Yesterday I ported a few thousand lines of code I'd been working on
over to Perl. It was quite a bit of work getting all of the strict
stuff correct and then fighting with the modules-do-not-reload
problem, but it's now mostly dealt with, and my code's much cleaner
and more modularized. (Huzzah.)
Unfortunately I've been continuing to have one program that I can't
figure out. Somehow, my information being submitted through forms
sometimes reverts to old data after I've clicked Submit and before
it's processed.
Now, I've read through much of the mod_perl documents, FAQs, etc.,
and I understand the general shape of *why* this happens. It's the
result of mod_perl keeping the perl modules, and thus the variables,
in memory. When I hit a server that's already been loaded, I get
incorrect results. What I don't understand is *how* it's happening in
this specific case, because I'm being very careful about clearly
setting my variables each time through.
There must be some aspect of how mod_perl works that I'm missing. I'm
hoping someone here can (1) tell me what I'm doing wrong in this
specific case and (2) tell me where my mental map is incorrect.
Anyway, here we go.
I start off with a simple index.cgi that I've made extremely short to
avoid the issue of nested subroutines. It has a require:
--
$main::filePath = /var/www/skotos/myskotos;
require ${main::filePath}/modules/lib/mylib.pm;
--
From that required library, I set my $cgi variable:
--
package mylib;
use CGI;
use CGI::Pretty qw( :html3 );
$mylib::cgi = new CGI;
--
It's a global variable, but that seems entirely appropriate for
something that's used in nearly every function. And, it gets
explicitly set every time the program is run.
Back in the original index.cgi, I have the problems when it's called
to process form information. Here's that particular segment of code:
--
require ${main::filePath}/modules/web/myedit.pm;
my $action = $mylib::cgi-param('action');
$main::pageNumber = $mylib::cgi-param('pageNumber');
$main::contentType = $mylib::cgi-param('contentType');
if ($action eq editpage) {
myedit::ProcessEditPage();
} elsif ($action eq editcontent) {
myedit::ProcessEditContent();
}
--
And, pretty much ANY of those parameters that I call in from $cgi can
come up wrong. Both the local variables defined by my ($action) and
the global variables set to $main ($pageNumber, $contentType) ...
which tells me that the problem is back in that $cgi reference.
But why?
Can I not set variables which might change down in modules? That
would seem grossly limiting if so, given that I've moved everything
to modules in order to avoid the nested subroutine problems.
Or am I missing something else?
I should mention, that out of extreme paranoia at this point I'm even
trying to undef $cgi when I'm done, to no effect.
--
END {
$mylib::dbh-disconnect if $mylib::dbh;
undef $mylib::cgi;
}
--
Help?
Shannon
--
Shannon
--
You met me at a very strange time in my life. --_Fight Club_
