Static::Simple 0.16

[catagits/Catalyst-Plugin-Static-Simple.git] / README

NAME
    Catalyst::Plugin::Static::Simple - Make serving static pages painless.

SYNOPSIS
        use Catalyst;
        MyApp->setup( qw/Static::Simple/ );
        # that's it; static content is automatically served by
        # Catalyst, though you can configure things or bypass
        # Catalyst entirely in a production environment

DESCRIPTION
    The Static::Simple plugin is designed to make serving static content in
    your application during development quick and easy, without requiring a
    single line of code from you.

    This plugin detects static files by looking at the file extension in the
    URL (such as .css or .png or .js). The plugin uses the lightweight
    MIME::Types module to map file extensions to IANA-registered MIME types,
    and will serve your static files with the correct MIME type directly to
    the browser, without being processed through Catalyst.

    Note that actions mapped to paths using periods (.) will still operate
    properly.

    Though Static::Simple is designed to work out-of-the-box, you can tweak
    the operation by adding various configuration options. In a production
    environment, you will probably want to use your webserver to deliver
    static content; for an example see "USING WITH APACHE", below.

DEFAULT BEHAVIOR
    By default, Static::Simple will deliver all files having extensions
    (that is, bits of text following a period (".")), *except* files having
    the extensions "tmpl", "tt", "tt2", "html", and "xhtml". These files,
    and all files without extensions, will be processed through Catalyst. If
    MIME::Types doesn't recognize an extension, it will be served as
    "text/plain".

    To restate: files having the extensions "tmpl", "tt", "tt2", "html", and
    "xhtml" *will not* be served statically by default, they will be
    processed by Catalyst. Thus if you want to use ".html" files from within
    a Catalyst app as static files, you need to change the configuration of
    Static::Simple. Note also that files having any other extension *will*
    be served statically, so if you're using any other extension for
    template files, you should also change the configuration.

    Logging of static files is turned off by default.

ADVANCED CONFIGURATION
    Configuration is completely optional and is specified within
    "MyApp->config->{static}". If you use any of these options, this module
    will probably feel less "simple" to you!

  Enabling request logging
    Since Catalyst 5.50, logging of static requests is turned off by
    default; static requests tend to clutter the log output and rarely
    reveal anything useful. However, if you want to enable logging of static
    requests, you can do so by setting "MyApp->config->{static}->{no_logs}"
    to 0.

  Forcing directories into static mode
    Define a list of top-level directories beneath your 'root' directory
    that should always be served in static mode. Regular expressions may be
    specified using "qr//".

        MyApp->config->{static}->{dirs} = [
            'static',
            qr/^(images|css)/,
        ];

  Including additional directories
    You may specify a list of directories in which to search for your static
    files. The directories will be searched in order and will return the
    first file found. Note that your root directory is not automatically
    added to the search path when you specify an "include_path". You should
    use "MyApp->config->{root}" to add it.

        MyApp->config->{static}->{include_path} = [
            '/path/to/overlay',
            \&incpath_generator,
            MyApp->config->{root}
        ];
    
    With the above setting, a request for the file "/images/logo.jpg" will
    search for the following files, returning the first one found:

        /path/to/overlay/images/logo.jpg
        /dynamic/path/images/logo.jpg
        /your/app/home/root/images/logo.jpg
    
    The include path can contain a subroutine reference to dynamically
    return a list of available directories. This method will receive the $c
    object as a parameter and should return a reference to a list of
    directories. Errors can be reported using "die()". This method will be
    called every time a file is requested that appears to be a static file
    (i.e. it has an extension).

    For example:

        sub incpath_generator {
            my $c = shift;
        
            if ( $c->session->{customer_dir} ) {
                return [ $c->session->{customer_dir} ];
            } else {
                die "No customer dir defined.";
            }
        }
    
  Ignoring certain types of files
    There are some file types you may not wish to serve as static files.
    Most important in this category are your raw template files. By default,
    files with the extensions "tmpl", "tt", "tt2", "html", and "xhtml" will
    be ignored by Static::Simple in the interest of security. If you wish to
    define your own extensions to ignore, use the "ignore_extensions"
    option:

        MyApp->config->{static}->{ignore_extensions} 
            = [ qw/html asp php/ ];
    
  Ignoring entire directories
    To prevent an entire directory from being served statically, you can use
    the "ignore_dirs" option. This option contains a list of relative
    directory paths to ignore. If using "include_path", the path will be
    checked against every included path.

        MyApp->config->{static}->{ignore_dirs} = [ qw/tmpl css/ ];
    
    For example, if combined with the above "include_path" setting, this
    "ignore_dirs" value will ignore the following directories if they exist:

        /path/to/overlay/tmpl
        /path/to/overlay/css
        /dynamic/path/tmpl
        /dynamic/path/css
        /your/app/home/root/tmpl
        /your/app/home/root/css    

  Custom MIME types
    To override or add to the default MIME types set by the MIME::Types
    module, you may enter your own extension to MIME type mapping.

        MyApp->config->{static}->{mime_types} = {
            jpg => 'image/jpg',
            png => 'image/png',
        };

  Compatibility with other plugins
    Since version 0.12, Static::Simple plays nice with other plugins. It no
    longer short-circuits the "prepare_action" stage as it was causing too
    many compatibility issues with other plugins.

  Debugging information
    Enable additional debugging information printed in the Catalyst log.
    This is automatically enabled when running Catalyst in -Debug mode.

        MyApp->config->{static}->{debug} = 1;
    
USING WITH APACHE
    While Static::Simple will work just fine serving files through Catalyst
    in mod_perl, for increased performance, you may wish to have Apache
    handle the serving of your static files. To do this, simply use a
    dedicated directory for your static files and configure an Apache
    Location block for that directory. This approach is recommended for
    production installations.

        <Location /static>
            SetHandler default-handler
        </Location>

    Using this approach Apache will bypass any handling of these directories
    through Catalyst. You can leave Static::Simple as part of your
    application, and it will continue to function on a development server,
    or using Catalyst's built-in server.

INTERNAL EXTENDED METHODS
    Static::Simple extends the following steps in the Catalyst process.

  prepare_action
    "prepare_action" is used to first check if the request path is a static
    file. If so, we skip all other "prepare_action" steps to improve
    performance.

  dispatch
    "dispatch" takes the file found during "prepare_action" and writes it to
    the output.

  finalize
    "finalize" serves up final header information and displays any log
    messages.

  setup
    "setup" initializes all default values.

SEE ALSO
    Catalyst, Catalyst::Plugin::Static,
    <http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/>

AUTHOR
    Andy Grundman, <andy@hybridized.org>

CONTRIBUTORS
    Marcus Ramberg, <mramberg@cpan.org> Jesse Sheidlower, <jester@panix.com>

THANKS
    The authors of Catalyst::Plugin::Static:

        Sebastian Riedel
        Christian Hansen
        Marcus Ramberg

    For the include_path code from Template Toolkit:

        Andy Wardley

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