NAME

Gantry::Conf::FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions regarding Gantry::Conf

Why should I use Gantry::Conf at all?

There are many reasons why we feel Gantry::Conf is helpful both during development and after deployment. The next two entries should hopefully answer this quesiton for you as they outline a few common scenarios programmers and system administrators often face.

How is Gantry::Conf helpful during development?

Easy separation of development configs from production configs

Often programmers have a separate development environment from their production environment. By using <shared> blocks and dev instances you can avoid spending any serious time setting up your application in the development environment. Take this configuration example:

  <shared dev> 
     dbuser nobody
     dbpass secret
     dbconn "dbi:Pg:dbname=dev"
  </shared>

  <shared production>
     dbuser apache
     dbpass secret2
     dbconn "dbi:Pg:dbname=production"
  </shared> 

  <instance app1> 
     ConfigureVia FlatFile Config::General /etc/apps/app1.conf 
     use production 
  </instance> 

  <instance app1-dev> 
     ConfigureVia FlatFile Config::General /etc/apps/app1.conf 
     use dev
  </instance> 

By separating out our production and dev database information into shared blocks we can essentially switch between our production and dev environments by simplyl changing the instance we are using. If you were working on a script this would be a simple matter of running:

  $ script.pl --instance=app1-dev 

instead of:

  $ script.pl --instance=app1 

How is Gatnry::Conf helpful in production?

TODO

How do I pass my instance information into my application?

There are many possible ways to do this a few of which are:

Command line arguments

If your application accepts arguments on the command line we suggest adding an --instance option to pass in the instance's name.

PerlSetVar

In a mod_perl environment you could use a PerlSetVar, possibly named Instance, to pull in this value for your application.

ModPerl::ParamBuilder

Again in a mod_perl environment, another option would be to use ModPerl::ParamBuilder to pass the instance name in.

Hard coded

We include this for the sake of completeness, but advise against it. You could always simply hard code your instance information into your application, but this will greatly reduce the flexibility you have.

How do I add a different provider for an existing ConfigVia method?

TODO

How do I add to the ConfigVia methods?

TODO

Gantry(3), Gantry::Conf(3), Gantry::Conf::Tutorial(3)

AUTHOR

Frank Wiles <frank@revsys.com>

COPYRIGHT and LICENSE

Copyright (c) 2006, Frank Wiles.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.8.6 or, at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.