WithApacheSession

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A popular MasonX module that implements sessions.
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I was able to get this to work with debian etch with Apache 2 and mod_perl 2, after initially encountering the following error:

The 'param_object' parameter ("Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x845bc48)") to Apache::Session::Wrapper->new() does not have the method: 'param'

Stack:
[/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm:88]
[/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm:829]
[(eval 31):8]
[-e:0]

You need to install libapreq2, which is available in etch's repo (package libapache2-mod-apreq2). Don't forget to also install libapache2-request-perl and use 'a2enmod apreq' to load the module into Apache2.


You also need to tell Mason to use mod_perl instead of CGI, and you need to specifically enable cookies by telling WithApacheSession to tell Apache::Session::Wrapper to set them. Here is an example of the necessary Apache configuration:

LoadModule apreq_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_apreq2.so
PerlModule HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler
<LocationMatch "(\.html|\.pl)$">
SetHandler perl-script
PerlHandler HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler
PerlSetVar MasonArgsMethod mod_perl
PerlSetVar MasonRequestClass MasonX::Request::WithApacheSession
PerlSetVar MasonSessionCookieDomain .example.com
PerlSetVar MasonSessionClass Apache::Session::File
PerlSetVar MasonSessionDirectory /tmp/sessions/data
PerlSetVar MasonSessionLockDirectory /tmp/sessions/locks
PerlSetVar MasonSessionUseCookie 1
</LocationMatch>

Note the LoadModule, the "MasonArgsMethod mod_perl" and the "MasonSessionUseCookie 1"

The above example, if implemented programatically in, for example, a handler.pl using MasonX::Request::WithApacheSession, would like something like this:

sub handler {
my ($r) = @_;
my $ah = HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler->new(
comp_root => "/path/to/comp/root",
data_dir => "/path/to/data/dir",
args_method => "mod_perl",
request_class => 'MasonX::Request::WithApacheSession',
session_class => 'Apache::Session::File',
session_cookie_domain => '.example.com',
session_directory => '/tmp/sessions/data',
session_lock_directory => '/tmp/sessions/locks',
session_use_cookie => 1,
);
my $status = $ah->handle_request($r);
return $status;
}

Note the parameters beginning with "session_", which get forwarded to the Apache::Session::Wrapper class, which in turn passes them to (in this case) Apache::Session::File.