Name

Apache::Dir - Simple Perl Version of mod_dir

Synopsis

  PerlModule Apache::Dir
  PerlFixupHandler Apache::Dir

Description

This simple module is designed to be a partial replacement for the standard Apache mod_dir module. One of the things that module does is to redirect browsers to a directory URL ending in a slash when they request the directory without the slash. Since mod_dir seems do its thing during the Apache response phase, if you use a Perl handler, it won't run. This can be problematic if the Perl handler doesn't likewise take the directory redirecting into account.

A good example is HTML::Mason. If you've disabled Mason's decline_dirs parameter (MasonDeclineDirs 0 in httpd.conf), and there's a dhandler in the directory /foo, then for a request for /foo, /foo/dhandler will respond. This can wreak havoc if you use relative URLs in the dhandler. What really should happen is that a request for /foo will be redirected to /foo/ before Mason ever sees it.

This is the problem that this module is designed to address. Configuration would then look something like this:

  <Location /foo>
    PerlSetVar       MasonDeclineDirs 0
    PerlModule       Apache::Dir
    PerlModule       HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler
    SetHandler       perl-script
    PerlFixupHandler Apache::Dir
    PerlHandler      HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler
  </Location>

Apache::Dir can also be configured to handle the request during the response cycle, if you wish. Just specify it before any other Perl handler to have it execute first:

  <Location /foo>
    PerlSetVar  MasonDeclineDirs 0
    PerlModule  Apache::Dir
    PerlModule  HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler
    SetHandler  perl-script
    PerlHandler Apache::Dir HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler
  </Location>

Support

This module is stored in an open GitHub repository. Feel free to fork and contribute!

Please file bug reports via GitHub Issues or by sending mail to bug-Apache-Dir@rt.cpan.org.

Author

David E. Wheeler <david@justatheory.com>

Copyright and License

Copyright 2004-2011 by David E. Wheeler. Some Rights Reserved.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.