              => 'MY_HOST',
);

This will match the environment variable MY_HOST to the <Host> section.

Setting `SITE_NAME` from an `.htaccess` file or the CGI script

Since SITE_NAME is just an environment variable, you can set it anywhere you can set environment variables. For instance in an .htaccess file:

# .htaccess
SetEnv SITE_NAME bookshop

Or even the calling CGI script:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use MySite::WebApp;

$ENV{'SITE_NAME'} = 'recordshop';
my $app = MySite::WebApp->new();
$app->run();

Access to Configuration information from another Class

You can also get at the current configuration settings from a completely unrelated Perl module. This can be useful for instance if you need to configure a set of Class::DBI classes, and you want them to be able to pick up their configuration on their own. For instance:

# app.conf

<database>
    connect_string = dbi:Pg:dbname=example
    username       = test
    password       = test

    <options>
        RaiseError = 1
        AutoCommit = 1
    </options>
</database>


# In your Class::DBI subclass
package My::Class::DBI::Base;
use base 'Class::DBI';

sub db_Main {

    my $conf = CGI::Application::Plugin::Config::General->get_current_config;

    my $dsn  = $conf->{'database'}{'connect_string'};
    my $user = $conf->{'database'}{'username'};
    my $pass = $conf->{'database'}{'password'};
    my $opts = $conf->{'database'}{'options'};

    return DBI->connect_cached($dsn, $user, $pass, $opts);
}

For this example to work, you need to make sure you call $self->conf->init before you access the database through any of your Class::DBI objects.

Note that get_current_config returns the configuration hash (or hashref) directly, and does not give you access to the object itself. It is the equivalent of calling $self->conf->getall.

Changing Parsing Behaviour Using Custom -MatchSections

Internally, this module uses Config::General and Config::General::Match to parse its config files. If you want to change the parsing behaviour, you can pass your own -MatchSections list to init. For instance, if you want to allow only sections named <URL>, with no nesting, and have these matched exactly to the complete request path, you could do the following:

# app.conf

admin_area = 0
user_area  = 0

<URL /cgi-bin/admin.cgi>
    admin_area = 1
</URL>

<URL /cgi-bin/user.cgi>
    user_area = 1
</URL>


# in your cgiapp_init:
$self->conf->init(
    -ConfigFile        => 'app.conf',
    -NestingDepth      => 1,
    -Options           => {
        -MatchSections => [
            {
                -Name          => 'URL',
                -MatchType     => 'exact',
                -MergePriority => 0,
                -SectionType   => 'path',
            },
        ]
    }
);

For reference, here is the default -MatchSections:

-MatchSections => [
    {
        -Name          => 'Site', # overridden by -SiteSectionName
        -MatchType     => 'exact',
        -MergePriority => 0,
        -SectionType   => 'env',
    },
    {
        -Name          => 'AppMatch',
        -MatchType     => 'regex',
        -SectionType   => 'module',
        -MergePriority => 1,
    },
    {
        -Name              => 'App',
        -MatchType         => 'path',
        -PathPathSeparator => '::',
        -SectionType       => 'module',
        -MergePriority     => 1,
    },
    {
        -Name          => 'LocationMatch',
        -MatchType     => 'regex',
        -SectionType   => 'path',
        -MergePriority => 3,
    },
    {
        -Name          => 'Location',
        -MatchType     => 'path',
        -SectionType   => 'path',
        -MergePriority => 3,
    },
],

For each section, the -SectionType param indicates what runtime variable the section will be matched against. Here are the allowed values

env:     matched to the environment variable SITE_NAME (overridden by -SiteNameVar)
module:  name of the Perl Module handling this request (e.g. MyApp::Users)
path:    path of the request, including path_info (e.g. /cgi-bin/myapp/users.cgi/some/path)

You can use the above -SectionType values in your own custom -MatchSections.

For more information on the syntax of -MatchSections, see the docs for Config::General::Match.

AUTHOR

Michael Graham, <mag-perl@occamstoothbrush.com>

BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature requests to bug-cgi-application-plugin-config-general@rt.cpan.org, or through the web interface at http://rt.cpan.org. I will be notified, and then you'll automatically be notified of progress on your bug as I make changes.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This module would not be possible without Thomas Linden's excellent Config::General module.

Thanks to the excellent examples provided by the other CGI::Application plugin authors: Mark Stosberg, Michael Peters, Cees Hek and others.

COPYRIGHT & LICENSE

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

To install CGI::Application::Plugin::Config::General, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.

cpanm

cpanm CGI::Application::Plugin::Config::General

CPAN shell

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install CGI::Application::Plugin::Config::General

For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.

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