[cgiapp] Persistence

[Mark Knoop]

> On Feb 5, 2008 10:59 PM, Mark Knoop <mark at rawcane.net> wrote:
>> > Hi
>> >
>> > I'm new to CGI::Application.
>
> Welcome
>
>> > I like the way it makes me organize the script but I guess I could do 
>> > it
>> > in this way without CGI:Application so I just want to be sure I fully
>> > understand the benefits.
>> >
>> > Given that I am not running it under mod_perl at this stage is each
>> > instance request a completely seperate event or does CGI::Application
>> > somehow keep track of something between one user's calls to the same
>> > instance?
>
> No, CGI::Application by itself does not offer any persistance.  Each
> request will create a new CGI::Application object.  You can use
> mod_perl or FastCGI to make the code persistent, but it will still
> create a new CGI::Application object on each request.
>
>> > If not then does CGI::Application offer any other benefits than helping
>> > one to organize ones code better?
>
> If you look at the source code for CGI::Application you will see that
> it is not very big and not very complex.  So yes you are correct in
> thinking that you can probably structure your code that way without
> using CGI::Application itself.
>
> The benefit in using it is that you are using a module that has been
> tried and tested over many years by thousands of people.  These people
> all structure their apps in a very similar way (ie the
> CGI::Application way), which means you can benefit from several thing:
>
> Code re-use
> - many people have spent time building lots of extensions to
> CGI::Application that make life for a web developer much easier.  By
> using CGI::Application as your base you can benefit from all this work
> (search CPAN for CGI::Application::Plugin to see what is publicly
> available).
>
> Lower your Technical Debt
> - Building your own application code structure and rebuilding your own
> version of all the plugins that are available means you have to
> maintain all that extra code.  And the person that takes over your
> project in the future has to maintain and understand what you have
> built.  Using well supported modules and best practices lowers your
> technical debt for the future.  It also gives future maintainers a
> starting place to look for help and documentation.
>
> Help from your peers
> - this mailing list has many people that may be able to help you if
> you run into problems, but only if you use CGI::Application.  Building
> it all yourself means you are less likely to find someone that can (or
> is willing to) help you.
>
>
>> Ok... have made some progress. It seems I can use the
>> CGI::Application::Plugin::Session  for the persistence side of things. 
>> But
>> still feel like I am missing a trick.... will persevere and see if things
>> become clearer.
>
> So it looks like you have already found some of the plugins :)  The
> Session plugin will allow you to maintain state variables across
> requests.  So if all you want to do is store some info for a user
> between requests (like an authentication token, or maybe their
> language preference, etc...) then the Session plugin will definately
> do that for you.
>
> If you still feel you are missing something, then explain to us what
> you are trying to do, and what you are expecting an application
> framework like CGI::Application to do for you.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Cees Hek
>
Thanks for the very thorough and helpful response. I will probably have many 
questions over the coming weeks but for now I suspect I need to try some 
things out and see how I go. It is already improving my (very messy) code 
just from the way it is forcing me to think about and structure my 
application but I guess will take some trial and error to fully appreciate 
the benefits and establish best practices. Will be back with some questions 
regarding specifics soon!

Cheers
Mark