On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 7:48 PM, Jérôme Etévé <jerome.et...@gmail.com>wrote:
> Hi Vincent,
>
> Why can it be wrong to serve binary content ? How do you do for
> instance when you want to dynamically generate an image or any kind of
> binary document based on the user's data ?
>
> Cheers !
>
> J
>
I wouldn't say it is "wrong" necessarily, only that it is often not the best
solution. Some disadvantages:
* performance: Apache will serve binary content from the file system with
better response times
* memory: serving with a mod_perl process could use 10-100MB more RAM than
Apache optimized for static files (and since binaries are often larger than
text files, the process will be held longer)
* pain: one slip in the code can cause your binary to be corrupted, and this
can be hard to debug.
I find it is often more efficient to pre-generate binaries using an offline
script. That said, I have used Mason to serve binaries, specifically CAPTCHA
images which need to be both randomly generated and associated with a
particular form submission for checking. It's not always wrong! :)
Some rules to follow in components that serve binary data:
* Always use the inherit => undef flag. Any text sent from any component in
the chain will corrupt your binary, and this is the only way to ensure that
never happens.
* Always explicitly set the content-type header in the component (before you
flush any buffers!).
* Name the component with an extension appropriate to the content-type. If
it generates pdf files, name it something.pdf, and modify your apache
configuration specially for that file. (This one may be considered
controversial, but I find it saves lots of pain at the client side, and I
strongly recommend it.)
Does anyone else have some handy tips? I would like to hear how others are
doing this too.
--
-Vince Veselosky
http://www.webquills.net
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