CAM::App - Web database application framework
LICENSE
Copyright 2005 Clotho Advanced Media, Inc., <
[email protected]>
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.
ABOUT CLOTHO
"CAM" stands for Clotho Advanced Media Inc. (www.clotho.com) which
developed this module. Contact us at
[email protected].
INSTALLATION
Install via one of the following:
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install
or
perl Build.PL
perl Build
perl Build test
perl Build install
DESCRIPTION
This module implements a basic framework for building web database
applications with the CAM libraries. It is designed to be subclassed
(see SUBCLASSING below) by your software to provide web functionality
with low overhead. It is intended for the usual Apache, Perl, MySQL,
and Linux environment, but as little as possible is hardcoded for that
idiom (or, when hardcoded, we try to make the pieces overrideable).
External libraries referenced:
Required:
CGI
CAM::Template
Optional: (NOTE! Some of these have not yet been released to CPAN)
CGI::Compress::Gzip
DBI
CAM::Session
CAM::SQLManager
CAM::SQLObject
CAM::EmailTemplate
CAM::EmailTemplate::SMTP
CAM::Template::Cache
COMPARISON
The Perl module CAM::App most closely resembles is CGI::Application. It's
main advantages over that module are:
* Simplifies DBI connections
* Prefills templates
* Integrated with a session manager (CAM::Session)
* Centralized error handling
* Simple email sending (via CAM::EmailTemplate)
* Integrates a very simple configuration mechanism
* Can auto-compress output HTML
It's main disadvantages vs. CGI::Application are:
* Doesn't autodetect or support run modes, except via subclassing.
* Doesn't support HTML::Template
* Run modes are not necessarily centralized
And features which may or may not be advantages:
* Can behave as a helper instead of a harness
* Uses CAM::Template instead of HTML::Template
* Caller sets up explicitly scripted run modes instead of
CGI::Application's run modes. (if you think this is an advantage,
then CGI::Application really was never an option for you, was it?)
In general, CGI::Application is great for highly-structured web
applications that are easily broken into use modes. CAM::App is good
for apps that are much more free form, and just need a little help
with organization.
SUBCLASSING
There are a few important steps for you to use this library.
1) Although it's not strictly necessary, we HIGHLY recommend starting
with a subclass. This can be as simple as creating a trivial file
like this in, for example, "MyApp.pm":
package MyApp;
use CAM::App;
our @ISA = qw(CAM::App);
1;
2) Create a configuration file. We recommend starting with the
SampleConfig.pm, but you can quite easily build your own from scratch.
cp example/SampleConfig.pm MyConfig.pm
edit MyConfig.pm
3) Set up your CGI script to use MyApp and MyConfig. It should
contain lines something like this.
use lib qw(.); # or where ever you stored the new .pm file
use MyApp;
use MyConfig;
my $app = MyApp->new(config => MyConfig->new());
$app->authenticate() or $app->error("Login failed");
my $cgi = $app->getCGI();
...
