CGI::Portal - Extensible Framework for Multiuser Applications SYNOPSIS use CGI::Portal; CGI::Portal::activate({'database_type' => "mysql", 'database_name' => "some_name", 'database_host' => "localhost", 'database_user' => "some_user", 'database_passw' => "some_password", 'user_table' => "users", 'user_index_field' => "id", 'user_user_field' => "user", 'user_passw_field' => "passw", 'user_additional' => ["email","first_name","middle_initial","last_name","city","state","country"], # at least: ["email"], 'session_table' => "sessions", 'session_index_field' => "id", 'session_sid_field' => "sid", 'session_user_field' => "user", 'session_start_field' => "session_start", 'session_additional' => "", # Modules in the CGI::Portal::Scripts namespace, the first is the default action 'actions' => ["logon", "logoff", "register", "profile", "changepw", "emailpw"], 'session_length' => 7200, 'admin_email' => "some_user\@some_host.com", 'template_dir' => "templates/", # include trailing slash 'header_html' => "header.html", 'footer_html' => "footer.html", 'logon_success_html' => "logon.html"}); DESCRIPTION CGI::Portal is a framework for the design of extensible, plug-configure-and-play multiuser web applications based on preferred object oriented coding standards. It provides authentication, session management, internal redirects and a modular architecture to build complex applications. It requires a database including a user and a sessions table, a collection of HTML::Template style templates and a properly configured starrtup script. At first you may want to install the provided sample files. All requests access through the startup script, and are handled by the module in the CGI::Portal::Scripts namespace that corresponds to the desired action. Above shown actions are included in CGI::Portal. For example, portal.cgi?action=foo calls CGI::Portal::Scripts::foo::launch() FUNCTIONS activate CGI::Portal::activate($conf) takes a reference to the configuration hash, collects input parameters, creates a database object, and passes those on to your module for creating an object instance. It then runs your modules "launch" method and concludes by doing the printing for you. This function is called once from your startup script. INSTALLATION perl Makefile.PL make make test make install CGI::Portal::Scripts - Building Applications SYNOPSIS package CGI::Portal::Scripts::some_name; use CGI::Portal::Scripts; use vars qw(@ISA); @ISA = qw(CGI::Portal::Scripts); 1; sub launch { my $self = shift; .... } Internal Redirect package CGI::Portal::Scripts::some_name; use CGI::Portal::Scripts; use CGI::Portal::Scripts::other_name; use vars qw(@ISA); @ISA = qw(CGI::Portal::Scripts); 1; sub launch { my $self = shift; .... bless $self, "CGI::Portal::Scripts::other_name"; $self->launch; } DESCRIPTION Applications based on CGI::Portal are build by creating modules that reside in the CGI::Portal::Scripts namespace and extend CGI::Portal::Scripts. These modules must provide a subroutine launch() that CGI::Portal calls as an object method to run your modules code. A subroutine new() is not necessary or helpful as you are extending CGI::Portal::Scripts. In your modules, do not print() or exit(). Instead of "print"ing append to $self->{'out'} or $self->{'cookies'} and instead of "exit"ing, "return" from launch(). Extending CGI::Portal::Scripts, gives you access to an object with the following attributes. ATTRIBUTES conf $self->{'conf'} references a hash containing all values as set in the startup script. in $self->{'in'} references a hash containing all input parameters, stripped off any HTML tags. user $self->{'user'} is set by $self->authenticate_user() if logon succeeds. rdb $self->{'rdb'} is a CGI::Portal::RDB database object holding a database handle. out $self->{'out'} supposed to collect all output. cookies $self->{'cookies'} collects cookie headers you might want to set. It is also used for Sessions, so you might want to append to it. FUNCTIONS authenticate_user $self->authenticate_user() takes no arguments and does not return anything. It sets $self->{'user'} and starts a session if user logon succeeds. If user logon fails it writes the HTML for a logon form to $self->{'out'}. It also maintains the sessions during subsequent calls. $self->authenticate_user(); return unless $self->{'user'}; .... logoff $self->logoff() takes no arguments and does not return anything. It removes the current users session id from the database and unsets the session cookie. RDB->exec $self->{'rdb'}->exec($sql) is an object method for the database object. It takes a SQL statement as argument and returns a DBI statement handle. The database handle can be directly retrieved from $self->{'rdb'}{'dbh'}. RDB->escape $self->{'rdb'}->escape(@values) takes an array of SQL values. It uses DBI's quote() on those values and returns them as a string seperated by commas. AUTHOR Alexander David