Writing Apache Modules with Perl and C

How This Book Is Organized

Chapter 1, talks about general issues of web application programming and shows how the web server APIs in general, and the Apache server API in specific, fit into the picture.

Chapter 2, shows you the mechanics of getting your system ready for Perl and C module development. It describes how to lay out the directory structure, install required files, and configure the Apache web server for maximum flexibility. It then leads you through the steps of installing two simple modules, one written in Perl and the other in C.

Chapter 3, paints a broad overview of the Apache API, taking you through the various phases of the HTTP transaction and the process of server startup, initialization, and cleanup. It shows how API modules fit into this process and how they can intervene to customize it.

Chapter 4, is all about the request phase of the transaction, where modules create document content to be transmitted back to the browser. This chapter, and in fact the next three chapters, all use the Perl API to illustrate the concepts and to provide concrete working examples.

Chapter 5, describes various techniques for maintaining state on a web server so that a user's interaction with the server becomes a continuous session rather than a series of unrelated transactions. The chapter starts with simple tricks and slowly grows in sophistication as we develop an Internet-wide tournament version of the classic "hangman" game.

Chapter 6, shows you how to intervene in Apache's ...