FRAMEWORK FOR PORTABLE WEB APPLICATIONS ---------------------------------------------------------------------- by Darren Duncan CONTENTS * Preface * Keeping Up To Date * Requirements * Installation * Support * To Do * Author PREFACE This distribution features the Perl 5 module named "CGI::Portable" as well as these 5 other modules that are recommended for use with it: CGI::Portable::Adapter[CGI|Socket], CGI::Portable::App[Static|MultiScreen|SplitScreen]. All of my modules have complete POD inside of them, so please refer to that for a description of the module itself. This Read Me document concerns itself mainly with installation and support issues, and also includes any "To Do" lists. This distribution also includes 5 other modules, in the temporary name space Demo*, that are designed to be used with CGI::Portable. Each of these is included as a demo "application component", and by looking at them, you should have a better idea what CGI::Portable can do for you. Unlike ordinary demos, however, these are a lot more mature and are being used effectively in multiple production environments. For all intents and purposes, you should treat them like "scripts" rather than "modules" as far as when you use them, due to their more proprietary nature. They are in "lib" along with the feature modules. This distribution now has a "demos" folder containing 41 files which are ready-to-use example scripts and data files that exercise CGI::Portable and all of the Demo* modules. Many of these are exactly the same as the Synopsis POD for particular modules. Some have minor adjustments or demonstrate the Synopsis examples that make use of the most features of the particular modules. Many demos have extra files in them that never appeared in Synopsis. It is my hope that these demos will make it an order of magnitude easier for you to adopt my modules and put them to work in a productive manner. The provided demos include: a multi-page web site with usage tracking, guest books, mail and survey forms, static html and plain text pages, segmented text file display, redirection, and a few other strange modules that don't do anything useful but play with features. Any actual modules in the demos folder are very immature and should not be used as is; rather, learn from them. They intentionally have no POD and are not versioned. KEEPING UP TO DATE My module set is constantly under development. You should be able to find the newest versions at my website, "http://www.DarrenDuncan.net", on the page called "Perl Libraries I Made" (name subject to change). They can also be found on CPAN under the author name of "DUNCAND". I am inclined to update the copies on my web site more often, but those intermediate versions are more likely to have been tested less, and the modules may be updated day by day without increasing the version numbers. However, the copies on CPAN are guaranteed to have unique version numbers when the module has changed. REQUIREMENTS All of my modules require Perl 5.004 or newer, even though only some of them need it, in the interest of consistency. That said, Perl 5.004 is already 3 years old, is available as a binary on practically every OS that supports Perl at all, and is a very solid release, so I see no reason to support anything older. Modules in this distribution require modules in these following distributions: File-VirtualPath-1.011.tar.gz - by Darren Duncan (DUNCAND) - File::VirtualPath 1.011 is required by: - CGI::Portable (stores file-system related paths) - CGI::Portable (stores url related paths) CGI-MultiValuedHash-1.09.tar.gz - by Darren Duncan (DUNCAND) - CGI::MultiValuedHash 1.09 is required by: - CGI::Portable (stores and url-decodes user queries, posts, cookies) HTML-EasyTags-1.071.tar.gz - by Darren Duncan (DUNCAND) - HTML::EasyTags 1.071 is required by: - CGI::Portable (assembles the pieces of a new HTML page) mod_perl-1.24_01.tar.gz (older versions may work): - Apache 1.27 is required by: - CGI::Portable::AdapterCGI (when running under mod_perl) HTML-FormTemplate-2.021.tar.gz - by Darren Duncan (DUNCAND) - HTML::FormTemplate 2.021 is required by: - DemoMailForm (for making input forms and form reports) - DemoGuestBook (for making input forms and form reports) libnet-1.0703.tar.gz (older versions may work): - by Graham Barr (GBARR) - Net::SMTP 2.15 is required by: - DemoMailForm (when sending e-mails of form data) - DemoGuestBook (when sending e-mails of form data) - DemoUsage (when sending e-mails of usage data) GD (any version I suppose) is required by the "image" demo. INSTALLATION To install these modules, cd to the directory that contains all of the extracted distribution files, including this ReadMe file, and type the following: perl Makefile.PL make make test make install The last step probably won't work if you are not the administrator of your machine; in that case you either need to get your administrator to install this for you, or put it in a your own local directory instead. The Makefile.PL can do this for you if you substitute something like the following for the first line above: perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/tmp/myperl5 or: perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/home/me/myperl5 If you are on a Mac system that is older than Mac OS X (Mac OS 9 or earlier) and/or you are otherwise having problems with the Makefile, you can still install this module the old fashioned way, by copying. Every file in the "lib" folder of this distribution goes in its corresponding location within the "lib" folder that came with your Perl 5 distribution. Or alternately, put them anywhere you want, but you will need to have that location added to your include path by your main program using something like this: use lib '/home/me/myperl5/lib'; Then you would want to run the included test programs to make sure the modules are installed correctly. Call them like this: perl -w t/CGI-Portable.t Any existing POD is embedded in the modules themselves. The Makefile probably extracted it for you in the usual manner, or you can run a POD extractor on it yourself to the same effect. You can also find an HTMLized copy of the POD on CPAN and other public source archives; I link to one copy of it on my web site. SUPPORT Currently I don't have any support arranged with other people, lists, newsgroups, or otherwise. Feel free to ask me if you can't figure things out on your own, or another person whom you know has used this. I may start a mailing list for support issues later, so that users of my modules can help each other with them. TO DO * Add feature that lets one export a CGI::Portable application to a set of static html files that can be used independantly of any script, except that they would still call the script to process any forms. This would consist mainly of changing the self-referencing hyperlinks in generated screens. Advantages are greatly improved performance for applications with mostly static screens, including the initial page for forms. * Add feature that lets one have separate "development" and "production" directories for application components or config files whereby equivalent files in the production directory are used by default, but copies in the development directory are used instead if they exist. This makes it easier for someone to change the application while it is in use without normal users seeing the new version while it is being tested. * Add a battery of ok / not ok tests. * Improve the documentation. * I have few more ideas in this regard, but am open to suggestions. * Now all of my pre-conceived modules for public release are done, so all I've got left to do in that regards is improve the existing ones. AUTHOR Copyright (c) 1999-2004, Darren R. Duncan. All rights reserved. This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. However, I do request that this copyright information and credits remain attached to the file. If you modify this module and redistribute a changed version then please attach a note listing the modifications. This module is available "as-is" and the author can not be held accountable for any problems resulting from its use. I am always interested in knowing how my work helps others, so if you put this module to use in any of your own products or services then I would appreciate (but not require) it if you send me the website url for said product or service, so I know who you are. Also, if you make non-proprietary changes to the module because it doesn't work the way you need, and you are willing to make these freely available, then please send me a copy so that I can roll desirable changes into the main release. Address comments, suggestions, and bug reports to perl@DarrenDuncan.net. Share and Enjoy!