[Catalyst] OT - long game phishing
I just noticed that a list subscriber m.j.co...@asitis.co.uk seems to have been hacked and the hacker is playing a longer game, sending phishing email to this list and a bunch of others at infrequent intervals to try and avoid a security response. Specifically, the catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk list has now received 3 phishing messages from that sender over a 6 month interval, on 2015 Dec 23, 2016 Apr 23, and 2016 Jun 19. Anyway, those administering this list or others this account is posting to should escalate some security response, at least a boot from the list and optionally a report to their email host. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] An MVC logic separation conundrum
The best option is to keep the concerns separated. Models should always take their inputs via explicit arguments for a Model-specific API, and they should not have any knowledge of or direct access to a Controller. If this means you have to bundle up a larger amount of data in the Controller so the data passage is clean, so be it, that is the lesser evil. -- Darren Duncan On 2016-03-09 11:03 AM, Chris Welch wrote: Hi This is more of a general MVC question, but hopefully it's okay to ask in here. I've set up a model to generate data in iCal format (see my previous thread and thanks for the responses on that), but it has thrown up an interesting general logic separation question that I don't know the answer to. By way of an example, I'm generating iCal events for a data table called team_matches (DBIx::Class model name TeamMatch). I was hoping, as would seem to be the cleanest way to do it, to have a result class "helper" method, such that on each match object I could call something like: $match->generate_ical_data, which would generate a hashref of calendar values to be passed through to my MyApp::Model::ICal module that will generate the actual data. The problem with this is that certain properties require access to the Catalyst application: for example, there's a uri property, the value for which will need to be generated by $c->uri_for_action and since this particular application has the ability to be multi-language (via CatalstX::I18N) the description value needs to be generated by $c->maketext. All of this brings up a quandary: there are only two ways around this that I can see: * Pass $c into the $match->generate_ical_data method (which I know is STRONGLY discouraged and very very bad). * Generate the hashref in the controller (which potentially makes for a 'fatter' controller than you ideally want and I'm trying to stick to the ideals here). I'm guessing the preference of the above options should really be the latter (which is what I'm currently doing in the interim), but I am hoping that there's a super-clever way that I've not thought of that someone can tell me I've completely overlooked? Thank you in advance. Chris ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] Fw: new message
Looks like someone's been hacked. ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] Using Catalyst on MS SQL DB that has tables with no primary keys
Brian Katzung wrote: If I recall correctly, I read in a cookbook somewhere (can't seem to find it now) that for rows with no primary key, you can use: __PACKAGE__-set_primary_key(__PACKAGE__-columns); (making the entire row be a multi-column primary key). Well that is indeed how things should work; when there is no primary or unique key explicitly defined, there should be an implicit one ranging over all the columns. However, SQL doesn't work that way and would allow duplicate rows, and so then the question is what behavior do you expect your Perl layer to have? If you edit a duplicate row, is it supposed to change all copies or just one? -- Darren Duncan On 2012-09-14 14:53, Derek W wrote: Ah, you meant just on Catalyst side, to tell it that the id column is the primary. I didn't think of that. Thanks! I'll give that a shot. On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 11:40 AM, Robert Wohlfarth rbwohlfa...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 1:31 PM, Derek W derekwro...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks, I figured that would probably fix it, but the problem is I am not allowed to make any changes to the DB structure itself. I suppose I need to convince them why it's in the best interest to have a primary key... You can set the primary key in the schema file. For example, add a line like __PACKAGE__-set_primary_key( id ); to lib/MyApp/Schema/Result/MyTable.pm. You do not need to change the database. DBIx::Class will then use id whenever it wants a primary key. -- Robert Wohlfarth ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] [JOB] Looking for Telecommute Web Developer
Speaking for myself, I got my current (good) job because the company also posted it to the Catalyst list, in addition to jobs.perl.org. -- Darren Duncan Frank Kumro wrote: I believe the opening is posted on jobs.perl.org too (or will very soon). The opening is sent to the list because some of our other devs (including myself) found the job via this list. -Frank On 07/05/2012 05:40 PM, Len Jaffe wrote: Doesn't jobs.perl.org http://jobs.perl.org exist for posting perl jobs? L. -- lenja...@jaffesystems.com mailto:lenja...@jaffesystems.com 614-404-4214 www.volunteerable.net http://www.volunteerable.net Proprietor: http://www.theycomewithcheese.com/ - An Homage to Fromage Greenbar http://www.greenbartraining.org/: Grubmaster: 2012-2009, Grub Asst: 2008, Trained: 2007. ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] Wiki is Temporarily Unavailable
Dimitar Petrov wrote: It should be back in a while. Cheers, Dimitar On Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 10:11 AM, sc...@simpzoid.com mailto:sc...@simpzoid.com wrote: Just in case nobody has noticed the Catalyst WiKi is down and has been for at least a day. So is this the leap-second bug or the power outage or something else? -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] Caching SQL results for speed...?
will trillich wrote: Okay, after some perl -D:NTYProf tester.pl http://tester.pl with 200 iterations: 70% of the time is taken up in five modules: 1) SQL::Abstract 2) DBIx::Class::ResultSet 3) Class::Accessor::Grouped 4) DBIx::Class::Storage::DBI 5) HTML::FormHandler::Field ...because in 200 iterations they were called millions of times each. (The form requested has several select/option menus.) So, several 5000s (millions / 200) of calls for a single screen? That sounds like a lot for one screen. Do you need that much? -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] Which Form Validation Libs?
Eric Berg wrote: I see that there are a number of form validation libraries that purport to work with Catalyst. I've been using CGI::Formbuilder for years and have been relatively happy with it. I need something for my new Catalyst app. I have already created my forms in my TT templates, but I need validation for most of the regular stuff, including zip codes, states, credit card info, etc. You guys got any recommendations? Thanks. Eric Its not form specific, but currently I like using MooseX::Types and MooseX::Types::Structured for validation. You can use these to declare validators in a declarational fashion for each data type you have, or use pre-defined ones for some common cases. For each type Foo, it provides an is_Foo function you can test inputs with. With MooseX::Types::Structured in particular and its Dict type constructors, you can define a type to represent the form as a whole, so it will check you have all the right fields and their contents; that said, while using a Dict for the whole form will tell you if any field was done incorrectly, it alone won't say which field, so whether you might want to use it depends on how specific you want input error messages to be. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] Question about Chained Controller
woosley. xu. wrote: Hi All, I am quite a beginner for Catalyst. When I used Chained Controller to handle some permission pages, I met a problem snip I don't know if others do it the way you have, but in my limited experience I found that an auto method is the most appropriate way to intercept people going to a protected section with a login screen. Also, I don't recognize the $c-flash part of your code; where is flash() defined? -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] example of sep db config args (was Re: Accessing DB from external model)
Darren Duncan wrote:
sub _lazy_default_for_dbc {
my ($process) = @_;
my $dbc = try {
my $dsn = sprintf( q{dbi:Pg:dbname=%s;host=%s;port=%s},
$process-db_name(), $process-db_host(),
$process-db_port() );
my $dbc = DBIx::Connector-new( $dsn,
$process-db_user(), $process-db_pass(),
{ 'RaiseError' = 1, 'AutoCommit' = 1 },
);
my $dbh = $dbc-dbh();
# SET UP ANY OTHER CLIENT SETTINGS HERE ON $dbh
return $dbc;
}
catch {
confess sprintf( q{Could not open connection to Pg server or
db: %s}, $_ );
};
return $dbc;
}
As an addendum ...
While this isn't relevant to the main point of my post, which is how to separate
config params for a database connection used by a Catalyst app, I noticed that
my code had a different flaw, which is now hopefully corrected in the version below:
sub _lazy_default_for_dbc {
my ($process) = @_;
my $dbc = try {
my $dsn = sprintf( q{dbi:Pg:dbname=%s;host=%s;port=%s},
$process-db_name(), $process-db_host(), $process-db_port() );
my $dbc = DBIx::Connector-new( $dsn,
$process-db_user(), $process-db_pass(), {
RaiseError = 1,
AutoCommit = 1,
Callbacks = {
connected = sub {
my ($dbh) = @_;
$process-_do_post_connect( $dbh );
},
},
},
);
return $dbc;
}
catch {
confess sprintf( q{Could not open connection to Pg server or db:
%s}, $_ );
};
return $dbc;
}
sub _do_post_connect {
my ($process, $dbh) = @_;
# SET UP ANY OTHER CLIENT SETTINGS HERE ON $dbh
}
The flaw is that if DBIx::Connector had to reconnect to the database, an event
that users shouldn't have to be aware of having occurred, the client settings
done by SET UP ... would not have been done on the new connection.
-- Darren Duncan
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[Catalyst] example of sep db config args (was Re: Accessing DB from external model)
P.S. While answering a question, this email could be adapted for a Catalyst
cookbook / etc entry if one wants to.
Octavian Rasnita wrote:
I agree and yes, that sample code could give bad ideas.
In my case I am the app designer, coder, maintainer, site admin, everything but
the web designer and I've done it so for not specifying these settings in more
places.
I have the same role in my situation, but I also designed the project so it is
easier for someone else to come along and maintain it.
Is there another place where I could put these settings for a certain DBIC
schema?
For example, can I put them in the MyApp/Schema.pm, orsomewhere else? Can you
give an example?
I can show you a simplified version of what I have done, but with any
identifying details changed to protect the innocent. My version uses straight
DBI+DBIx::Connector rather than DBIC but you should be able to adapt the design
to DBIC or any other database API; my version is also Pg-specific but only minor
tweaks would be needed to work with something else. Since this is from a
proprietary application rather than a CPAN module, I can get away with requiring
and exploiting the latest Perl version, 5.12.x, rather than giving those up to
support older Perls.
1. Here is the relevant portion of MyApp.conf, which uses Config::General as
per Catalyst's default these days.
Model DB
args
db_host localhost
db_port 5444
db_name myproj_v1_db
db_user myproj_v1_usr_myapp
db_pass myapppass
/args
/Model
2. Here is the slightly simplified version of MyApp/Model/DB.pm, which uses
Catalyst::Model::Adaptor, and in such a way to support different class and file
names (requires 0.09+):
use 5.012002;
use utf8;
use warnings FATAL = 'all';
use MyDBMSLib 0.001;
package MyApp::Model::DB 0.001;
use parent 'Catalyst::Model::Adaptor'; # requires = 0.09
__PACKAGE__-config( class = 'MyDBMSLib' );
1;
3. Here is a complete/template content of MyDBMSLib.pm; the original had
multiple classes in it but I removed the other ones and simplified the main one;
the original file was named after a different package than what I kept:
use 5.012002;
use utf8;
use warnings FATAL = 'all';
use DBIx::Connector;
use DBI;
use DBD::Pg;
###
###
{ package MyDBMSLib 0.001; # class
use namespace::autoclean;
use Try::Tiny;
use Moose;
has 'db_host' = (is = 'ro', isa = 'Str', required = 1 );
has 'db_port' = (is = 'ro', isa = 'Int', required = 1 );
has 'db_name' = (is = 'ro', isa = 'Str', required = 1 );
has 'db_user' = (is = 'ro', isa = 'Str', required = 1 );
has 'db_pass' = (is = 'ro', isa = 'Str', required = 1 );
# This is the actual (as far as we're concerned) Pg database connection
# object; the connection is opened the first time the _dbc attr is read
# and it is closed when the _dbc attr is garbage collected.
has '_dbc' = (
is = 'ro',
isa = 'DBIx::Connector',
required = 1,
lazy = 1,
default = \_lazy_default_for_dbc,
);
###
sub _lazy_default_for_dbc {
my ($process) = @_;
my $dbc = try {
my $dsn = sprintf( q{dbi:Pg:dbname=%s;host=%s;port=%s},
$process-db_name(), $process-db_host(), $process-db_port() );
my $dbc = DBIx::Connector-new( $dsn,
$process-db_user(), $process-db_pass(),
{ 'RaiseError' = 1, 'AutoCommit' = 1 },
);
my $dbh = $dbc-dbh();
# SET UP ANY OTHER CLIENT SETTINGS HERE ON $dbh
return $dbc;
}
catch {
confess sprintf( q{Could not open connection to Pg server or db:
%s}, $_ );
};
return $dbc;
}
###
# PUT OTHER USEFUL MyDBMSLib METHODS HERE
###
__PACKAGE__-meta()-make_immutable();
} # class MyDBMSLib
###
###
1;
For your version, mainly just replace _dbc with an object of whatever initial
class you have with DBIC that takes the db connection config args.
Your analogy to _lazy_default_for_dbc is where you feed DBIC its actual config
args, where some can be defined in MyDBMSLib itself and others taken from the
config file.
-- Darren Duncan
Re: [Catalyst] Accessing DB from external model
Mike Raynham wrote:
Here, the connection information is moved from MyApp::Model::DB to
MyApp::DB, and then Catalyst::Model::Adaptor is used to glue
MyApp::Model::DB to MyApp::DB. Is it a good idea? MyApp::Model::DB
appears to be part of the Catalyst application, so if I want to access
the database from an external model, it makes sense to me to move the
connection code outside of the Catalyst application.
What you want to do is turn all the stuff that mediates access to the database
into your own shared library formatted kind of like one you might find as a CPAN
module, say MyDBLib, and then use it in your Catalyst application by way of
Catalyst::Model::Adaptor.
For any configuration details that might vary either per application or per
deployment, make these user-configurable parameters of MyDBLib, with then each
of your applications would supply arguments to it when instantiating a MyDBLib
object; in the Catalyst app's case, said arguments would be in your Catalyst app
config file as is normal for MyApp::Model::DB.
For any configuration details that are unlikely to vary per application or per
deployment, especially if they are details for which your actual code would
vary, then put these directly in your MyDBLib code instead.
Octavian Rasnita wrote:
The best idea would be to put the connection information in the application's
config file like in the example below. (This example uses a Perl data
structure, but you can use any configuration type accepted by Config::Any).
'Model::DB' = {
schema_class = 'MyApp::Schema',
connect_info = {
dsn = 'dbi:Oracle:host=10.10.10.10;port=1521;sid=ora8',
user = 'user',
password = password,
#name_sep = '.',
LongReadLen = 100*1024*1024,
LongTruncOk = 1,
on_connect_call = 'datetime_setup',
on_connect_do = [
alter session set NLS_COMP='LINGUISTIC',
alter session set NLS_SORT='BINARY_AI',
],
},
},
The model will access the connection information directly if it is defined in
the config file, and you can use the data from this config file in any other
external program.
You can use the module Config::JFDI for using the Catalyst config file easier.
Now some of this looks wrong to me; a lot of those details should be in your
MyDBLib code instead of the config file. Your config file should instead look
more like this:
'Model::DB' = {
schema_class = 'MyApp::Schema',
connect_info = {
host = '10.10.10.10',
port = 1521,
user = 'user',
password = password,
},
},
These are more details that a non-programmer user would set.
The other details should all be in your code instead, because users shouldn't
have to know and in particular if they are changed your code could break. In
particular I'm thinking of stuff like on_connect_call or the fact you are
using dbi:Oracle.
Where it can get fuzzier is if your application is cross-DBMS portable, in which
case more info would need to be in the config file, but you'd want to abstract
it somehow, such as users just naming the DBMS and then they are actually
picking from a pre-defined profile which has the code-specific details. But if
the app isn't supposed to be portable, eg if it uses Oracle-specific stuff, then
don't put dbi:Oracle and NLS* and that stuff in your user config file.
Stuff like LongReadLen might be okay here if and only if changing it just tunes
performance, like you were setting a chunk-buffer size or something, and would
have no impact on behavior nor break any code; otherwise don't have it here.
-- Darren Duncan
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Re: [Catalyst] Deleting the expired session files?
Octavian Rasnita wrote: I am trying to create a script that will be executed by a cron job which will delete all the expired session files, but without success. I use the Session::Store::File plugin. snip Have you tried using the FastMMap store instead? I understand this can automatically expire sessions. The main caveat that I'm aware of is that it is unreliable in a multi-thread environment. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] DBIC mailing list?
I find that a good thing to check when one doesn't see their own list messages is the web archive of that list. If your message is in the archive, then the problem is likely with delivery to you as a list subscriber, and other subscribers may have seen it. If the message isn't in the archive, then probably no one has seen it. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
[Catalyst] test PostgreSQL 9.0 rc1
All, The next major release of Postgres is imminent, 9.0, but first a release candidate has come out today, and anyone who can should download and test it. Details in the forwarded email below. (Also, coincidentally, a release candidate for Perl 5.12.2 has also come out today on CPAN and needs testing, this being a minor update.) -- Darren Duncan Original Message Subject: [ANNOUNCE] PostgreSQL 9.0 Release Candidate 1 Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 09:05:01 -0700 From: Josh Berkus j...@postgresql.org To: pgsql-annou...@postgresql.org The first release candidate for PostgreSQL 9.0 is now available. Please download and test immediately so that we can move rapidly towards final release. All known bugs should be fixed, so users should promptly report any bugs which they find. Note that, due to a system catalog change, an initdb and database reload will be required for upgrading from 9.0 beta versions. We encourage users to use this opportunity to test pg_upgrade. Please report your results. If you are able to help with testing, please see the testing page: http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/HowToBetaTest No changes in commands, interfaces or APIs are expected between this release candidate and the final version. Applications which will deploy on 9.0 can and should test against 9.0rc1. Depending on bug reports, there may or may not be more release candidates before the final release. Source code, as well as binary installers for many platforms, is available from the PostgreSQL Web Site: * Source: http://www.postgresql.org/ftp/source/v9.0rc1 * One-Click Installer, including Win64 binaries: http://www.enterprisedb.com/products/pgdownload.do * Binaries for other platforms: http://www.postgresql.org/ftp/binary/v9.0rc1 * Release Notes: http://developer.postgresql.org/pgdocs/postgres/release-9-0.html * Participating in Testing: http://www.postgresql.org/developer/beta ---(end of broadcast)--- -To unsubscribe from this list, send an email to: pgsql-announce-unsubscr...@postgresql.org ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] Catalyst::ScriptRole and excludes
Bill Moseley wrote:
In case hasn't been noticed, newer Moose will complain about the renamed
-excludes option.
with 'MooseX::Getopt' = {
excludes = [qw/
_getopt_spec_warnings
_getopt_spec_exception
_getopt_full_usage
/],
};
Love that MooseX::Getopt. :)
That was true with Moose 1.10, and then Moose 1.12 turns off that warning so
that other code has time to be updated. -- Darren Duncan
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[Catalyst] working with strange port setups
Hello,
For context, I'm currently deploying/demoing a Catalyst app on a client machine
where it uses a contrived base url scheme to work around a restrictive firewall
setup. To be specific, the Firewall blocks all ports except port 80 (plus a few
admin ports like SSH etc) and I want to run through HTTPS, so I've currently got
the machine's Apache running HTTPS through port 80 rather than 443.
(My development machine isn't contrived at all, so no issue there.)
The contrived url for my Catalyst app looks like this:
https://example.com:80/MyApp/some/page
My app initially works fine here using the FastCGI or CGI server script and the
urls produced by uri_for() are mostly what is needed here but not quite.
An invocation of:
https://example.com:80/MyApp/some/page
... would have page urls going to the likes of:
https://example.com/MyApp/other/page
... which is correct except for the missing :80, because the result alone
implies port 443 which isn't correct here.
Now from running the first url with ?dump_info=1 shows that the FastCGI/CGI
program, namely Catalyst, *does* receive the necessary information to produce
correct base urls.
Here's a relevant subset of Request details from dump_info:
bless({
base = bless(do{\(my $o = https://example.com/MyApp/;)}, URI::https),
headers = bless({
host = example.com:80,
https = on,
}, HTTP::Headers),
uri = bless(do{\(my $o =
https://example.com/MyApp/some/page?dump_info=1;)}, URI::https),
}, Catalyst::Request)
The base and uri reflect the incorrect output, but the headers records the
fact that both port 80 was invoked and https is on. Using the latter 2 bits of
information, Catalyst should be able to construct https://example.com:80; urls.
Therefore, can anyone tell me how to configure Catalyst so that it builds the
urls I need, or alternately where in the Catalyst source I should look in order
to create a patch to enable this?
Ideally this added smarts could make it into a CPAN release, if code changes are
needed, but I would like to have this working quite soon, so if I knew what to
patch in the meantime to get this to work, I would appreciate it.
Undoubtedly, Catalyst should simply handle this situation, but I'm not surprised
that it doesn't yet, considering this is an edge case that the developers may
not have encountered before.
Thank you. -- Darren Duncan
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Re: [Catalyst] Best practice for setting up database in a complex project?
Matija Grabnar wrote: I was wondering what the experienced Catalyst developers use to set up a database in a project. Do you write the database definition mysql/postgresql format, and then dump schema to get the Perl classes, or do you write Perl class definitions and use something else to output the table creation statements for the database of your choice? And what do you do when the structure of the database changes (new tables, new columns, new indexes or foreign keys) - do you use a DB versioning thing, or do you do it by hand? If you do use a DB versioning tool, which do you recommend? What I like to do is write as much as is reasonably possible in SQL. Supplementing Dave's response, I also like to exploit SQL stored procedures and define one for each distinct data manipulation or query operation. So, rather than issue the bulk of an insert/update/delete/select from Perl, I wrap those statements in SQL stored procedures and then just invoke those from Perl instead. Design-wise, you would typically have a declared stored procedure parameter for each bind variable that the underlying statement(s) would have if issued directly, but that you can save on duplication if your procedure is wrapping multiple statements that each take the same bind values. On the Perl side, the DBI bind params would then map to procedure params, as the procedure call is then your SQL statement issued from Perl. When you use SQL stored procedures to mediate access to your tables, then when you want to change the tables or columns or indexes etc that you have, it is less likely that you will have to make any changes to your Perl, as the appropriate manipulation or query changes may be confined to the database, so many changes won't require changing anything but the database. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] Question on Perl versions with Catalyst
Joe Landman wrote: We are redoing one of our applications, and I wanted a quick sync against which Perl versions are currently blessed. I remember that 5.10.0 did not work due to a bug in the Perl base. Are there any issues we need to be aware of for 5.12.0 or should we stick with 5.10.x (x greater than or equal to 1)? My recommendation is to ignore the 5.10.x series, and go straight to 5.12.1+ if you want the newest production version, or use 5.8.x if you want to support older Perls. The 5.12.x and 5.10.x were released close enough together, and the 5.12.x benefit from the new and improved development process of making a release every month regardless of how much was changed. Also, 5.12.x improves some of the features that 5.10.x added, such as making smart matching and Unicode work better. Speaking for myself, I'm using 5.12.1 in production and for my work applications, and I'm using 5.8.1+ for my CPAN modules. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
[Catalyst] perms on gen script/ files differ between platforms
I noticed today that generating a new Catalyst app under 2 different platforms, Mac OS X and Linux/CentOS, produces files with different sets of initial file permissions. Both of these are the latest released Catalyst under Perl 5.12.1. On Mac OS X, the initial 5 files in script/ had these permissions: -rwx-- ... where the owner can execute but no one else can do anything. On CentOS, the same files had these permissions: -rw-rw-r-- ... where no one can execute but everyone can read. So what is the reason for this difference? Is it intentional or a bug? Thank you. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] perms on gen script/ files differ between platforms
Florian Ragwitz wrote: On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 07:05:56PM -0700, Darren Duncan wrote: On Mac OS X, the initial 5 files in script/ had these permissions: -rwx-- ... where the owner can execute but no one else can do anything. On CentOS, the same files had these permissions: -rw-rw-r-- ... where no one can execute but everyone can read. So what is the reason for this difference? Is it intentional or a bug? I'm guessing your umask settings on both systems differ. Thanks for the pointer; I wasn't previously aware of the umask feature of Unixes, though I'm not surprised it exists either. The umask does indeed differ on the 2 systems, but their values suggest this isn't the complete story. Typing umask on the Mac OS X gives 0022 and on Linux gives 0002. This would suggest default file permissions -rw-r--r-- on Mac OS X and -rw-rw-r-- on Linux. So, umask can explain the Linux perms all by themselves but there must be more to it with the Mac OS X. Regardless, I consider my question to be answered, so thank you. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] Clean install doesn't work at all... any ideas?
Sir Robert Burbridge wrote: Hey can anyone help me figure out this issue? I upgraded catalyst to v5.80024 (from CPAN). A fresh install throws the following error. I included module version numbers that seemed relevant ... Moose: v1.07 Catalyst: v5.80024 Catalyst::Runtime: v5.80024 Catalyst::Devel: v1.27 snip I updated to the latest Moose et al and then created a new Catalyst app et al as you did, and I'm not seeing any errors. [Core Features] - Test::More ...loaded. (0.94 = 0.88) - Catalyst::Runtime...loaded. (5.80024 = 5.80024) - Catalyst::Plugin::ConfigLoader ...loaded. (0.27) - Catalyst::Plugin::Static::Simple ...loaded. (0.29) - Catalyst::Action::RenderView ...loaded. (0.14) - Moose...loaded. (1.07) - namespace::autoclean ...loaded. (0.11) - Config::General ...loaded. (2.48) Mind you, I also made sure to separately put Class::MOP up to date if that was needed, and I also did my tests on a different operating system, Mac OS X 10.6.3. I also had Perl 5.12.1, and I don't recall you saying what Perl version you had. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
[Catalyst] ANNOUNCE - Muldis D version 0.129.1
commercial support. And http://github.com/muldis/ is its main public GIT version control repository. Thank you in advance for any interest in or support for this project that you can give. Any kind of support is welcome, from trying to update your own projects to use Muldis D, or from contributing your time and expertise to improving Muldis D or its implementations or ancillary projects, or promoting this project in various media and forums. Support is welcome in providing significant financial sponsorship towards my further work, in which case you have more of a say in its direction and priorities. But mainly I want to see it get used to enrich projects and their users and developers. This project and ancillary projects are a serious endeavor that I intend to commercially support over the long term, and others can do likewise. Good day. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] Re: Alternatives to DBIx?
Adam Sjøgren wrote: On Sat, 17 Apr 2010 19:15:14 +0100, Lyle wrote: Adam Sjøgren wrote: Ok, I'll bite: What system do you use instead of an object-relational mapper? At the moment I just use DBI directly. [...] Thanks for the answer. It is always nice to know what people like when they express contempt for other things. It gives you a chance to understand where they are coming from better. Personally, I prefer a middle-ground between raw DBI+SQL and ORMs as they are currently known, and that's what my Muldis D language and database toolkit is meant to deliver. People could treat it like a SQL templating system in the way that things like SQL::Abstract are treated, but that it is a lot more thorough in features and makes the SQL look more like Perl; your database tables are expressed as data type definitions plus declared variables of those types; your queries are expressed as mostly-declarational functions and procedures. You can write Muldis D either in string form like with SQL or Perl, which is better when you're writing code entirely manually, and you can write it as Perl data structures, which is better if you are generating code using Perl, both forms equally expressive; the latter is the closest analogy to traditional SQL generators. Muldis D is like a traditional ORM in that it has a variety of built-in features that SQL DBMSs in general lack, such as updateable views or collection-valued attributes, say to nest child records under parents. But unlike typical ORMs, it unifies objects and the relational model, and so considers that there is no impedence mismatch, while ORMs say there is a mismatch and tries to treat the two things as separate. In other words, Muldis D makes the database itself look more powerful or Perlish than it otherwise is, and so Perl programs can then use it as if it were just an ordinary programming language VM, based on types and routines like regular languages. I am perhaps a few days away from a milestone in this project and I wasn't going to talk about it here before that; but this thread sort of forced my hand as I didn't want the option to go unmentioned in it. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] KiokuDB, MongoDB and the NoSQL thing
As an addendum to this thread ... It just occurred to me now, following an interview today with a developer of millions-users social-network games, that I could be embracing this NoSQL thing in an indirect way, taking into account that still I consider it just a reasonable compromise for some applications, but not a general database pancea. Because Muldis D is designed from the start to be implementable over both SQL DBMSs of various capabilities and within general purpose languages, meaning that any functionality a DBMS doesn't natively support can be hoisted to the application, this structure is a natural fit for NoSQL. NoSQL is all about keeping the main DBMS simple, supporting just a few native operations, and massively parallel. And so, one could write Muldis D code and deploy it both over SQL and NoSQL, and in the latter case it would just do a lot of the work on the application side. Essentially, Muldis D takes care of the I believe I did, Bob, so you can use a NoSQL store without doing the write a distributed map-reduce function in Erlang yourself, instead you just say what you want declaratively much like in SQL, and then the right thing happens. Of course, that won't generally give you the consistency/integrity that a relational DBMS backend has over a NoSQL one, but at least you'll get the powerful queries part. You heard it here first. -- Darren Duncan S.A. Kiehn wrote: Thanks for the link Darren. I will read and ponder. Also of interest, I seen that Search::GIN has had a new release http://blogs.perl.org/users/sawyer_x/2010/03/searchgin-004-finally-out.html. The post also mentions some docs explaining queries, but I have not found them yet. Active Search::GIN development would encourage KiokuDB usage I would think. Thanks for the posts regarding this topic. S. Kiehn Darren Duncan wrote: Here's something timely on Ars, in that I just discovered it now around the time of this discussion thread: http://arstechnica.com/business/data-centers/2010/02/-since-the-rise-of.ars It lays out a summary of how the SQL and NoSQL worlds compare, and what sort of trade-offs you get for each choice, and it introduces several specific NoSQL projects. I also learned something, such that what CouchDB and MongoDB specifically represent data with is JSON documents. So basically, what you pick out of today's choices depends on your priorities. ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] Which PHP framework is the most similar to Catalyst?
Julien Sobrier wrote: Hello, I need to help a project that will be developed with PHP. I really love Catalyst, and I am looking for a similar framework in PHP. Symphony seems to be the closed to Catalyst. Do you have any suggestion? Thank you Julien If the project hasn't been built yet, why don't you try convincing them to use the genuine article Catalyst? Its not like there is a legacy PHP codebase, and if the other developers know PHP, it isn't that hard to learn Perl, especially when Catalyst or CPAN takes care of so much. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] KiokuDB, MongoDB and the NoSQL thing
S.A. Kiehn wrote: I do not see many posts regarding uses of KiokuDB within Catalyst so I was curious about the opinion of the community in regards to its usage. Is it still to early within development? Also, I have been reading more about the increase in the NoSQL interest, with a particular interest in the MongoDB database (it seems to be similar in some respects to KiokuDB), but I do not find Perl people in the discussion as much as others (Ruby, PHP). Are there developers in the Catalyst community who lean toward NoSQL concepts over traditional RDMS's, or is best to view as a tool to use at times? How about MongoDB? Am I being suckered by another bandwagon? Thanks, Scott K. Well I happen to be strongly opinionated on this topic, so here goes ... While these other DBMSs have their uses, I believe that anyone is misguided who figures they are superior solutions for most uses of relational databases. I believe that the relational model of data is still the single best general solution that we have come up with for organizing and querying any non-trivial amount of data that is the least bit structured. Especially so when that data needs to be or could possibly be worked with by multiple kinds of users or applications that may have different needs, and need their own views of that data. It is also good for persisting data, but persistence isn't the main point; rather easy and flexible organization and querying is the point; persistence is optional, same as persisting an array of data is optional. That said, while it does the job well enough many times, SQL is deeply flawed and doesn't represent the relational model of data properly, but just approximates it to varying degrees, this variance depends partly on the SQL DBMS in use, which range in features quite a bit. I believe that quite often when people complain about relational databases, they are really complaining about SQL databases, as if those were the same, and so various solutions are proposed like ORMs or these NoSQL concepts. But the problem is that they are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Yes, SQL is quite flawed, but the relational model it approximates is not (or it is much less flawed, if you want to argue that having something actually flawless is impossible). I believe that the best solution is not to ditch everything, but rather to provide a DBMS that actually implements the full relational model of data, and not just an approximation, nor ditching the concept entirely. If you do that, then a lot of these other kinds of DBMSs like so-called object-relational or object or key-value become redundant, because the full relational model incorporates their features. For example, the full relational model supports having tuple/row and relation/table values as attributes/fields of other ones, and so you can natively model any arbitrarily complex data type that an object could model, without too much indirection (similarly to how many languages support having an array as an element of an array). Hence ORMs are redundant and so are distinct concepts of object stores, or alternately they become a lot thinner. And so, as a model of good community behaviour, I'm not just sitting around talking about what people should do, but I am going out and actually doing it, creating a DBMS that provides the full relational model (both as self-contained implementations as well as implementations over existing DBMSs), and right now. Simultaneously taking what SQL should have been and all the good features of the SQL alternatives, elegantly integrated in one streamlined bloat-free package. This project, with the umbrella name Muldis (see CPAN etc), is mostly pre-alpha right now, but I am filling in the gaps as soon as I can and I am confident it will be viable. In fact, I released updates to 3 of 4 current sub-projects on CPAN earlier today. So, to answer your question, go ahead and explore the alternatives you name, but I will say to anyone that the relational model is the single best general solution for data aggregation and processing. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] Re: Catalyst 5.800013 - missing dependency version
Toby Corkindale wrote: I am running the latest stable versions of Moose/Class-MOP and their dependencies. to...@arya:~$ pmvers Moose 0.91 to...@arya:~$ pmvers Class::MOP 0.93 Meanwhile, Moose 0.92 and CMOP 0.94 came out half a day before your post. See if those are any better. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] Reading Database At Startup
Ovid wrote:
For a personal project, I want users to be able to click on a letter and get a
list of countries starting with that letter. I can do this:
Considering that there are only about 250 countries in total, you should just
list them all on one screen and be done with it.
I think that would be a lot more user friendly than requiring them to click a
letter first, especially if they're not sure exactly how their country is
spelled or what letter it might be under (eg, is Republic of Ireland under I
or R).
Save clicking a letter when you're doing a list of cities or something.
my $letters = $c-model('DB')-storage-dbh-selectcol_arrayref(
'select distinct(substr(name,1,1)) as letter from country order by
letter'
);
$c-stash-{letters} = $letters;
Also, to use 'distinct' I don't think you ever use parens; you just say select
distinct foo-expr as bar from baz
-- Darren Duncan
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Re: [Catalyst] New Apress book shipping now from Amazon.com
If you want it, you'll have to come here in person to pick it up. -- Darren Duncan Ali M. wrote: The extra one is mine! Regards, Ali On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 11:06 PM, Darren Duncandar...@darrenduncan.net wrote: Darren Duncan wrote: Ari Constancio wrote: For those interested, Amazon.com is shipping now pre-orders for The Definitive Guide to Catalyst. Not sure about new orders, though. I've had a different experience so far. I pre-ordered the book on amazon.ca back on June 19th, and it estimated it would ship July 10, the release date. Then today I got a message from Amazon saying it had been delayed, and now they say, I kid you not: Estimated ship date: August 05 2009 - October 21 2009 Now that's probably a glitch, which will be corrected shortly with a new estimate, and usually my experience with Amazon is they ship things ahead of their estimates. But as a hedge I went and placed a separate amazon.com order now, which it estimates to ship on July 17th. The idea that when one ships I'll cancel the other one (or end up with 2 copies if they ship simultaneously). So we'll see what I get first. As an update, today (July 27) I received *both* copies in the mail, after they had shipped on July 19 (.com) and July 22 (.ca). Both in good condition. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] New Apress book shipping now from Amazon.com
Darren Duncan wrote: Ari Constancio wrote: For those interested, Amazon.com is shipping now pre-orders for The Definitive Guide to Catalyst. Not sure about new orders, though. I've had a different experience so far. I pre-ordered the book on amazon.ca back on June 19th, and it estimated it would ship July 10, the release date. Then today I got a message from Amazon saying it had been delayed, and now they say, I kid you not: Estimated ship date: August 05 2009 - October 21 2009 Now that's probably a glitch, which will be corrected shortly with a new estimate, and usually my experience with Amazon is they ship things ahead of their estimates. But as a hedge I went and placed a separate amazon.com order now, which it estimates to ship on July 17th. The idea that when one ships I'll cancel the other one (or end up with 2 copies if they ship simultaneously). So we'll see what I get first. As an update, today (July 27) I received *both* copies in the mail, after they had shipped on July 19 (.com) and July 22 (.ca). Both in good condition. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] More up-to-date version of Perl 5.10 ...
Kiffin Gish wrote: Installed Catalyst and at the end it said that because of a bug in Perl 5.10 I need to update to a newer version. Which version do you recommend that is the most stable for Catalyst? The first Perl 5.10.1 release candidate is expected to be out in maybe a week or so, and would presumably be the newest stable shortly after. Meanwhile, there is a maint-5.10 snapshot (aka 'RC0') that came out on July 7 which is close to what 5.10.1RC1 would be but that it is *not* for production; see http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2009/07/msg148270.html for info and to get it; note that installing it in standard locations will blow away a production 5.10.0 since it is still marked as 5.10.0. Alternately, go older and try 5.8.9 or 5.8.8 for the alternate most stable right now. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] New Apress book shipping now from Amazon.com
Ari Constancio wrote: For those interested, Amazon.com is shipping now pre-orders for The Definitive Guide to Catalyst. Not sure about new orders, though. I've had a different experience so far. I pre-ordered the book on amazon.ca back on June 19th, and it estimated it would ship July 10, the release date. Then today I got a message from Amazon saying it had been delayed, and now they say, I kid you not: Estimated ship date: August 05 2009 - October 21 2009 Now that's probably a glitch, which will be corrected shortly with a new estimate, and usually my experience with Amazon is they ship things ahead of their estimates. But as a hedge I went and placed a separate amazon.com order now, which it estimates to ship on July 17th. The idea that when one ships I'll cancel the other one (or end up with 2 copies if they ship simultaneously). So we'll see what I get first. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] PostgreSQL 8.4 released
Joshua D. Drake wrote: Thought I would let you know this little wonderful tidbit for the day. PostgreSQL 8.4 has been released. You can check out the release here: http://www.postgresql.org/about/news.1108 That's great news. Postgres 8.4 introduces some features that I consider very valuable to have, and that makes possible some work that would otherwise be quite difficult. For examples, common table expressions or named subqueries (WITH), with recursion. This lets you apply to non-trivial database queries what are good practices in programming in general, such as factoring out repeated portions of a query into named subqueries so you only have to write that part once. And the recursion which basically is predicated in the prior ability. That's one of the things I appreciate the most. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] More natural access to model?
Paweł Tęcza wrote: Dnia 2009-05-12, wto o godzinie 19:30 +0100, Matt S Trout pisze: Well, that's a horrible idea. The whole point of having a database is to -model- your data. If you try and turn it into a giant hash, then of course you're going to end up with nasty code. I -could- explain how to clean that loop up a lot, but the reality is that you should have actual columns for things and update your database as required as new types of data need to be included - you'll have to update the application anyway, so I don't see any reason not to update the database at the same time ... Intriguing post. My application and database design are still under heavy development, so all ideas, suggestions and comments are very welcome :D A general rule of thumb is that you should be conceptualizing your databases similar to how you conceptualize your applications. Your database schema, such as what tables you have, and their columns, and their column data types, and the relationships between tables and columns etc, these are like program code, such as how you choose to decompose your application into libraries and classes and class attributes and type constraints and input constraints and so on. The actual data you put in your database tables is analogous to what data you put in your application variables or objects. Generally speaking it should be natural to change your actual database schema as often as you change your application source code, where it makes sense; for example, changing your schema is a similar sort of operation to changing what attributes your object classes have or your constraints. Or more accurately in practice, a database is more like (or in some cases, exactly like) a shared library, where you have some classes you write once and share in multiple applications, and if you change the library you have to consider that impact on all the applications that use it. Hence people tend to be more conservative in database design changes, but still one shouldn't be afraid to do it, and all you really need is just proper communication and planning between the involved parties so it goes smoothly. Also, same as classes can have multiple APIs, eg keeping old ones for backwards compatibility if old apps can't update, databases have things called views / virtual tables which let them also have multiple APIs; this is one of the main purposes of views in fact. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] ANNOUNCE: SimpleDB - Auth configuration made easy
Zbigniew Lukasiak wrote: * Your passwords are stored in the 'password' field in your users table and are not encrypted. This is always a bad idea. If someone ever gets direct database access, they now know each user's mindset as to how they choose passwords, and can subsequently login to the application as them or target them in a wider context where they may have used similar passwords elsewhere. You always want passwords in a one-way hash, and if users forget their password, you don't tell it to them, but you have them make a new one. Also reminding users of their password in an email message is also a bad idea. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] ANNOUNCE: SimpleDB - Auth configuration made easy
Jason Kuri wrote: If I explicitly override the default, by explicitly requesting 'clear', because my requirements explicitly need this ability, then I must change the code to get rid of the warning? Ahh, but it's for the 'simple', who must be guided, and can't be bothered to read the warnings in the text so bonk'em repeatedly in the logs till they mind what you say. Which is to explicitly not use the feature which you've explicitly provided? (sigh) How about adding 'clear_please_please' ? (Just because I like simple doesn't mean I _am_ 'simple' - and I really do appreciate the simplicity enablers, really) Matt suggested a way to turn off the warning also... but I am skeptical... either we hold the newbies hand and protect him from himself, and warn him if he's doing something dangerous or we happily let them shoot themselves in the foot, assuming they'll probably figure it out after the first time Seems the two options are out of sync with each other... I'm not beyond convincing... just a bit skeptical Anybody else want to weigh in... should we protect them, but allow them to throw off the comfort blankets if they say 'PLEeease'? I think a good approach is to have safer more secure defaults, and if users explicitly turn those off then have relevant warnings on by default, and if users really know what they're doing then they can explicitly turn those off. For example, users can have an explicit no_warnings_plaintext_password or some such where warnings are turned on by default and off explicitly. Generally speaking, those who know enough to handle less safe things also know enough how to ask the system to let them do those things. People who don't know well enough for one aren't likely at the same time have to know to ask the system for help in pointing out unsafe behaviour so they're in trouble if unsafe is the default. For people who do know things, having safe defaults is still good for working together with their desire to be lazy. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] tips for troubleshooting/QAing Unicode
J. Shirley wrote: Hey Darren, great post! Can you post it on the wiki, perhaps at: http://dev.catalystframework.org/wiki/faq link to Unicode Troubleshooting in the Unicode section there? It would be much appreciated. Thanks, -J I have gone and added a section to http://dev.catalystframework.org/wiki/gettingstarted/tutorialsandhowtos/using_unicode that has a slightly edited version of my email post. In the process, I discovered that your wiki appears to have a Unicode handling problem, which I black-box debugged and present here. If you go to the above url when you are not logged in and your browser has its cache/cookies/etc flushed beforehand, then my Japanese text sample will display correctly. But if you login to your account and then view the page, then the Japanese text sample will not display properly. Moreover, if you logout after being logged in and refresh the page again, it still doesn't display properly, but if you wipe your cache/cookies/etc (I haven't narrowed it down yet), and then refresh that page, then it displays properly. I see this same behaviour on both Firefox 3.0.3 and Safari 3.1.2, both on Mac OS X 10.5.5 PPC. A telnet to the server on port 80 also displays correctly, though that is only testing the not logged in example. From what I have seen so far, I would guess that the wiki is sometimes encoding its http response as UTF-8 and other times as some single-byte encoding like ISOLATIN1 but it is still declaring that it is UTF-8. I don't have the source code of the wiki or access to the server to test further though. Someone please confirm the behaviour I'm seeing. I hope my diagnosis will help fix it. (On a tangent, I suggest declaring the encoding using uppercase UTF-8 and not lowercase utf-8 as the server currently is doing; I don't think this is the cause of the problem but it might be technically incorrect, unless those things are officially case-insensitive.) Thank you. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
Re: [Catalyst] tips for troubleshooting/QAing Unicode (was Re: Passing UTF-8 arg in URL to DBIC search)
Lee Aylward wrote: Great timing on this as I am currently struggling with some unicode text not displaying correctly in an application I am working on. Per your suggestion I put the Japanese text at the top of my template. All of a sudden the browsers started displaying that and other non-ascii characters correctly. The second I take away the Japanese text it goes back to just showing question marks. I am seeing this behavior in both the test server and Apache. I have looked at the Content-Type header and it is definitely serving it as utf-8, so I am at abit of a loss. There are no databases involved here, but I am displaying information from IMDB::Film. Is there anything in the actual HTML that needs to be set? That seems strange. I wonder if something in your template handler or other part of your app is trying to DWIM for you and is getting it wrong. Are your source files actually UTF-8, both the prior and new versions? Are you explicitly declaring that in one place and not another? I wouldn't expect the addition of Japanese text to suddenly make the other characters look correct by itself unless there's some DWIM going on. I suspect you made some other change between the two versions as well, such as saving the source file in a different encoding. Note that the reason I use a Japanese text example is because the vast majority of my normal program text would fit in the ASCII repertoire, and it would only be user data that might be Unicode, though most user data isn't. And Japanese characters are known to not have a one-byte interpretation and they stand out clearly from latin letters at a glance. So in your own situation, the text you already have that doesn't display right, if it is literal text in your source code, should be a surrogate for my Japanese test example to see if things look right. So see what your text editor says that your older/incorrect file version's encoding is. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
[Catalyst] tips for troubleshooting/QAing Unicode (was Re: Passing UTF-8 arg in URL to DBIC search)
Maybe you're already aware of this, but I've found from experience that
troubleshooting encoding/Unicode problems in a web/db app can be difficult,
especially with multiple conversions at different stages, but I've come up
with a short generic algorithm to help test/ensure that things are working
and where things need fixing. Note that these details assuming we're using
Perl 5.8+.
1. Make sure all your text/code/template/non-binary/etc files are saved as
UTF-8 text files (or they are 7-bit ASCII), and you have a Unicode-savvy
text editor.
2. Have a use utf8; at the top of every Perl file, so Perl treats your
source files as being Unicode.
3. Place a text string literal in your program code that you know isn't in
ASCII ... for example I like to use the word 'サンプル', which is what came
out of Google's translation tool when I asked it to translate the word
'sample' to Japanese. Then setup your program to display that text
directly in your web page text, without any escaping.
4. Make sure the HTTP response headers for the webpage with that text have
a content-type charset value of UTF-8, and make sure that Perl is encoding
its output as actual UTF-8; if you were doing it directly using STDOUT for
example such as in a CGI, it could be: binmode *main::STDOUT,
':encoding(UTF-8)'; or such. Make sure your web browser is Unicode savvy.
5. At this point, if the web page displays correctly with the non-ASCII
literal (and moreover, if you view source in the browser and the literal
also displays literally), then you know your program can work/represent
internally with Unicode correctly, and it can output Unicode correctly to
the browser. It is very important to get this step working first, in
isolation, so that you are in a position to judge or troubleshoot other
issues such as receiving Unicode input from a browser or using it with a
database.
6. Next test that you can receive Unicode from the browser in the various
ways, whether by query string / http headers or in an http post. Eg try
outputting a value and have the user submit it again, and compare for
equality either in the Perl program or by displaying it again next to the
original for visual inspection. If any differences come up, then you know
any fixes you have to do concern either how you read and interpret the
browser request, or perhaps on how you instruct the browser on how to
submit a request. Once that's all cleared up, then you know your I/O with
the web browser works fine.
7. To test a database, I suggest first using a known-good and Unicode savvy
alternate input method for putting some Unicode text in the database, such
as using an admin/utility tool that came with the DBMS. Also make sure
that the database is itself using UTF-8 character strings in its schema, eg
that the schema is declared this way.
8. With a database known to contain some valid Unicode etc text, you first
test simply selecting that text from the database and displaying it. If
anything doesn't match, it means you probably have to configure your DBMS
client connection encoding so it is UTF-8 (often done with a few certain
SQL commands), and then separately ensure that Perl is decoding the UTF-8
data into Perl text strings properly. Its important to make sure you can
retrieve Unicode from the database properly so that you have a context for
judging that you can insert such text in the database.
9. Next try to insert some Unicode text in the database using your program,
then select it back to check that it worked. If it didn't, then check DBMS
client connection settings, or that Perl is encoding text as UTF-8 properly.
10. Actually, when you have a known-good external tool to help you, you can
alternately start the DBMS tests with step 9, where your program inserts
text, then you use the known-good tool to ensure it actually was recorded
properly.
Anyway, that's it in a nutshell. Now I'm sure many of you have already
figured this out, but for those who haven't, I hope these tips help you.
Adjust as appropriate to account for any abstraction tools or frameworks
you are using which means your tests may also involve testing those tools
or configuring them.
-- Darren Duncan
Hugh Hunter wrote:
I've been struggling with this for some time and know there must be an
answer out there.
I'm using URL arguments to pass parameters to my controller. It's a
site about names, so take the url http://domain.com/name/Jesús (note the
accented u). The Name.pm controller has an :Args(1) decorator so Jesús
is stored in $name and then passed to my DBIC model in a -search({name
= $name}) call. This doesn't manage to find the row that exists in
mysql. When I dump $name I get:
'name' = 'Jes\xc3\xbas'
which I think I understand as being perl's internal escaping of utf-8
characters.
I've done everything recommended on
http://dev.catalystframework.org/wiki/gettingstarted/tutorialsandhowtos/using_unicode
[Catalyst] Re: CGI.pm and Catalyst?
At 11:39 AM +0100 3/7/08, Aristotle Pagaltzis wrote: It's a really really REALLY bad idea to mix your display logic into your controllers, much less your model. Most people therefore say that you should use a template system with a minilanguage. But the reason that doing this is good is that it forces you to write your display logic in a separate file without easy access to the rest of the code. In other words, it forces you to properly separate concerns: the controllers only translate HTTP into model and view calls, and only the model has business logic, and the view does nothing else than translate the stash into output. But the language in which your display logic is written doesn't much matter. (In fact, the minilanguages are usually terrible, like writing shell and awk scripts when you could be writing Perl.) It's not an issue to write Perl to generate your output, as long as you keep that Perl code in separate modules whose *only* job is to render the stash. Speaking for myself (who is now on the cusp of starting to use Catalyst for the first time, and is now reading the book to learn it), I have for the last several years been writing my new web applications with very few external dependencies, with said applications using DBI and SQL directly, and producing their own HTML, both without help from a generic templating wrapper or generic DBI wrapper. That said, the applications were well structured and highly resembled the MVP practices that Catalyst is built on. Practically all of the code was in modules, except for a thin wrapper which invoked the otherwise controller main in an eval block so to trap and report otherwise unhandled compile or runtime exceptions. Its controller logic and HTML-making view code were in separate per-application modules; the controller examined user input, determined what page to display (using the path_info mainly) and gathered data to use; the view was invoked almost just before the controller exited, and rendered the page the controller told it to do. Utility modules wrapped DBI, and wrapped the web client input/output (including 301s etc), uri generation, and managed sessions (the last 3 with CGI.pm and CGI::Session and File::VirtualPath) and the stash. For configuration, the controller starts by do-ing a Perl file that simply contained an anonymous Perl hash declaration, so Perl itself is the config file parser. Many more similarities that I won't detail here. Suffice it to say that as I've been reading the book, I very much understand the reasoning of how Catalyst-using applications, and the framework, are structured, as its essentially the same as what I was doing, but that with Catalyst a greater part of the codebase will be generified and higher quality. The first main benefit I anticipate getting from switching to Catalyst is improved server portability, and in particular the ability to develop and test an app without running it on the actual Apache server. Getting back to the topic at hand, I think it works very well for a view to simply be written in Perl, and in many cases it seemed to work better than the templating approach I had seen in PHP applications. That said, as per the examples in the book, I intend to try using a non-Perl template approach (TT or something) at the same time as adopting Catalyst, and see how well that works out. At the same time, I'll also move to using an alternate database access method than direct DBI+SQL, which would be my first use of Muldis DB. Note that many of my database queries are relatively complicated and would have required writing a lot of SQL anyway were I to use any other DBI wrappers / ORMs, afaik. -- Darren Duncan ___ List: Catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/ Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
