The Perl support provides support for both Perl scripts
and Perl tags. In both cases, the actual Perl code is executed in a subprocess,
and not in the main Roxen process, which makes it harder for the programmer
to accidentally mess things up for the main Roxen server.
The module will catch requests to documents whose path ends with any
of the extensions (suffixes) indicated by the `Extensions' setting in
the module configuration. The default is `.perl' and `.pl'.
Perl tags, or processing instructions, will be available if the module
setting `Enable Perl tag' is set to `Yes'. This means ordinary RXML pages
can use Perl code, such as in the example below.
<?perl print scalar(localtime), "\n"; ?> |
|
It is possible to enable similar parsing of script results by switching
the `Script output' option to `RXML', but this is usually not desirable,
and may not work so well with traditional CGI scripts. Nevertheless, it
might be useful under special circumstances.
When configuring the Perl support, it may be worth considering how heavy
load the Perl support will be expected to handle.
If a Roxen site makes heavy use of Perl scripts, it may be desirable that
several such scripts can execute in parallel, while the opposite may be true
if your Roxen server runs on modest hardware. In either case, the maximum
number of subprocesses on behalf of the Perl support can be decided through
the `Parallel scripts' setting in the module configuration. The default is
3, which should be good enough in most cases, but it might be desirable to
raise or lower it some cases.
Unless other arrangements are made by the scripts, errors occuring during
the execution of Perl scripts will be reported in the server debug log, so
this is the place to watch for error reports. (The Event log in the web
interface won't show these errors.)
Consult the Roxen Programmer manual for more details about how to use
the Perl support.
