How can I run Perl on web servers?

Question

I am very new to Perl and I wonder how to run it on webservers and all. (or if it can)

Answer 1

1) cgi, infact any program can run behind the server. 2) mod-perl

Answer 2

The three commonest options are:

• mod_perl
• FastCGI
• CGI

I'd recommend FastCGI for good performance without massive complication.

The new kid on the block is PSGI/Plack, which I can't comment on as I haven't found time to look at it properly.

There are various web frameworks (such as Catalyst) which can do a lot of the heavy lifting involved in building a web application for you. Most can be accessed with more than one of the above methods (e.g. Catalyst supports all four).

Answer 3

You can even run Perl as a webserver :)

For eq: Continuity

use strict;
use warnings;
use Continuity;

Continuity->new->loop;

sub main {
    my $request = shift;
    $request->print( '<p>Hello world</p>' );
}

You can then looking into doing a Reverse Proxy in front of these.

/I3az/

Answer 4

You clearly want to use PSGI/Plack to deploy your Perl application. This is the way to go in 2010, you should not go another way.

PSGI/Plack lets you deploy the application under any webserver you like, see http://plackperl.org for details.

You'll also have to choose an application framework that supports PSGI. There are many; among them is Dancer a micro-framework designed to be as effortless as possible for the developer.

See http://dancer.sukria.net for details.