I've built a lot of sites in Mason since 2001, and only recently started using Ruby on Rails. I also have some experience with a Catalyst site built by my staff for a client, though I personally found Catalyst to be somewhat complex for what it does.
In my experience, Mason is great for a Perl programmer who doesn't want to get too far from the HTML. What I like most about it is that it lets you prototype something very quickly, and then evolve it over time to pull reusable pieces into either (1) Mason components, or (2) Perl modules. I also like the fact that there is not much complexity to the "routing" / controller behavior -- it makes it very easy to find the file you want given a particular URL. WIth more complex frameworks, you may find yourself looking through many files + directories to find all the parts that go into rendering a particular page or URL. dhandlers are quite powerful -- they can give you the effect of as much routing as you want, since the parameter comes into them showing the rest of the path in the URL. We used them for downloadable PDF or DOC documents that would get saved to disk with the correct filename (rather than being saved as download.html). If you have just a few developers working on the project, Mason should still be fine. If more than a few, you might find you benefit from separating the authoring + documentation of controllers from models + views -- in that case, Catalyst could be useful, with Mason as the views. Although I'm somewhat competent in Rails now, when I need to put an interactive website together quickly, I still reach for plain old Mason. --Mark Torrance m...@vinq.com On Jul 3, 2009, at 10:47 PM, Paul Vixie wrote: > Dave Rolsky <auta...@urth.org> writes: > >> ..., I do think that using some sort of controller is pretty >> crucial to >> having a maintainable webapp, and using Mason as your controller is >> not a >> good idea. > > i graduated from raw mod-perl2 and 'use CGI' to mason last year, and > am > loving it so far. my gripe with the MVC approach is that it requires > more discipline than i have and more foreknowledge than i ever have > about > exactly what i'm building and when i'll be done. > > no question that for a non-research project where a design predates > the > implementation and/or where multiple developers will work together > on it > (either simultaneously or eventually) i'd want the MVC approach. > folks > hereabout are using RoR and it's driving our quality up and our dev > costs > down. but they don't use perl. i do. and i don't work on things > where > i know in advance what they are, or with help. so, mason as > "controller" > (noting that the map is not the territory and i'm only using the term > because the quoted text uses it) is perfect for my way of working in > 2009. > -- > Paul Vixie > KI6YSY > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > _______________________________________________ > Mason-users mailing list > Mason-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mason-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Mason-users mailing list Mason-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mason-users
