Re: Persistant data with Mason

[bpphillips]

if you're needing access to this data from with Mason, you can use Mason's built in data caching. First you create a component file to encapsulate the data you want to share across requests and processes (i.e. "_getSharedData").

# mason component _getSharedData
my $value = $m->cache->get("key");
return $value if(defined($value));

# compute $value here since it hasn't been stored yet
$value = $$;

$m->cache->set(key=>$value);
return $value

Then you can call that component anytime you want to retrieve it.

my $value = $m->comp('/_getSharedData');

Note that Mason's cache, by default, is stored on disk but you can use any Cache::Cache sub-class that you want (Cache::SharedMemoryCache would allow you to share the data across processes without writing it to disk).

$m->cache(cache_class => 'SharedMemoryCache')->set(key=>$value);
$value = $m->cache(cache_class => 'SharedMemoryCache')->get("key");

Also, $m->cache->get("key") is scoped to the component you are calling it from (so don't expect to be able to access the same data from another component without calling _getSharedData

For more info on Mason caching, see the HTML::Mason::Devel docs.

HTH - Brian

[cowboy]

I believe Cache::Cache recommends using Cache::FileCache rather than Cache::SharedMemoryCache. Other than that, I agree, a cache is probably the easiest way to go. Cache::FileCache on a tmpfs or other sort of ram disk, is quite quick. Alternatively, as others have suggested, a light weight DB backend also makes sharing easy.

[crenz]

Thanks, this is actually a very good suggestion. Using the environment won't work, as I'll be accessing the Perl interpreter's %ENV, not Apache's. I might dabble with Shared Memory directly some time, but for now, I think I'll just use Mason's caching capabilities to avoid reinventing the wheel...