Christopher A. Thompson <x4 (at) ROCKETMAIL.COM> exclaimed:

• Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 09:34:19 -0700

  I have put up a site that's a true testament to mod perl's power. (He
  said humbly).
  
  http://openscape.org now contains the new site that I've been writing
  over the last 2 weeks.
  
  The site is generated 100% dynamically by my module Obelisk.pm. Apache
  1.2.6 and mod_perl 1.10 are used, and the module is inserted to run on
  <Location />. MySQL and DBD::MySQL provide the back end object store.
  
  I keep all text, news items, and the like in the SQL database. at
  request time, the module takes the following steps.
  
  $method = $r->method;
  $loc = $r->uri;
  
  $loc is then parsed out. Depending on the "page" requested the module
  generates a page based on several SQL calls, and prints the result
  back out. I pass args on to the subrequests this way too, such as
  http://openscape.org/rnews/12  will read news item 12. It's all
  handled in the URL parsing. For the forms handling when you post a
  news item, I use CGI_Lite to grab things off POST. (If $method is
  POST), since Apache:: cant grab POST by default. I plan to implement
  my own POST handler, I just havent gotten around to it.
  
  You can post comments on news items, and those will be generated
  dynamically too. (a-la slashdot.org if you're familiar).
  
  The amazing part of all this is twofold. First, it's all done in 427
  lines of perl and 6 SQL tables. Slashdot is 2500 lines of code.
  Second, while I dont have any definitive numbers, this looks like it's
  going to scale very large. I've thrown a few large parallel requests
  at it (just simple LWP gets, in many parallel processes) and it doesnt
  seem to slow down. This box is just a P5/166 with 64megs RAM and Linux
  2.0.31.
  
  This all occurs with no CGI.pm, no Apache::Registry, no on disk
  content but the Obelisk.pm. I am so spoiled by this method that I dont
  think I can go back. I'm writing a Doc on the process and I'll have it
  up soon. I know I'm not the first person to do this, but the process
  doesnt seem to be exceedingly documented. Oh, and Obelisk will be
  GPL'ed as soon as I gather it into a form that's fit for human
  consumption.
  
  Thanks Doug and crew for mod_perl.
  
  -Chris
  
  
  
  ===
  ------------------------------------------------------------
  Chris Thompson    |I do not wish it to be misconstrued that
  ct@x4.net         |     at no time was I not in total
  ct@cthompson.org  |      Disagreement   --Anonymous
  ------------------------------------------------------------