=head1 DESCRIPTION
-=head2 Lifecycle
+This document provides an overview of the internals of
+Catalyst. As Catalyst is still developing rapidly, details
+may become out of date: please treat this as a guide, and
+look at the source for the last word.
-These are the steps of a Catalyst request, every step can be overloaded to
+The coverage is split into initialization and request lifecycle.
+
+=head2 Initialization
+
+Catalyst initializes itself in two stages (I may be wrong in some of
+the details here - AF):
+
+=over 4
+
+=item 1
+
+When the Catalyst module is imported in the main application
+module it evaluates any options (C<-Debug>, C<-Engine=XXX>)
+and loads any specified plugins, making the application module
+inherit from the plugin classes. It also sets up a default log
+object and ensures that the application module inherits from
+C<Catalyst> and from the selected specialized Engine module.
+
+=item 2
+
+When the application module makes the first call to C<< __PACKAGE__->action() >>
+(implemented in C<Catalyst::Engine>), Catalyst automatically loads all
+components it finds in the C<$class::Controller>, C<$class::C>,
+C<$class::Model>, C<$class::M>, C<$class::View> and C<$class::V>
+namespaces (using C<Module::Pluggable::Fast>). A table of actions is built up
+and added to on subsequent calls to C<action()>.
+
+=back
+
+
+=head2 Request Lifecycle
+
+For each request Catalyst builds a I<context> object, which includes
+information about the request, and then searches the action table for matching
+actions.
+
+The handling of a request can be divided into three stages: preparation of the
+context, processing of the request, and finalization of the response. These
+are the steps of a Catalyst request in detail; every step can be overloaded to
extend Catalyst.
handler
prepare
prepare_request
- prepare_path
- prepare_cookies
+ prepare_connection
prepare_headers
+ prepare_cookies
+ prepare_path
prepare_action
+ prepare_body
prepare_parameters
prepare_uploads
- process
+ dispatch
finalize
+ finalize_cookies
finalize_headers
- finalize_output
+ finalize_body
+
+These steps are normally overloaded from engine classes, and may also be
+extended by plugins. Extending means using multiple inheritance with L<NEXT>.
+
+The specialized engine classes populate the Catalyst request object with
+information from the underlying layer (C<Apache::Request> or C<CGI::Simple>)
+during the prepare phase, then push the generated response information down to
+the underlying layer during the finalize phase.
-These steps are normally overloaded from engine classes, and extended by
-plugins.
-Extending means using multiple inheritance with L<NEXT>.
=head1 AUTHOR