Writing Apache Modules with Perl and C

4.5. Apache::Registry

If you are using mod_perl to write Apache modules, then you probably want to take advantage of Apache::Registry. Apache::Registry is a prewritten Apache Perl module that is a content handler for files containing Perl code. In addition to making it unnecessary to restart the server every time you revise a source file, Apache::Registry sets up a simulated CGI environment, so that programs that expect to get information about the transaction from environment variables can continue to do so. This allows legacy CGI applications to run under the Apache Perl API, and lets you use server-side code libraries (such as the original CGI.pm) that assume the script is running in a CGI environment.

Apache::Registry is similar in concept to the content filters we created earlier in this chapter, but instead of performing simple string substitutions on the contents of the requested file, Apache::Registry compiles and executes the code contained within it. In order to avoid recompiling the script each time it's requested, Apache::Registry caches the compiled code and checks the file modification time each time it's requested in order to determine whether it can safely use the cached code or whether it must recompile the file. Should you ever wish to look at its source code, Apache::Registry is a good example of a well-written Apache content handler that exercises much of the Perl API.

We created a typical configuration file entry for Apache::Registry in Chapter 2. Let's ...