Provided by: libapache-asp-perl_2.62-1_all bug

NAME

         Apache::ASP - Active Server Pages for Apache with mod_perl

SYNOPSIS

         SetHandler  perl-script
         PerlModule  Apache::ASP
         PerlHandler Apache::ASP
         PerlSetVar  Global /tmp/asp

DESCRIPTION

       Apache::ASP provides an Active Server Pages port to the Apache Web Server with Perl
       scripting only, and enables developing of dynamic web applications with session management
       and embedded Perl code.  There are also many powerful extensions, including XML taglibs,
       XSLT rendering, and new events not originally part of the ASP API!

       This module works under the Apache Web Server with the mod_perl module enabled. See
       http://www.apache.org and http://perl.apache.org for further information.

       This is a portable solution, similar to ActiveState's PerlScript for NT/IIS ASP.  Work has
       been done and will continue to make ports to and from this implementation as smooth as
       possible.

       For Apache::ASP downloading and installation, please read the INSTALL section.  For
       installation troubleshooting check the FAQ and the SUPPORT sections.

       For database access, ActiveX, scripting languages, and other miscellaneous issues please
       read the FAQ section.

WEBSITE

       The Apache::ASP web site is at http://www.apache-asp.org/ which you can also find in the
       ./site directory of the source distribution.

INSTALL

       The installation process for Apache::ASP is geared towards those with experience with
       Perl, Apache, and unix systems.  For those without this experience, please understand that
       the learning curve can be significant.  But what you have at the end will be a web site
       running on superior open source software.

       If installing onto a Windows operating system, please see the section titled Win32
       Install.

   Need Help
       Often, installing the mod_perl part of the Apache server can be the hardest part.  If this
       is the case for you, check out the FAQ and SUPPORT sections for further help, as well as
       the "Build Apache" notes in this section.

       Please also see the mod_perl guide at http://perl.apache.org/guide which one ought to give
       a good read before undertaking a mod_perl project.

   Download and CPAN Install
       You may download the latest Apache::ASP from your nearest CPAN, and also:

         http://cpan.org/modules/by-module/Apache/
         ftp://ftp.duke.edu/pub/perl/modules/by-module/Apache/

       As a Perl developer, you should make yourself familiar with the CPAN.pm module, and how it
       may be used to install Apache::ASP, and other related modules.  The easiest way to install
       Apache::ASP for the first time from Perl is to fire up the CPAN shell like:

        shell prompt> perl -MCPAN -e shell
         ... configure CPAN ...
         ... then upgrade to latest CPAN ...
        cpan> install CPAN
         ...
        cpan> install Bundle::Apache::ASP

       Installing the Apache::ASP bundle will automatically install all the modules Apache::ASP
       is dependent on as well as Apache::ASP itself.  If you have trouble installing the bundle,
       then try installing the necessary modules one at a time:

        cpan> install MLDBM
        cpan> install MLDBM::Sync
        cpan> install Digest::MD5  *** may not be needed for perl 5.8+ ***
        cpan> install Apache::ASP

       For extra/optional functionality in Apache::ASP 2.31 or greater, like support for
       FormFill, XSLT, or SSI, you can install this bundle via CPAN:

         cpan> install Bundle::Apache::ASP::Extra

   Regular Perl Module Install
       If not doing the CPAN install, download Apache::ASP and install it using the make or nmake
       commands as shown below.  Otherwise, just copy ASP.pm to $PERLLIB/site/Apache

         > perl Makefile.PL
         > make
         > make test
         > make install

         * use nmake for win32

       Please note that you must first have the Apache Web Server & mod_perl installed before
       using this module in a web server environment.  The offline mode for building static html
       at ./cgi/asp may be used with just perl.

   Win32 / Windows Install
       If you are on a Win32 platform, like WinNT or Windows 2000, you can download the win32
       binaries linked to from:

         http://perl.apache.org/distributions.html

       From here, I would recommend the mod_perl binary installation at:

         ftp://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/pub/other/

       and install the latest perl-win32-bin-*.exe file.

       Randy Kobes has graciously provided these, which include compiled versions perl, mod_perl,
       apache, mod_ssl, as well as all the modules required by Apache::ASP and Apache::ASP
       itself.

       You may also try the more recent Perl-5.8-win32-bin.exe distribution which is built on
       Apache 2.  This should be treated as BETA release software until mod_perl 2.x is released
       as stable. Some notes from Randy Kobes about getting this release to work are here:

         After installing this distribution, in Apache2\conf\perl.conf
         (pulled in via Apache2\conf\httpd.conf) there's directives that
         have Apache::ASP handle files placed under the Apache2\asp\
         directory. There should be a sample Apache::ASP script there,
         printenv.html, accessed as http://127.0.0.1/asp/printenv.html
         which, if working, will print out your environment variables.

   WinME / 98 / 95 flock() workaround
       For those on desktop Windows operation systems, Apache::ASP v2.25 and later needs a
       special work around for the lack of flock() support on these systems.  Please add this to
       your Apache httpd.conf to fix this problem after mod_perl is installed:

         <Perl>
          *CORE::GLOBAL::flock = sub { 1 };
         </Perl>
         PerlModule  Apache::ASP

       Please be sure to add this configuration before Apache::ASP is loaded via PerlModule, or a
       PerlRequire statement.

   Linux DSO Distributions
       If you have a linux distribution, like a RedHat Linux server, with an RPM style Apache +
       mod_perl, seriously consider building a static version of the httpd server yourself, not
       DSO.  DSO is marked as experimental for mod_perl, and often does not work, resulting in
       "no request object" error messages, and other oddities, and are terrible to debug, because
       of the strange kinds of things that can go wrong.

   Build Apache and mod_perl
       For a quick build of apache, there is a script in the distribution at
       ./make_httpd/build_httpds.sh that can compile a statically linked Apache with mod_ssl and
       mod_perl.  Just drop the sources into the make_httpd directory, configure the environments
       as appropriate, and execute the script like this:

        make_httpd> ./build_httpds.sh

       You might also find helpful a couple items:

         Stas's mod_perl guide install section
         http://perl.apache.org/guide/install.html

         Apache Toolbox
         http://www.apachetoolbox.com/

       People have been using Apache Toolbox to automate their complex builds with great success.

   Quick Start
       Once you have successfully built the Apache Web Server with mod_perl, copy the ./site/eg/
       directory from the Apache::ASP installation to your Apache document tree and try it out!
       You must put "AllowOverride All" in your httpd.conf <Directory> config section to let the
       .htaccess file in the ./site/eg installation directory do its work.  If you want a starter
       config file for Apache::ASP, just look at the .htaccess file in the ./site/eg/ directory.

       So, you might add this to your Apache httpd.conf file just to get the scripts in ./site/eg
       working, where $DOCUMENT_ROOT represents the DocumentRoot config for your apache server:

         <Directory $DOCUMENT_ROOT/asp/eg >
           Options FollowSymLinks
           AllowOverride All
         </Directory>

       To copy the entire site, including the examples, you might do a raw directory copy as in:

         shell> cp -rpd ./site $DOCUMENT_ROOT/asp

       So you could then reference the Apache::ASP docs at /asp/ at your site, and the examples
       at /asp/eg/ .

       This is not a good production configuration, because it is insecure with the
       FollowSymLinks, and tells Apache to look for .htaccess which is bad for performance but it
       should be handy for getting started with development.

       You will know that Apache::ASP is working normally if you can run the scripts in
       ./site/eg/ without any errors.  Common problems can be found in the FAQ section.

CONFIG

       You may use a <Files ...> directive in your httpd.conf Apache configuration file to make
       Apache::ASP start ticking.  Configure the optional settings if you want, the defaults are
       fine to get started.  The settings are documented below.  Make sure Global is set to where
       your web applications global.asa is if you have one!

        PerlModule  Apache::ASP
        <Files ~ (\.asp)>
          SetHandler  perl-script
          PerlHandler Apache::ASP
          PerlSetVar  Global .
          PerlSetVar  StateDir /tmp/asp
        </Files>

       NOTE: do not use this for the examples in ./site/eg.  To get the examples working, check
       out the Quick Start section of INSTALL

       You may use other Apache configuration tags like <Directory>, <Location>, and
       <VirtualHost>, to separately define ASP configurations, but using the <Files> tag is
       natural for ASP application building because it lends itself naturally to mixed media per
       directory.  For building many separate ASP sites, you might want to use separate .htaccess
       files, or <Files> tags in <VirtualHost> sections, the latter being better for performance.

   Core
       Global
           Global is the nerve center of an Apache::ASP application, in which the global.asa may
           reside defining the web application's event handlers.

           This directory is pushed onto @INC, so you will be able to "use" and "require" files
           in this directory, and perl modules developed for this application may be dropped into
           this directory, for easy use.

           Unless StateDir is configured, this directory must be some writable directory by the
           web server.  $Session and $Application object state files will be stored in this
           directory.  If StateDir is configured, then ignore this paragraph, as it overrides the
           Global directory for this purpose.

           Includes, specified with <!--#include file=somefile.inc--> or $Response->Include()
           syntax, may also be in this directory, please see section on includes for more
           information.

             PerlSetVar Global /tmp

       GlobalPackage
           Perl package namespace that all scripts, includes, & global.asa events are compiled
           into.  By default, GlobalPackage is some obscure name that is uniquely generated from
           the file path of the Global directory, and global.asa file.  The use of explicitly
           naming the GlobalPackage is to allow scripts access to globals and subs defined in a
           perl module that is included with commands like:

             in perl script: use Some::Package;
             in apache conf: PerlModule Some::Package

             PerlSetVar GlobalPackage Some::Package

       UniquePackages
           default 0.  Set to 1 to compile each script into its own perl package, so that
           subroutines defined in one script will not collide with another.

           By default, ASP scripts in a web application are compiled into the *same* perl
           package, so these scripts, their includes, and the global.asa events all share common
           globals & subroutines defined by each other.  The problem for some developers was that
           they would at times define a subroutine of the same name in 2+ scripts, and one
           subroutine definition would redefine the other one because of the namespace collision.

             PerlSetVar UniquePackages 0

       DynamicIncludes
           default 0.  SSI file includes are normally inlined in the calling script, and the text
           gets compiled with the script as a whole.  With this option set to TRUE, file includes
           are compiled as a separate subroutine and called when the script is run.  The
           advantage of having this turned on is that the code compiled from the include can be
           shared between scripts, which keeps the script sizes smaller in memory, and keeps
           compile times down.

             PerlSetVar DynamicIncludes 0

       IncludesDir
           no defaults.  If set, this directory will also be used to look for includes when
           compiling scripts.  By default the directory the script is in, and the Global
           directory are checked for includes.

           This extension was added so that includes could be easily shared between ASP
           applications, whereas placing includes in the Global directory only allows sharing
           between scripts in an application.

             PerlSetVar IncludesDir .

           Also, multiple includes directories may be set by creating a directory list separated
           by a semicolon ';' as in

             PerlSetVar IncludesDir ../shared;/usr/local/asp/shared

           Using IncludesDir in this way creates an includes search path that would look like .,
           Global, ../shared, /usr/local/asp/shared The current directory of the executing script
           is checked first whenever an include is specified, then the Global directory in which
           the global.asa resides, and finally the IncludesDir setting.

       NoCache
           Default 0, if set to 1 will make it so that neither script nor include compilations
           are cached by the server.  Using this configuration will save on memory but will slow
           down script execution.  Please see the TUNING section for other strategies on
           improving site performance.

             PerlSetVar NoCache 0

   State Management
       NoState
           default 0, if true, neither the $Application nor $Session objects will be created.
           Use this for a performance increase.  Please note that this setting takes precedence
           over the AllowSessionState and AllowApplicationState settings.

             PerlSetVar NoState 0

       AllowSessionState
           Set to 0 for no session tracking, 1 by default If Session tracking is turned off,
           performance improves, but the $Session object is inaccessible.

             PerlSetVar AllowSessionState 1

           Note that if you want to dissallow session creation for certain non web browser user
           agents, like search engine spiders, you can use an init handler like:

             PerlInitHandler "sub { $_[0]->dir_config('AllowSessionState', 0) }"

       AllowApplicationState
           Default 1.  If you want to leave $Application undefined, then set this to 0, for a
           performance increase of around 2-3%.  Allowing use of $Application is less expensive
           than $Session, as there is more work for the StateManager associated with $Session
           garbage collection so this parameter should be only used for extreme tuning.

             PerlSetVar AllowApplicationState 1

       StateDir
           default $Global/.state.  State files for ASP application go to this directory.  Where
           the state files go is the most important determinant in what makes a unique ASP
           application.  Different configs pointing to the same StateDir are part of the same ASP
           application.

           The default has not changed since implementing this config directive.  The reason for
           this config option is to allow operating systems with caching file systems like
           Solaris to specify a state directory separately from the Global directory, which
           contains more permanent files.  This way one may point StateDir to /tmp/myaspapp, and
           make one's ASP application scream with speed.

             PerlSetVar StateDir ./.state

       StateManager
           default 10, this number specifies the numbers of times per SessionTimeout that timed
           out sessions are garbage collected.  The bigger the number, the slower your system,
           but the more precise Session_OnEnd's will be run from global.asa, which occur when a
           timed out session is cleaned up, and the better able to withstand Session guessing
           hacking attempts.  The lower the number, the faster a normal system will run.

           The defaults of 20 minutes for SessionTimeout and 10 times for StateManager, has dead
           Sessions being cleaned up every 2 minutes.

             PerlSetVar StateManager 10

       StateDB
           default SDBM_File, this is the internal database used for state objects like
           $Application and $Session.  Because an SDBM_File %hash has a limit on the size of a
           record key+value pair, usually 1024 bytes, you may want to use another tied database
           like DB_File or MLDBM::Sync::SDBM_File.

           With lightweight $Session and $Application use, you can get away with SDBM_File, but
           if you load it up with complex data like
             $Session{key} = { # very large complex object } you might max out the 1024 limit.

           Currently StateDB can be: SDBM_File, MLDBM::Sync::SDBM_File, DB_File, and GDBM_File.
           Please let me know if you would like to add any more to this list.

           As of version .18, you may change this setting in a live production environment, and
           new state databases created will be of this format.  With a prior version if you
           switch to a new StateDB, you would want to delete the old StateDir, as there will
           likely be incompatibilities between the different database formats, including the way
           garbage collection is handled.

             PerlSetVar StateDB SDBM_File

       StateCache
           Deprecated as of 2.23.  There is no equivalent config for the functionality this
           represented from that version on.  The 2.23 release represented a significant rewrite
           of the state management, moving to MLDBM::Sync for its subsystem.

       StateSerializer
           default Data::Dumper, you may set this to Storable for faster serialization and
           storage of data into state objects.  This is particularly useful when storing large
           objects in $Session and $Application, as the Storable.pm module has a faster
           implementation of freezing and thawing data from and to perl structures.  Note that if
           you are storing this much data in your state databases, you may want to use DB_File
           since it does not have the default 1024 byte limit that SDBM_File has on key/value
           lengths.

           This configuration setting may be changed in production as the state database's
           serializer type is stored in the internal state manager which will always use
           Data::Dumper & SDBM_File to store data.

             PerlSetVar StateSerializer Data::Dumper

   Sessions
       CookiePath
           URL root that client responds to by sending the session cookie.  If your asp
           application falls under the server url "/asp", then you would set this variable to
           /asp.  This then allows you to run different applications on the same server, with
           different user sessions for each application.

             PerlSetVar CookiePath /

       CookieDomain
           Default 0, this NON-PORTABLE configuration will allow sessions to span multiple web
           sites that match the same domain root.  This is useful if your web sites are hosted on
           the same machine and can share the same StateDir configuration, and you want to shared
           the $Session data across web sites.  Whatever this is set to, that will add a

             ; domain=$CookieDomain

           part to the Set-Cookie: header set for the session-id cookie.

             PerlSetVar CookieDomain .your.global.domain

       SessionTimeout
           Default 20 minutes, when a user's session has been inactive for this period of time,
           the Session_OnEnd event is run, if defined, for that session, and the contents of that
           session are destroyed.

             PerlSetVar SessionTimeout 20

       SecureSession
           default 0.  Sets the secure tag for the session cookie, so that the cookie will only
           be transmitted by the browser under https transmissions.

             PerlSetVar SecureSession 1

       ParanoidSession
           default 0.  When true, stores the user-agent header of the browser that creates the
           session and validates this against the session cookie presented.  If this check fails,
           the session is killed, with the rationale that there is a hacking attempt underway.

           This config option was implemented to be a smooth upgrade, as you can turn it off and
           on, without disrupting current sessions.  Sessions must be created with this turned on
           for the security to take effect.

           This config option is to help prevent a brute force cookie search from being
           successful. The number of possible cookies is huge, 2^128, thus making such a hacking
           attempt VERY unlikely.  However, on the off chance that such an attack is successful,
           the hacker must also present identical browser headers to authenticate the session, or
           the session will be destroyed.  Thus the User-Agent acts as a backup to the real
           session id.  The IP address of the browser cannot be used, since because of proxies,
           IP addresses may change between requests during a session.

           There are a few browsers that will not present a User-Agent header.  These browsers
           are considered to be browsers of type "Unknown", and this method works the same way
           for them.

           Most people agree that this level of security is unnecessary, thus it is titled
           paranoid :)

             PerlSetVar ParanoidSession 0

       SessionSerialize
           default 0, if true, locks $Session for duration of script, which serializes requests
           to the $Session object.  Only one script at a time may run, per user $Session, with
           sessions allowed.

           Serialized requests to the session object is the Microsoft ASP way, but is dangerous
           in a production environment, where there is risk of long-running or run-away
           processes.  If these things happen, a session may be locked for an indefinite period
           of time.  A user STOP button should safely quit the session however.

             PerlSetVar SessionSerialize 0

       SessionCount
           default 0, if true enables the $Application->SessionCount API which returns how many
           sessions are currently active in the application.  This config was created because
           there is a performance hit associated with this count tracking, so it is disabled by
           default.

             PerlSetVar SessionCount 1

   Cookieless Sessions
       SessionQueryParse
           default 0, if true, will automatically parse the $Session session id into the query
           string of each local URL found in the $Response buffer.  For this setting to work
           therefore, buffering must be enabled.  This parsing will only occur when a session
           cookie has not been sent by a browser, so the first script of a session enabled site,
           and scripts viewed by web browsers that have cookies disabled will trigger this
           behavior.

           Although this runtime parsing method is computationally expensive, this cost should be
           amortized across most users that will not need this URL parsing.  This is a lazy
           programmer's dream.  For something more efficient, look at the SessionQuery setting.
           For more information about this solution, please read the SESSIONS section.

             PerlSetVar SessionQueryParse 0

       SessionQueryParseMatch
           default 0, set to a regexp pattern that matches all URLs that you want to have
           SessionQueryParse parse in session ids.  By default SessionQueryParse only modifies
           local URLs, but if you name your URLs of your site with absolute URLs like
           http://localhost then you will need to use this setting.  So to match http://localhost
           URLs, you might set this pattern to ^http://localhost.  Note that by setting this
           config, you are also setting SessionQueryParse.

             PerlSetVar SessionQueryParseMatch ^https?://localhost

       SessionQuery
           default 0, if set, the session id will be initialized from the $Request->QueryString
           if not first found as a cookie.  You can use this setting coupled with the

             $Server->URL($url, \%params)

           API extension to generate local URLs with session ids in their query strings, for
           efficient cookieless session support.  Note that if a browser has cookies disabled,
           every URL to any page that needs access to $Session will need to be created by this
           method, unless you are using SessionQueryParse which will do this for you
           automatically.

             PerlSetVar SessionQuery 0

       SessionQueryMatch
           default 0, set to a regexp pattern that will match URLs for $Server->URL() to add a
           session id to.  SessionQuery normally allows $Server->URL() to add session ids just to
           local URLs, so if you use absolute URL references like http://localhost/ for your web
           site, then just like with SessionQueryParseMatch, you might set this pattern to
           ^http://localhost

           If this is set, then you don't need to set SessionQuery, as it will be set
           automatically.

             PerlSetVar SessionQueryMatch ^http://localhost

       SessionQueryForce
           default 0, set to 1 if you want to disallow the use of cookies for session id passing,
           and only allow session ids to be passed on the query string via SessionQuery and
           SessionQueryParse settings.

             PerlSetVar SessionQueryForce 1

   Developer Environment
       UseStrict
           default 0, if set to 1, will compile all scripts, global.asa and includes with "use
           strict;" inserted at the head of the file, saving you from the painful process of
           strictifying code that was not strict to begin with.

           Because of how essential "use strict" programming is in a mod_perl environment, this
           default might be set to 1 one day, but this will be up for discussion before that
           decision is made.

           Note too that errors triggered by "use strict" are now captured as part of the normal
           Apache::ASP error handling when this configuration is set, otherwise "use strict"
           errors will not be handled properly, so using UseStrict is better than your own "use
           strict" statements.

           PerlSetVar UseStrict 1

       Debug
           1 for server log debugging, 2 for extra client html output, 3 for microtimes logged.
           Use 1 for production debugging, use 2 or 3 for development.  Turn off if you are not
           debugging.  These settings activate $Response->Debug().

             PerlSetVar Debug 2

           If Debug 3 is set and Time::HiRes is installed, microtimes will show up in the log,
           and also calculate the time between one $Response->Debug() and another, so good for a
           quick benchmark when you glance at the logs.

             PerlSetVar Debug 3

           If you would like to enable system level debugging, set Debug to a negative value.  So
           for system level debugging, but no output to browser:

             PerlSetVar Debug -1

       DebugBufferLength
           Default 100, set this to the number of bytes of the buffered output's tail you want to
           see when an error occurs and Debug 2 or MailErrorsTo is set, and when BufferingOn is
           enabled.

           With buffering the script output will not naturally show up when the script errors, as
           it has been buffered by the $Response object.  It helps to see where in the script
           output an error halted the script, so the last bytes of the buffered output are
           included with the rest of the debugging information.

           For a demo of this functionality, try the ./site/eg/syntax_error.htm script, and turn
           buffering on.

       PodComments
           default 1.  With pod comments turned on, perl pod style comments and documentation are
           parsed out of scripts at compile time.  This make for great documentation and a nice
           debugging tool, and it lets you comment out perl code and html in blocks.
           Specifically text like this:

            =pod
            text or perl code here
            =cut

           will get ripped out of the script before compiling.  The =pod and =cut perl directives
           must be at the beginning of the line, and must be followed by the end of the line.

             PerlSetVar PodComments 1

       CollectionItem
           Enables PerlScript syntax like:

             $Request->Form('var')->Item;
             $Request->Form('var')->Item(1);
             $Request->Form('var')->Count;

           Old PerlScript syntax, enabled with

             use Win32::OLE qw(in valof with OVERLOAD);

           is like native syntax

             $Request->Form('var');

           Only in Apache::ASP, can the above be written as:

             $Request->{Form}{var};

           which you would do if you _really_ needed the speed.

   XML / XSLT
       XMLSubsMatch
           default not defined, set to some regexp pattern that will match all XML and HTML tags
           that you want to have perl subroutines handle.  The is Apache::ASP's custom tag
           technology, and can be used to create powerful extensions to your XML and HTML
           rendering.

           Please see XML/XSLT section for instructions on its use.

             PerlSetVar XMLSubsMatch my:[\w\-]+

       XMLSubsStrict
           default 0, when set XMLSubs will only take arguments that are properly formed XML tag
           arguments like:

            <my:sub arg1="value" arg2="value" />

           By default, XMLSubs accept arbitrary perl code as argument values:

            <my:sub arg1=1+1 arg2=&perl_sub()/>

           which is not always wanted or expected.  Set XMLSubsStrict to 1 if this is the case.

             PerlSetVar XMLSubsStrict 1

       XMLSubsPerlArgs
           default 1, when set attribute values will be interpreted as raw perl code so that
           these all would execute as one would expect:

            <my:xmlsubs arg='1' arg2="2" arg3=$value arg4="1 $value" />

           With the 2.45 release, 0 may be set for this configuration or a more ASP style
           variable interpolation:

            <my:xmlsubs arg='1' arg2="2" args3="<%= $value %>" arg4="1 <%= $value %>" />

           This configuration is being introduced experimentally in version 2.45, as it will
           become the eventual default in the 3.0 release.

             PerlSetVar XMLSubsPerlArgs Off

       XSLT
           default not defined, if set to a file, ASP scripts will be regarded as XML output and
           transformed with the given XSL file with XML::XSLT.  This XSL file will also be
           executed as an ASP script first, and its output will be the XSL data used for the
           transformation.  This XSL file will be executed as a dynamic include, so may be
           located in the current directory, Global, or IncludesDir.

           Please see the XML/XSLT section for an explanation of its use.

             PerlSetVar XSLT template.xsl

       XSLTMatch
           default .*, if XSLT is set by default all ASP scripts will be XSL transformed by the
           specified XSL template.  This regexp setting will tell XSLT which file names to match
           with doing XSL transformations, so that regular HTML ASP scripts and XML ASP scripts
           can be configured with the same configuration block.  Please see ./site/eg/.htaccess
           for an example of its use.

             PerlSetVar XSLTMatch \.xml$

       XSLTParser
           default XML::XSLT, determines which perl module to use for XSLT parsing.  This is a
           new config as of 2.11.  Also supported is XML::Sablotron which does not handle XSLT
           with the exact same output, but is about 10 times faster than XML::XSLT.  XML::LibXSLT
           may also be used as of version 2.29, and seems to be about twice again as fast as
           XML::Sablotron, and a very complete XSLT implementation.

             PerlSetVar XSLTParser XML::XSLT
             PerlSetVar XSLTParser XML::Sablotron
             PerlSetVar XSLTParser XML::LibXSLT

       XSLTCache
           Activate XSLT file based caching through CacheDB, CacheDir, and CacheSize settings.
           This gives cached XSLT performance near AxKit and greater than Cocoon.  XSLT caches
           transformations keyed uniquely by XML & XSLT inputs.

             PerlSetVar XSLTCache 1

       XSLTCacheSize
           as of version 2.11, this config is no longer supported.

   Caching
       The output caching layer is a file dbm based output cache that runs on top of the
       MLDBM::Sync so inherits its performance characteristics.  With CacheDB set to
       MLDBM::Sync::SDBM_File, the cache layer is very fast at caching entries up to 20K in size,
       but for greater cached items, you should set CacheDB to another dbm like DB_File or
       GDBM_File.

       In order for the cache layer to function properly, whether for $Response->Include() output
       caching, see OBJECTS, or XSLT caching, see XML/XSLT, then Apache::ASP must be loaded in
       the parent httpd like so:

         # httpd.conf
         PerlModule Apache::ASP
           -- or --
         <Perl>
           use Apache::ASP;
         </Perl>

       The cache layer automatically expires entries upon server restart, but for this to work, a
       $ServerID must be computed when the Apache::ASP module gets loaded to store in each cached
       item.  Without the above done, each child httpd process will get its own $ServerID, so
       caching will not work at all.

       This said, output caching will not work in raw CGI mode, just running under mod_perl.

       CacheDB
           Like StateDB, sets dbm format for caching.  Since SDBM_File only support key/values
           pairs of around 1K max in length, the default for this is MLDBM::Sync::SDBM_File,
           which is very fast for < 20K output sizes.  For caching larger data than 20K, DB_File
           or GDBM_File are probably better to use.

             PerlSetVar CacheDB MLDBM::Sync::SDBM_File

           For your own benchmarks to test the relative speeds of the various DBMs under
           MLDBM::Sync, which is used by CacheDB, you may run the ./bench/bench_sync.pl script
           from the MLDBM::Sync distribution on your system.

       CacheDir
           By default, the cache directory is at StateDir/cache, but CacheDir can be used to set
           the StateDir value for caching purposes.  One may want the CacheDir separate from
           StateDir for example StateDir might be a centrally network mounted file system, while
           CacheDir might be a local file cache.

             PerlSetVar CacheDir /tmp/asp_demo

           On a system like Solaris where there is a RAM disk mounted on the system like /tmp, I
           could put the CacheDir there.  On a system like Linux where files are cached pretty
           well by default, this is less important.

       CacheSize
           By default, this is 10M of data per cache.  When any cache, like the XSLTCache,
           reaches this limit, the cache will be purged by deleting the cached dbm files
           entirely.  This is better for long term running of dbms than deleting individual
           records, because dbm formats will often degrade in performance with lots of insert &
           deletes.

           Units of M, K, and B are supported for megabytes, kilobytes, and bytes, with the
           default unit being B, so the following configs all mean the same thing;

             PerlSetVar CacheSize 10M
             PerlSetVar CacheSize 10240K
             PerlSetVar CacheSize 10485760B
             PerlSetVar CacheSize 10485760

           There are 2 caches currently, the XSLTCache, and the Response cache, the latter which
           is currently invoked for caching output from includes with special syntax.  See
           $Response->Include() for more info on the Response cache.

   Miscellaneous
       AuthServerVariables
           default 0. If you are using basic auth and would like $Request->ServerVariables set
           like AUTH_TYPE, AUTH_USER, AUTH_NAME, REMOTE_USER, & AUTH_PASSWD, then set this and
           Apache::ASP will initialize these values from Apache->*auth* commands.  Use of these
           environment variables keeps applications cross platform compatible as other servers
           set these too when performing basic 401 auth.

             PerlSetVar AuthServerVariables 0

       BufferingOn
           default 1, if true, buffers output through the response object.  $Response object will
           only send results to client browser if a $Response->Flush() is called, or if the asp
           script ends.  Lots of output will need to be flushed incrementally.

           If false, 0, the output is immediately written to the client, CGI style.  There will
           be a performance hit server side if output is flushed automatically to the client, but
           is probably small.

           I would leave this on, since error handling is poor, if your asp script errors after
           sending only some of the output.

             PerlSetVar BufferingOn 1

       InodeNames
           Default 0. Set to 1 to uses a stat() call on scripts and includes to derive subroutine
           namespace based on device and inode numbers. In case of multiple symbolic links
           pointing to the same script this will result in the script being compiled only once.
           Use only on unix flavours which support the stat() call that know about device and
           inode numbers.

             PerlSetVar InodeNames 1

       RequestParams
           Default 0, if set creates $Request->Params object with combined contents of
           $Request->QueryString and $Request->Form.  This is for developer convenience simlar to
           CGI.pm's param() method.

             PerlSetVar RequestParams 1

       RequestBinaryRead
           Default On, if set to Off will not read POST data into $Request->Form().

           One potential reason for configuring this to Off might be to initialize the
           Apache::ASP object in an Apache handler phase earlier than the normal
           PerlRequestHandler phase, so that it does not interfere with normal reading of POST
           data later in the request.

             PerlSetVar RequestBinaryRead On

       StatINC
           default 0, if true, reloads perl libraries that have changed on disk automatically for
           ASP scripts.  If false, the www server must be restarted for library changes to take
           effect.

           A known bug is that any functions that are exported, e.g. confess Carp qw(confess),
           will not be refreshed by StatINC.  To refresh these, you must restart the www server.

           This setting should be used in development only because it is so slow.  For a
           production version of StatINC, see StatINCMatch.

             PerlSetVar StatINC 1

       StatINCMatch
           default undef, if defined, it will be used as a regular expression to reload modules
           that match as in StatINC.  This is useful because StatINC has a very high performance
           penalty in production, so if you can narrow the modules that are checked for reloading
           each script execution to a handful, you will only suffer a mild performance penalty.

           The StatINCMatch setting should be a regular expression like: Struct|LWP which would
           match on reloading Class/Struct.pm, and all the LWP/.*  libraries.

           If you define StatINCMatch, you do not need to define StatINC.

             PerlSetVar StatINCMatch .*

       StatScripts
           default 1, if set to 0, changed scripts, global.asa, and includes will not be
           reloaded.  Coupled with Apache mod_perl startup and restart handlers executing
           Apache::ASP->Loader() for your application this allows your application to be frozen,
           and only reloaded on the next server restart or stop/start.

           There are a few advantages for not reloading scripts and modules in production.  First
           there is a slight performance improvement by not having to stat() the script, its
           includes and the global.asa every request.

           From an application deployment standpoint, you also gain the ability to deploy your
           application as a snapshot taken when the server starts and restarts.  This provides
           you with the reassurance that during a production server update from development
           sources, you do not have to worry with sources being used for the wrong libraries and
           such, while they are all being copied over.

           Finally, though you really should not do this, you can work on a live production
           application, with a test server reloading changes, but your production server does see
           the changes until you restart or stop/start it.  This saves your public from syntax
           errors while you are just doing a quick bug fix.

             PerlSetVar StatScripts 1

       SoftRedirect
           default 0, if true, a $Response->Redirect() does not end the script.  Normally, when a
           Redirect() is called, the script is ended automatically.  SoftRedirect 1, is a
           standard way of doing redirects, allowing for html output after the redirect is
           specified.

             PerlSetVar SoftRedirect 0

       Filter
           On/Off, default Off.  With filtering enabled, you can take advantage of full server
           side includes (SSI), implemented through Apache::SSI.  SSI is implemented through this
           mechanism by using Apache::Filter.  A sample configuration for full SSI with filtering
           is in the ./site/eg/.htaccess file, with a relevant example script
           ./site/eg/ssi_filter.ssi.

           You may only use this option with modperl v1.16 or greater installed and
           PERL_STACKED_HANDLERS enabled.  Filtering may be used in conjunction with other
           handlers that are also "filter aware".  If in doubt, try building your mod_perl with

             perl Makefile.PL EVERYTHING=1

           With filtering through Apache::SSI, you should expect near a a 20% performance
           decrease.

             PerlSetVar Filter Off

       CgiHeaders
           default 0.  When true, script output that looks like HTTP / CGI headers, will be added
           to the HTTP headers of the request.  So you could add:
             Set-Cookie: test=message

             <html>...
           to the top of your script, and all the headers preceding a newline
           will be added as if with a call to $Response->AddHeader().  This
           functionality is here for compatibility with raw cgi scripts,
           and those used to this kind of coding.

           When set to 0, CgiHeaders style headers will not be parsed from the script response.

             PerlSetVar CgiHeaders 0

       Clean
           default 0, may be set between 1 and 9.  This setting determine how much text/html
           output should be compressed.  A setting of 1 strips mostly white space saving usually
           10% in output size, at a performance cost of less than 5%.  A setting of 9 goes much
           further saving anywhere 25% to 50% typically, but with a performance hit of 50%.

           This config option is implemented via HTML::Clean.  Per script configuration of this
           setting is available via the $Response->{Clean} property, which may also be set
           between 0 and 9.

             PerlSetVar Clean 0

       CompressGzip
           default 0, if true will gzip compress HTML output on the fly if Compress::Zlib is
           installed, and the client browser supports it.  Depending on the HTML being
           compressed, the client may see a 50% to 90% reduction in HTML output.  I have seen 40K
           of HTML squeezed down to just under 6K.  This will come at a 5%-20% hit to CPU usage
           per request compressed.

           Note there are some cases when a browser says it will accept gzip encoding, but then
           not render it correctly.  This behavior has been seen with IE5 when set to use a proxy
           but not using a proxy, and the URL does not end with a .html or .htm.  No work around
           has yet been found for this case so use at your own risk.

             PerlSetVar CompressGzip 1

       FormFill
           default 0, if true will auto fill HTML forms with values from $Request->Form().  This
           functionality is provided by use of HTML::FillInForm.  For more information please see
           "perldoc HTML::FillInForm", and the example ./site/eg/formfill.asp.

           This feature can be enabled on a per form basis at runtime with $Response->{FormFill}
           = 1

             PerlSetVar FormFill 1

       TimeHiRes
           default 0, if set and Time::HiRes is installed, will do sub second timing of the time
           it takes Apache::ASP to process a request.  This will not include the time spent in
           the session manager, nor modperl or Apache, and is only a rough approximation at best.

           If Debug is set also, you will get a comment in your HTML output that indicates the
           time it took to process that script.

           If system debugging is set with Debug -1 or -2, you will also get this time in the
           Apache error log with the other system messages.

   Mail Administration
       Apache::ASP has some powerful administrative email extensions that let you sleep at night,
       knowing full well that if an error occurs at the web site, you will know about it
       immediately.  With these features already enabled, it was also easy to provide the
       $Server->Mail(\%mail) API extension which you can read up about in the OBJECTS section.

       MailHost
           The mail host is the smtp server that the below Mail* config directives will use when
           sending their emails.  By default Net::SMTP uses smtp mail hosts configured in
           Net::Config, which is set up at install time, but this setting can be used to override
           this config.

           The mail hosts specified in the Net::Config file will be used as backup smtp servers
           to the MailHost specified here, should this primary server not be working.

             PerlSetVar MailHost smtp.yourdomain.com.foobar

       MailFrom
           Default NONE, set this to specify the default mail address placed in the From: mail
           header for the $Server->Mail() API extension, as well as MailErrorsTo and MailAlertTo.

             PerlSetVar MailFrom youremail@yourdomain.com.foobar

       MailErrorsTo
           No default, if set, ASP server errors, error code 500, that result while compiling or
           running scripts under Apache::ASP will automatically be emailed to the email address
           set for this config.  This allows an administrator to have a rapid response to user
           generated server errors resulting from bugs in production ASP scripts.  Other errors,
           such as 404 not found will be handled by Apache directly.

           An easy way to see this config in action is to have an ASP script which calls a die(),
           which generates an internal ASP 500 server error.

           The Debug config of value 2 and this setting are mutually exclusive, as Debug 2 is a
           development setting where errors are displayed in the browser, and MailErrorsTo is a
           production setting so that errors are silently logged and sent via email to the web
           admin.

             PerlSetVar MailErrorsTo youremail@yourdomain.com

       MailAlertTo
           The address configured will have an email sent on any ASP server error 500, and the
           message will be short enough to fit on a text based pager.  This config setting would
           be used to give an administrator a heads up that a www server error occurred, as
           opposed to MailErrorsTo would be used for debugging that server error.

           This config does not work when Debug 2 is set, as it is a setting for use in
           production only, where Debug 2 is for development use.

             PerlSetVar MailAlertTo youremail@yourdomain.com

       MailAlertPeriod
           Default 20 minutes, this config specifies the time in minutes over which there may be
           only one alert email generated by MailAlertTo.  The purpose of MailAlertTo is to give
           the admin a heads up that there is an error at the www server.  MailErrorsTo is for to
           aid in speedy debugging of the incident.

             PerlSetVar MailAlertPeriod 20

   File Uploads
       FileUploadMax
           default 0, if set will limit file uploads to this size in bytes.  This is currently
           implemented by setting $CGI::POST_MAX before handling the file upload.  Prior to this,
           a developer would have to hardcode a value for $CGI::POST_MAX to get this to work.

             PerlSetVar 100000

       FileUploadTemp
           default 0, if set will leave a temp file on disk during the request, which may be
           helpful for processing by other programs, but is also a security risk in that other
           users on the operating system could potentially read this file while the script is
           running.

           The path to the temp file will be available at
           $Request->{FileUpload}{$form_field}{TempFile}.  The regular use of file uploads
           remains the same with the <$filehandle> to the upload at
           $Request->{Form}{$form_field}.  Please see the CGI section for more information on
           file uploads, and the $Request section in OBJECTS.

             PerlSetVar FileUploadTemp 0

SYNTAX

   General
       ASP embedding syntax allows one to embed code in html in 2 simple ways.  The first is the
       <% xxx %> tag in which xxx is any valid perl code.  The second is <%= xxx %> where xxx is
       some scalar value that will be inserted into the html directly.  An easy print.

         A simple asp page would look like:

         <!-- sample here -->
         <html>
         <body>
         For loop incrementing font size: <p>
         <% for(1..5) { %>
               <!-- iterated html text -->
               <font size="<%=$_%>" > Size = <%=$_%> </font> <br>
         <% } %>
         </body>
         </html>
         <!-- end sample here -->

       Notice that your perl code blocks can span any html.  The for loop above iterates over the
       html without any special syntax.

   XMLSubs
       XMLSubs allows a developer to define custom handlers for HTML & XML tags, which can extend
       the natural syntax of the ASP environment.  Configured like:

         PerlSetVar XMLSubsMatch site:\w+

       A simple tag like:

         <site:header title="Page Title" />

       can be constructed that could translate into:

         sub site::header {
             my $args = shift;
             print "<html><head><title>$args->{title}</title></head>\n";
             print "<body bgcolor=white>\n";
         }

       Better yet, one can use this functionality to trap and post process embedded HTML & XML
       like:

         <site:page title="Page Title">
           ... some HTML here ...
         </site:page>

       and then:

         sub site::page {
           my($args, $html) = @_;
           &site::header($args);
           $main::Response->Write($html);
           $main::Response->Write("</body></html>");
         }

       Though this could be used to fully render XML documents, it was not built for this
       purpose, but to add powerful tag extensions to HTML development environments.  For full
       XML rendering, you ought to try an XSLT approach, also supported by Apache::ASP.

   Editors
       As Apache::ASP supports a mixing of perl and HTML, any editor which supports development
       of one or the other would work well.  The following editors are known to work well for
       developing Apache::ASP web sites:

        * Emacs, in perl or HTML modes.  For a mmm-mode config
          that mixes HTML & perl modes in a single buffer, check
          out the editors/mmm-asp-perl.el file in distribution.

        * Microsoft Frontpage

        * Vim, special syntax support with editors/aasp.vim file in distribution.

        * UltraEdit32 ( http://www.ultraedit.com/ ) has syntax highlighting,
          good macros and a configurable wordlist (so one can have syntax
          highlighting both for Perl and HTML).

       Please feel free to suggest your favorite development environment for this list.

EVENTS

   Overview
       The ASP platform allows developers to create Web Applications.  In fulfillment of real
       software requirements, ASP allows event-triggered actions to be taken, which are defined
       in a global.asa file.  The global.asa file resides in the Global directory, defined as a
       config option, and may define the following actions:

               Action                  Event
               ------                  ------
               Script_OnStart *        Beginning of Script execution
               Script_OnEnd *          End of Script execution
               Script_OnFlush *        Before $Response being flushed to client.
               Script_OnParse *        Before script compilation
               Application_OnStart     Beginning of Application
               Application_OnEnd       End of Application
               Session_OnStart         Beginning of user Session.
               Session_OnEnd           End of user Session.

         * These are API extensions that are not portable, but were
           added because they are incredibly useful

       These actions must be defined in the $Global/global.asa file as subroutines, for example:

         sub Session_OnStart {
             $Application->{$Session->SessionID()} = started;
         }

       Sessions are easy to understand.  When visiting a page in a web application, each user has
       one unique $Session.  This session expires, after which the user will have a new $Session
       upon revisiting.

       A web application starts when the user visits a page in that application, and has a new
       $Session created.  Right before the first $Session is created, the $Application is
       created.  When the last user $Session expires, that $Application expires also.  For some
       web applications that are always busy, the Application_OnEnd event may never occur.

   Script_OnStart & Script_OnEnd
       The script events are used to run any code for all scripts in an application defined by a
       global.asa.  Often, you would like to run the same code for every script, which you would
       otherwise have to add by hand, or add with a file include, but with these events, just add
       your code to the global.asa, and it will be run.

       There is one caveat.  Code in Script_OnEnd is not guaranteed to be run when
       $Response->End() is called, since the program execution ends immediately at this event.
       To always run critical code, use the API extension:

               $Server->RegisterCleanup()

   Session_OnStart
       Triggered by the beginning of a user's session, Session_OnStart gets run before the user's
       executing script, and if the same session recently timed out, after the session's
       triggered Session_OnEnd.

       The Session_OnStart is particularly useful for caching database data, and avoids having
       the caching handled by clumsy code inserted into each script being executed.

   Session_OnEnd
       Triggered by a user session ending, Session_OnEnd can be useful for cleaning up and
       analyzing user data accumulated during a session.

       Sessions end when the session timeout expires, and the StateManager performs session
       cleanup.  The timing of the Session_OnEnd does not occur immediately after the session
       times out, but when the first script runs after the session expires, and the StateManager
       allows for that session to be cleaned up.

       So on a busy site with default SessionTimeout (20 minutes) and StateManager (10 times)
       settings, the Session_OnEnd for a particular session should be run near 22 minutes past
       the last activity that Session saw.  A site infrequently visited will only have the
       Session_OnEnd run when a subsequent visit occurs, and theoretically the last session of an
       application ever run will never have its Session_OnEnd run.

       Thus I would not put anything mission-critical in the Session_OnEnd, just stuff that would
       be nice to run whenever it gets run.

   Script_OnFlush
       API extension. This event will be called prior to flushing the $Response buffer to the web
       client.  At this time, the $Response->{BinaryRef} buffer reference may be used to modify
       the buffered output at runtime to apply global changes to scripts output without having to
       modify all the scripts.

        sub Script_OnFlush {
          my $ref = $Response->{BinaryRef};
          $$ref =~ s/\s+/ /sg; # to strip extra white space
        }

       Check out the ./site/eg/global.asa for an example of its use.

   Script_OnParse
       This event allows one to set up a source filter on the script text, allowing one to change
       the script on the fly before the compilation stage occurs.  The script text is available
       in the $Server->{ScriptRef} scalar reference, and can be accessed like so:

        sub Script_OnParse {
          my $code = $Server->{ScriptRef}
          $$code .= " ADDED SOMETHING ";
        }

   Application_OnStart
       This event marks the beginning of an ASP application, and is run just before the
       Session_OnStart of the first Session of an application.  This event is useful to load up
       $Application with data that will be used in all user sessions.

   Application_OnEnd
       The end of the application is marked by this event, which is run after the last user
       session has timed out for a given ASP application.

   Server_OnStart ( pseudo-event )
       Some might want something like a Server_OnStart event, where some code gets runs when the
       web server starts.  In mod_perl, this is easy to achieve outside of the scope of an ASP
       application, by putting some initialization code into a <Perl> section in the httpd.conf
       file.  Initializations that you would like to be shared with the child httpds are
       particularly useful, one such being the Apache::ASP->Loader() routine which you can read
       more about in the TUNING section - Precompile Scripts subsection. It is could be called
       like:

         # httpd.conf
         <Perl>
            Apache::ASP->Loader($path, $pattern, %config)
         </Perl>

       So a <Perl> section is your Server_OnStart routine!

   mod_perl handlers
       If one wants to extend one's environment with mod_perl handlers, Apache::ASP does not stop
       this.  Basic use of Apache::ASP in fact only involves the content handler phase of
       mod_perl's PerlHandler, like

         SetHandler perl-script
         PerlModule Apache::ASP
         PerlHandler Apache::ASP

       But mod_perl allows for direct access to many more Apache event stages, for full list try
       "perldoc mod_perl" or buy the mod_perl Eagle book.  Some commonly used ones are:

         PerlInitHandler
         PerlTransHandler
         PerlFixupHandler
         PerlHandler
         PerlLogHandler
         PerlCleanupHandler

       For straight Apache::ASP programming, there are some equivalents, say Script_OnStart event
       instead of Init/Fixup stages, or $Server->RegisterCleanup() for Log/Cleanup stages, but
       you can do things in the mod_perl handlers that you cannot do in Apache::ASP, especially
       if you want to handle all files globally, and not just ASP scripts.

       For many Apache::* modules for use with mod_perl, of which Apache::ASP is just one, check
       out http://perl.apache.org/src/apache-modlist.html

       To gain access to the ASP objects like $Session outside in a non-PerlHandler mod_perl
       handler, you may use this API:

         my $ASP = Apache::ASP->new($r); # $r is Apache->request object

       as in this possible Authen handler:

         <Perl>
           use Apache::ASP;
           sub My::Auth::handler {
             my $r = shift;
             my $ASP = Apache::ASP->new($r)
             my $Session = $ASP->Session;
           }
         </Perl>

       Here are some examples of do-it-yourself mod_perl handler programming...

        === Forbid Bad HSlide User Agent ===

        # httpd.conf
        PerlAccessHandler My::Access
        <Perl>
          sub My::Access::handler {
            my $r = shift;
            if($r->headers_in->{'USER_AGENT'} =~ /HSlide/) {
                403;
            } else {
                200;
            }
          }
        </Perl>

        === Runtime Path Parsing ===

       This example shows how one might take an arbitrary URL path /$path/$file.asp, and turn
       that into a runtime config for your site, so your scripts get executed always in your
       sites DocumentRoot.

        INPUT URL /SomeCategory/
        OUTPUT
         Script: index.asp
         $Server->Config('PATH') eq '/SomeCategory'

        INPUT URL /SomeCategory/index.asp
        OUTPUT
         Script: index.asp
         $Server->Config('PATH') eq '/SomeCategory'

        INPUT URI /index.asp
        OUTPUT
         Script: index.asp
         $Server->Config('PATH') eq ''

        # httpd.conf
        PerlTransHandler My::Init
        use lib qw( $custom_perllib );

        # $custom_perllib/My/Init.pm
        package My::Init;
        use strict;
        use Apache::Constants qw(:common);
        sub handler {
           my $r = shift;

           my $uri = $r->uri || '/';
           unless($uri =~ m|^(.*)(/([^/.]+\.[\w]+)?)$|i) {
               warn("can't parse uri $uri");
               return DECLINED;
           }
           $uri = $2;
           my $PATH = $1 || '';
           $r->dir_config('PATH', $PATH);

           if($uri eq '/') {
               $uri = '/index.asp';
           }

           $r->uri($uri);
           $r->filename($r->document_root.$uri);

           DECLINED;
        }

        1;

OBJECTS

       The beauty of the ASP Object Model is that it takes the burden of CGI and Session
       Management off the developer, and puts them in objects accessible from any ASP script &
       include.  For the perl programmer, treat these objects as globals accessible from anywhere
       in your ASP application.

       The Apache::ASP object model supports the following:

         Object         Function
         ------         --------
         $Session      - user session state
         $Response     - output to browser
         $Request      - input from browser
         $Application  - application state
         $Server       - general methods

       These objects, and their methods are further defined in the following sections.

       If you would like to define your own global objects for use in your scripts and includes,
       you can initialize them in the global.asa Script_OnStart like:

        use vars qw( $Form $Site ); # declare globals
        sub Script_OnStart {
            $Site = My::Site->new;  # init $Site object
            $Form = $Request->Form; # alias form data
            $Server->RegisterCleanup(sub { # garbage collection
                                         $Site->DESTROY;
                                         $Site = $Form = undef;
                                     });
        }

       In this way you can create site wide application objects and simple aliases for common
       functions.

   $Session Object
       The $Session object keeps track of user and web client state, in a persistent manner,
       making it relatively easy to develop web applications.  The $Session state is stored
       across HTTP connections, in database files in the Global or StateDir directories, and will
       persist across web server restarts.

       The user session is referenced by a 128 bit / 32 byte MD5 hex hashed cookie, and can be
       considered secure from session id guessing, or session hijacking.  When a hacker fails to
       guess a session, the system times out for a second, and with 2**128 (3.4e38) keys to
       guess, a hacker will not be guessing an id any time soon.

       If an incoming cookie matches a timed out or non-existent session, a new session is
       created with the incoming id.  If the id matches a currently active session, the session
       is tied to it and returned.  This is also similar to the Microsoft ASP implementation.

       The $Session reference is a hash ref, and can be used as such to store data as in:

           $Session->{count}++;        # increment count by one
           %{$Session} = ();   # clear $Session data

       The $Session object state is implemented through MLDBM, and a user should be aware of the
       limitations of MLDBM.  Basically, you can read complex structures, but not write them,
       directly:

         $data = $Session->{complex}{data};     # Read ok.
         $Session->{complex}{data} = $data;     # Write NOT ok.
         $Session->{complex} = {data => $data}; # Write ok, all at once.

       Please see MLDBM for more information on this topic.  $Session can also be used for the
       following methods and properties:

       $Session->{CodePage}
           Not implemented.  May never be until someone needs it.

       $Session->{LCID}
           Not implemented.  May never be until someone needs it.

       $Session->{SessionID}
           SessionID property, returns the id for the current session, which is exchanged between
           the client and the server as a cookie.

       $Session->{Timeout} [= $minutes]
           Timeout property, if minutes is being assigned, sets this default timeout for the user
           session, else returns the current session timeout.

           If a user session is inactive for the full timeout, the session is destroyed by the
           system.  No one can access the session after it times out, and the system garbage
           collects it eventually.

       $Session->Abandon()
           The abandon method times out the session immediately.  All Session data is cleared in
           the process, just as when any session times out.

       $Session->Lock()
           API extension. If you are about to use $Session for many consecutive reads or writes,
           you can improve performance by explicitly locking $Session, and then unlocking, like:

             $Session->Lock();
             $Session->{count}++;
             $Session->{count}++;
             $Session->{count}++;
             $Session->UnLock();

           This sequence causes $Session to be locked and unlocked only 1 time, instead of the 6
           times that it would be locked otherwise, 2 for each increment with one to read and one
           to write.

           Because of flushing issues with SDBM_File and DB_File databases, each lock actually
           ties fresh to the database, so the performance savings here can be considerable.

           Note that if you have SessionSerialize set, $Session is already locked for each script
           invocation automatically, as if you had called $Session->Lock() in Script_OnStart.
           Thus you do not need to worry about $Session locking for performance.  Please read the
           section on SessionSerialize for more info.

       $Session->UnLock()
           API Extension. Unlocks the $Session explicitly.  If you do not call this, $Session
           will be unlocked automatically at the end of the script.

   $Response Object
       This object manages the output from the ASP Application and the client web browser.  It
       does not store state information like the $Session object but does have a wide array of
       methods to call.

       $Response->{BinaryRef}
           API extension. This is a perl reference to the buffered output of the $Response
           object, and can be used in the Script_OnFlush global.asa event to modify the buffered
           output at runtime to apply global changes to scripts output without having to modify
           all the scripts.  These changes take place before content is flushed to the client web
           browser.

            sub Script_OnFlush {
              my $ref = $Response->{BinaryRef};
              $$ref =~ s/\s+/ /sg; # to strip extra white space
            }

           Check out the ./site/eg/global.asa for an example of its use.

       $Response->{Buffer}
           Default 1, when TRUE sends output from script to client only at the end of processing
           the script.  When 0, response is not buffered, and client is sent output as output is
           generated by the script.

       $Response->{CacheControl}
           Default "private", when set to public allows proxy servers to cache the content.  This
           setting controls the value set in the HTTP header Cache-Control

       $Response->{Charset}
           This member when set appends itself to the value of the Content-Type HTTP header.  If
           $Response->{Charset} = 'ISO-LATIN-1' is set, the corresponding header would look like:

             Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-LATIN-1

       $Response->{Clean} = 0-9;
           API extension. Set the Clean level, default 0, on a per script basis.  Clean of 1-9
           compresses text/html output.  Please see the Clean config option for more information.
           This setting may also be useful even if using compression to obfuscate HTML.

       $Response->{ContentType} = "text/html"
           Sets the MIME type for the current response being sent to the client.  Sent as an HTTP
           header.

       $Response->{Debug} = 1|0
           API extension.  Default set to value of Debug config.  May be used to temporarily
           activate or inactivate $Response->Debug() behavior.  Something like:

            {
              local $Response->{Debug} = 1;
              $Response->Debug($values);
            }

           maybe be used to always log something.  The Debug() method can be better than
           AppendToLog() because it will log data in data structures one level deep, whereas
           AppendToLog prints just raw string/scalar values.

       $Response->{Expires} = $time
           Sends a response header to the client indicating the $time in SECONDS in which the
           document should expire.  A time of 0 means immediate expiration.  The header generated
           is a standard HTTP date like: "Wed, 09 Feb 1994 22:23:32 GMT".

       $Response->{ExpiresAbsolute} = $date
           Sends a response header to the client with $date being an absolute time to expire.
           Formats accepted are all those accepted by HTTP::Date::str2time(), e.g.

            "Wed, 09 Feb 1994 22:23:32 GMT"     -- HTTP format
            "Tuesday, 08-Feb-94 14:15:29 GMT"   -- old rfc850 HTTP format

            "08-Feb-94"       -- old rfc850 HTTP format
            "09 Feb 1994"     -- proposed new HTTP format

            "Feb  3  1994"    -- Unix 'ls -l' format
            "Feb  3 17:03"    -- Unix 'ls -l' format

       $Response->{FormFill} = 0|1
           If true, HTML forms generated by the script output will be auto filled with data from
           $Request->Form.  This feature requires HTML::FillInForm to be installed.  Please see
           the FormFill CONFIG for more information.

           This setting overrides the FormFill config at runtime for the script execution only.

       $Response->{IsClientConnected}
           1 if web client is connected, 0 if not.  This value starts set to 1, and will be
           updated whenever a $Response->Flush() is called.  If BufferingOn is set, by default
           $Response->Flush() will only be called at the end of the HTML output.

           As of version 2.23 this value is updated correctly before global.asa Script_OnStart is
           called, so global script termination may be correctly handled during that event, which
           one might want to do with excessive user STOP/RELOADS when the web server is very
           busy.

           An API extension $Response->IsClientConnected may be called for refreshed connection
           status without calling first a $Response->Flush

       $Response->{PICS}
           If this property has been set, a PICS-Label HTTP header will be sent with its value.
           For those that do not know, PICS is a header that is useful in rating the internet.
           It stands for Platform for Internet Content Selection, and you can find more info
           about it at: http://www.w3.org

       $Response->{Status} = $status
           Sets the status code returned by the server.  Can be used to set messages like 500,
           internal server error

       $Response->AddHeader($name, $value)
           Adds a custom header to a web page.  Headers are sent only before any text from the
           main page is sent, so if you want to set a header after some text on a page, you must
           turn BufferingOn.

       $Response->AppendToLog($message)
           Adds $message to the server log.  Useful for debugging.

       $Response->BinaryWrite($data)
           Writes binary data to the client.  The only difference from $Response->Write() is that
           $Response->Flush() is called internally first, so the data cannot be parsed as an html
           header.  Flushing flushes the header if has not already been written.

           If you have set the $Response->{ContentType} to something other than text/html, cgi
           header parsing (see CGI notes), will be automatically be turned off, so you will not
           necessarily need to use BinaryWrite for writing binary data.

           For an example of BinaryWrite, see the binary_write.htm example in
           ./site/eg/binary_write.htm

           Please note that if you are on Win32, you will need to call binmode on a file handle
           before reading, if its data is binary.

       $Response->Clear()
           Erases buffered ASP output.

       $Response->Cookies($name, [$key,] $value)
           Sets the key or attribute of cookie with name $name to the value $value.  If $key is
           not defined, the Value of the cookie is set.  ASP CookiePath is assumed to be / in
           these examples.

            $Response->Cookies('name', 'value');
             --> Set-Cookie: name=value; path=/

            $Response->Cookies("Test", "data1", "test value");
            $Response->Cookies("Test", "data2", "more test");
            $Response->Cookies(
                   "Test", "Expires",
                   &HTTP::Date::time2str(time+86400)
                   );
            $Response->Cookies("Test", "Secure", 1);
            $Response->Cookies("Test", "Path", "/");
            $Response->Cookies("Test", "Domain", "host.com");
             -->   Set-Cookie:Test=data1=test%20value&data2=more%20test;   \
                           expires=Fri, 23 Apr 1999 07:19:52 GMT;          \
                           path=/; domain=host.com; secure

           The latter use of $key in the cookies not only sets cookie attributes such as Expires,
           but also treats the cookie as a hash of key value pairs which can later be accesses by

            $Request->Cookies('Test', 'data1');
            $Request->Cookies('Test', 'data2');

           Because this is perl, you can (NOT PORTABLE) reference the cookies directly through
           hash notation.  The same 5 commands above could be compressed to:

            $Response->{Cookies}{Test} =
                   {
                           Secure  => 1,
                           Value   =>
                                   {
                                           data1 => 'test value',
                                           data2 => 'more test'
                                   },
                           Expires => 86400, # not portable, see above
                           Domain  => 'host.com',
                           Path    => '/'
                   };

           and the first command would be:

            # you don't need to use hash notation when you are only setting
            # a simple value
            $Response->{Cookies}{'Test Name'} = 'Test Value';

           I prefer the hash notation for cookies, as this looks nice, and is quite perlish.  It
           is here to stay.  The Cookie() routine is very complex and does its best to allow
           access to the underlying hash structure of the data.  This is the best emulation I
           could write trying to match the Collections functionality of cookies in IIS ASP.

           For more information on Cookies, please go to the source at
           http://home.netscape.com/newsref/std/cookie_spec.html

       $Response->Debug(@args)
           API Extension. If the Debug config option is set greater than 0, this routine will
           write @args out to server error log.  refs in @args will be expanded one level deep,
           so data in simple data structures like one-level hash refs and array refs will be
           displayed.  CODE refs like

            $Response->Debug(sub { "some value" });

           will be executed and their output added to the debug output.  This extension allows
           the user to tie directly into the debugging capabilities of this module.

           While developing an app on a production server, it is often useful to have a separate
           error log for the application to catch debugging output separately.  One way of
           implementing this is to use the Apache ErrorLog configuration directive to create a
           separate error log for a virtual host.

           If you want further debugging support, like stack traces in your code, consider doing
           things like:

            $Response->Debug( sub { Carp::longmess('debug trace') };
            $SIG{__WARN__} = \&Carp::cluck; # then warn() will stack trace

           The only way at present to see exactly where in your script an error occurred is to
           set the Debug config directive to 2, and match the error line number to perl script
           generated from your ASP script.

           However, as of version 0.10, the perl script generated from the asp script should
           match almost exactly line by line, except in cases of inlined includes, which add to
           the text of the original script, pod comments which are entirely yanked out, and <% #
           comment %> style comments which have a \n added to them so they still work.

           If you would like to see the HTML preceding an error while developing, consider
           setting the BufferingOn config directive to 0.

       $Response->End()
           Sends result to client, and immediately exits script.  Automatically called at end of
           script, if not already called.

       $Response->ErrorDocument($code, $uri)
           API extension that allows for the modification the Apache ErrorDocument at runtime.
           $uri may be a on site document, off site URL, or string containing the error message.

           This extension is useful if you want to have scripts set error codes with
           $Response->{Status} like 401 for authentication failure, and to then control from the
           script what the error message looks like.

           For more information on the Apache ErrorDocument mechanism, please see ErrorDocument
           in the CORE Apache settings, and the Apache->custom_response() API, for which this
           method is a wrapper.

       $Response->Flush()
           Sends buffered output to client and clears buffer.

       $Response->Include($filename, @args)
           This API extension calls the routine compiled from asp script in $filename with the
           args @args.  This is a direct translation of the SSI tag

             <!--#include file=$filename args=@args-->

           Please see the SSI section for more on SSI in general.

           This API extension was created to allow greater modularization of code by allowing
           includes to be called with runtime arguments.  Files included are compiled once, and
           the anonymous code ref from that compilation is cached, thus including a file in this
           manner is just like calling a perl subroutine.  The @args can be found in @_ in the
           includes like:

             # include.inc
             <% my @args = @_; %>

           As of 2.23, multiple return values can be returned from an include like:

            my @rv = $Response->Include($filename, @args);

       $Response->Include(\%cache_args, @sub_args) *CACHE API*
           As of version 2.23, output from an include may be cached with this API and the CONFIG
           settings CacheDir & CacheDB.  This can be used to execute expensive includes only
           rarely where applicable, drastically increasing performance in some cases.

           This API extension applies to the entire include family:

             my @rv = $Response->Include(\%cache_args, @include_args)
             my $html_ref = $Response->TrapInclude(\%cache_args, @include_args)
             $Server->Execute(\%cache_args, @include_args)

           For this output cache to work, you must load Apache::ASP in the Apache parent httpd
           like so:

             # httpd.conf
             PerlModule Apache::ASP

           The cache arguments are shown here

             $Response->Include({
               File => 'file.inc',
               Cache => 1, # to activate cache layer
               Expires => 3600, # to expire in one hour
               LastModified => time() - 600, # to expire if cached before 10 minutes ago
               Key => $Request->Form, # to cache based on checksum of serialized form data,
               Clear => 1, # always executes include & cache output
             }, @include_args);

             File - include file to execute, can be file name or \$script
               script data passed in as a string reference.

             Cache - activate caching, will run like normal include without this

             Expires - only cache for this long in seconds

             LastModified - if cached before this time(), expire

             Key - The cache item identity.  Can be $data, \$data, \%data, \@data,
               this data is serialized and combined with the filename & @include_args
               to create a MD5 checksum to fetch from the cache with. If you wanted
               to cache the results of a search page from form data POSTed,
               then this key could be

                 { Key => $Request->Form }

             Clear - If set to 1, or boolean true, will always execute the include
               and update the cache entry for it.

           Motivation: If an include takes 1 second to execute because of complex SQL to a
           database, and you can cache the output of this include because it is not realtime
           data, and the cache layer runs at .01 seconds, then you have a 100 fold savings on
           that part of the script.  Site scalability can be dramatically increased in this way
           by intelligently caching bottlenecks in the web application.

           Use Sparingly: If you have a fast include, then it may execute faster than the cache
           layer runs, in which case you may actually slow your site down by using this feature.
           Therefore try to use this sparingly, and only when sure you really need it.
           Apache::ASP scripts generally execute very quickly, so most developers will not need
           to use this feature at all.

       $Response->Include(\$script_text, @args)
           Added in Apache::ASP 2.11, this method allows for executing ASP scripts that are
           generated dynamically by passing in a reference to the script data instead of the file
           name.  This works just like the normal $Response->Include() API, except a string
           reference is passed in instead of a filename.  For example:

             <%
               my $script = "<\% print 'TEST'; %\>";
               $Response->Include(\$script);
             %>

           This include would output TEST.  Note that tokens like <% and %> must be escaped so
           Apache::ASP does not try to compile those code blocks directly when compiling the
           original script.  If the $script data were fetched directly from some external
           resource like a database, then these tokens would not need to be escaped at all as in:

             <%
               my $script = $dbh->selectrow_array(
                  "select script_text from scripts where script_id = ?",
                  undef, $script_id
                  );
               $Response->Include(\$script);
             %>

           This method could also be used to render other types of dynamic scripts, like XML docs
           using XMLSubs for example, though for complex runtime XML rendering, one should use
           something better suited like XSLT.  See the $Server->XSLT API for more on this topic.

       $Response->IsClientConnected()
           API Extension.  1 for web client still connected, 0 if disconnected which might happen
           if the user hits the stop button.  The original API for this
           $Response->{IsClientConnected} is only updated after a $Response->Flush is called, so
           this method may be called for a refreshed status.

           Note $Response->Flush calls $Response->IsClientConnected to update
           $Response->{IsClientConnected} so to use this you are going straight to the source!
           But if you are doing a loop like:

             while(@data) {
               $Response->End if ! $Response->{IsClientConnected};
               my $row = shift @data;
               %> <%= $row %> <%
               $Response->Flush;
             }

           Then its more efficient to use the member instead of the method since
           $Response->Flush() has already updated that value for you.

       $Response->Redirect($url)
           Sends the client a command to go to a different url $url.  Script immediately ends.

       $Response->TrapInclude($file, @args)
           Calls $Response->Include() with same arguments as passed to it, but instead traps the
           include output buffer and returns it as as a perl string reference.  This allows one
           to postprocess the output buffer before sending to the client.

             my $string_ref = $Response->TrapInclude('file.inc');
             $$string_ref =~ s/\s+/ /sg; # squash whitespace like Clean 1
             print $$string_ref;

           The data is returned as a referenece to save on what might be a large string copy.
           You may dereference the data with the $$string_ref notation.

       $Response->Write($data)
           Write output to the HTML page.  <%=$data%> syntax is shorthand for a
           $Response->Write($data).  All final output to the client must at some point go through
           this method.

   $Request Object
       The request object manages the input from the client browser, like posts, query strings,
       cookies, etc.  Normal return results are values if an index is specified, or a collection
       / perl hash ref if no index is specified.  WARNING, the latter property is not supported
       in ActiveState PerlScript, so if you use the hashes returned by such a technique, it will
       not be portable.

       A normal use of this feature would be to iterate through the form variables in the form
       hash...

        $form = $Request->Form();
        for(keys %{$form}) {
               $Response->Write("$_: $form->{$_}<br>\n");
        }

       Please see the ./site/eg/server_variables.htm asp file for this method in action.

       Note that if a form POST or query string contains duplicate values for a key, those values
       will be returned through normal use of the $Request object:

         @values = $Request->Form('key');

       but you can also access the internal storage, which is an array reference like so:

         $array_ref = $Request->{Form}{'key'};
         @values = @{$array_ref};

       Please read the PERLSCRIPT section for more information on how things like
       $Request->QueryString() & $Request->Form() behave as collections.

       $Request->{Method}
           API extension.  Returns the client HTTP request method, as in GET or POST.  Added in
           version 2.31.

       $Request->{TotalBytes}
           The amount of data sent by the client in the body of the request, usually the length
           of the form data.  This is the same value as
           $Request->ServerVariables('CONTENT_LENGTH')

       $Request->BinaryRead([$length])
           Returns a string whose contents are the first $length bytes of the form data, or body,
           sent by the client request.  If $length is not given, will return all of the form
           data.  This data is the raw data sent by the client, without any parsing done on it by
           Apache::ASP.

           Note that BinaryRead will not return any data for file uploads.  Please see the
           $Request->FileUpload() interface for access to this data.  $Request->Form() data will
           also be available as normal.

       $Request->ClientCertificate()
           Not implemented.

       $Request->Cookies($name [,$key])
           Returns the value of the Cookie with name $name.  If a $key is specified, then a
           lookup will be done on the cookie as if it were a query string.  So, a cookie set by:

            Set-Cookie: test=data1=1&data2=2

           would have a value of 2 returned by $Request->Cookies('test','data2').

           If no name is specified, a hash will be returned of cookie names as keys and cookie
           values as values.  If the cookie value is a query string, it will automatically be
           parsed, and the value will be a hash reference to these values.

           When in doubt, try it out.  Remember that unless you set the Expires attribute of a
           cookie with $Response->Cookies('cookie', 'Expires', $xyz), the cookies that you set
           will only last until you close your browser, so you may find your self opening &
           closing your browser a lot when debugging cookies.

           For more information on cookies in ASP, please read $Response->Cookies()

       $Request->FileUpload($form_field, $key)
           API extension.  The FileUpload interface to file upload data is stabilized.  The
           internal representation of the file uploads is a hash of hashes, one hash per file
           upload found in the $Request->Form() collection.  This collection of collections may
           be queried through the normal interface like so:

             $Request->FileUpload('upload_file', 'ContentType');
             $Request->FileUpload('upload_file', 'FileHandle');
             $Request->FileUpload('upload_file', 'BrowserFile');
             $Request->FileUpload('upload_file', 'Mime-Header');
             $Request->FileUpload('upload_file', 'TempFile');

             * note that TempFile must be use with the UploadTempFile
               configuration setting.

           The above represents the old slow collection interface, but like all collections in
           Apache::ASP, you can reference the internal hash representation more easily.

             my $fileup = $Request->{FileUpload}{upload_file};
             $fileup->{ContentType};
             $fileup->{BrowserFile};
             $fileup->{FileHandle};
             $fileup->{Mime-Header};
             $fileup->{TempFile};

       $Request->Form($name)
           Returns the value of the input of name $name used in a form with POST method.  If
           $name is not specified, returns a ref to a hash of all the form data.  One can use
           this hash to create a nice alias to the form data like:

            # in global.asa
            use vars qw( $Form );
            sub Script_OnStart {
              $Form = $Request->Form;
            }
            # then in ASP scripts
            <%= $Form->{var} %>

           File upload data will be loaded into $Request->Form('file_field'), where the value is
           the actual file name of the file uploaded, and the contents of the file can be found
           by reading from the file name as a file handle as in:

            while(read($Request->Form('file_field_name'), $data, 1024)) {};

           For more information, please see the CGI / File Upload section, as file uploads are
           implemented via the CGI.pm module.  An example can be found in the installation
           samples ./site/eg/file_upload.asp

       $Request->Params($name)
           API extension. If RequestParams CONFIG is set, the $Request->Params object is created
           with combined contents of $Request->QueryString and $Request->Form.  This is for
           developer convenience simlar to CGI.pm's param() method.  Just like for
           $Response->Form, one could create a nice alias like:

            # in global.asa
            use vars qw( $Params );
            sub Script_OnStart {
              $Params = $Request->Params;
            }

       $Request->QueryString($name)
           Returns the value of the input of name $name used in a form with GET method, or passed
           by appending a query string to the end of a url as in http://localhost/?data=value.
           If $name is not specified, returns a ref to a hash of all the query string data.

       $Request->ServerVariables($name)
           Returns the value of the server variable / environment variable with name $name.  If
           $name is not specified, returns a ref to a hash of all the server / environment
           variables data.  The following would be a common use of this method:

            $env = $Request->ServerVariables();
            # %{$env} here would be equivalent to the cgi %ENV in perl.

   $Application Object
       Like the $Session object, you may use the $Application object to store data across the
       entire life of the application.  Every page in the ASP application always has access to
       this object.  So if you wanted to keep track of how many visitors there where to the
       application during its lifetime, you might have a line like this:

        $Application->{num_users}++

       The Lock and Unlock methods are used to prevent simultaneous access to the $Application
       object.

       $Application->Lock()
           Locks the Application object for the life of the script, or until UnLock() unlocks it,
           whichever comes first.  When $Application is locked, this guarantees that data being
           read and written to it will not suddenly change on you between the reads and the
           writes.

           This and the $Session object both lock automatically upon every read and every write
           to ensure data integrity.  This lock is useful for concurrent access control purposes.

           Be careful to not be too liberal with this, as you can quickly create application
           bottlenecks with its improper use.

       $Application->UnLock()
           Unlocks the $Application object.  If already unlocked, does nothing.

       $Application->GetSession($sess_id)
           This NON-PORTABLE API extension returns a user $Session given a session id.  This
           allows one to easily write a session manager if session ids are stored in $Application
           during Session_OnStart, with full access to these sessions for administrative
           purposes.

           Be careful not to expose full session ids over the net, as they could be used by a
           hacker to impersonate another user.  So when creating a session manager, for example,
           you could create some other id to reference the SessionID internally, which would
           allow you to control the sessions.  This kind of application would best be served
           under a secure web server.

           The ./site/eg/global_asa_demo.asp script makes use of this routine to display all the
           data in current user sessions.

       $Application->SessionCount()
           This NON-PORTABLE method returns the current number of active sessions in the
           application, and is enabled by the SessionCount configuration setting.  This method is
           not implemented as part of the original ASP object model, but is implemented here
           because it is useful.  In particular, when accessing databases with license
           requirements, one can monitor usage effectively through accessing this value.

   $Server Object
       The server object is that object that handles everything the other objects do not.  The
       best part of the server object for Win32 users is the CreateObject method which allows
       developers to create instances of ActiveX components, like the ADO component.

       $Server->{ScriptTimeout} = $seconds
           Not implemented. May never be.  Please see the Apache Timeout configuration option,
           normally in httpd.conf.

       $Server->Config($setting)
           API extension.  Allows a developer to read the CONFIG settings, like Global,
           GlobalPackage, StateDir, etc.  Currently implemented as a wrapper around

             Apache->dir_config($setting)

           May also be invoked as $Server->Config(), which will return a hash ref of all the
           PerlSetVar settings.

       $Server->CreateObject($program_id)
           Allows use of ActiveX objects on Win32.  This routine returns a reference to an
           Win32::OLE object upon success, and nothing upon failure.  It is through this
           mechanism that a developer can utilize ADO.  The equivalent syntax in VBScript is

            Set object = Server.CreateObject(program_id)

           For further information, try 'perldoc Win32::OLE' from your favorite command line.

       $Server->Execute($file, @args)
           New method from ASP 3.0, this does the same thing as

             $Response->Include($file, @args)

           and internally is just a wrapper for such.  Seems like we had this important
           functionality before the IIS/ASP camp!

       $Server->File()
           Returns the absolute file path to current executing script.  Same as
           Apache->request->filename when running under mod_perl.

           ASP API extension.

       $Server->GetLastError()
           Not implemented, will likely not ever be because this is dependent on how IIS handles
           errors and is not relevant in Apache.

       $Server->HTMLEncode( $string || \$string )
           Returns an HTML escapes version of $string. &, ", >, <, are each escapes with their
           HTML equivalents.  Strings encoded in this nature should be raw text displayed to an
           end user, as HTML tags become escaped with this method.

           As of version 2.23, $Server->HTMLEncode() may take a string reference for an
           optmization when encoding a large buffer as an API extension.  Here is how one might
           use one over the other:

             my $buffer = '&' x 100000;
             $buffer = $Server->HTMLEncode($buffer);
             print $buffer;
               - or -
             my $buffer = '&' x 100000;
             $Server->HTMLEncode(\$buffer);
             print $buffer;

           Using the reference passing method in benchmarks on 100K of data was 5% more
           efficient, but maybe useful for some.  It saves on copying the 100K buffer twice.

       $Server->MapInclude($include)
           API extension.  Given the include $include, as an absolute or relative file name to
           the current executing script, this method returns the file path that the include would
           be found from the include search path.  The include search path is the current script
           directory, Global, and IncludesDir directories.

           If the include is not found in the includes search path, then undef, or bool false, is
           returned. So one may do something like this:

             if($Server->MapInclude('include.inc')) {
               $Response->Include('include.inc');
             }

           This code demonstrates how one might only try to execute an include if it exists,
           which is useful since a script will error if it tries to execute an include that does
           not exist.

       $Server->MapPath($url);
           Given the url $url, absolute, or relative to the current executing script, this method
           returns the equivalent filename that the server would translate the request to,
           regardless or whether the request would be valid.

           Only a $url that is relative to the host is valid.  Urls like "." and "/" are fine
           arguments to MapPath, but http://localhost would not be.

           To see this method call in action, check out the sample ./site/eg/server.htm script.

       $Server->Mail(\%mail, %smtp_args);
           With the Net::SMTP and Net::Config modules installed, which are part of the perl
           libnet package, you may use this API extension to send email.  The \%mail hash
           reference that you pass in must have values for at least the To, From, and Subject
           headers, and the Body of the mail message.

           The return value of this routine is 1 for success, 0 for failure.  If the MailHost
           SMTP server is not available, this will have a return value of 0.

           You could send an email like so:

            $Server->Mail({
                           To => 'somebody@yourdomain.com.foobar',
                           From => 'youremail@yourdomain.com.foobar',
                           Subject => 'Subject of Email',
                           Body =>
                            'Body of message. '.
                            'You might have a lot to say here!',
                           Organization => 'Your Organization',
                           CC => 'youremailcc@yourdomain.com.foobar',
                           BCC => 'youremailbcc@yourdomain.com.foobar',
                           Debug => 0 || 1,
                          });

           Any extra fields specified for the email will be interpreted as headers for the email,
           so to send an HTML email, you could set 'Content-Type' => 'text/html' in the above
           example.

           If you have MailFrom configured, this will be the default for the From header in your
           email.  For more configuration options like the MailHost setting, check out the CONFIG
           section.

           The return value of this method call will be boolean for success of the mail being
           sent.

           If you would like to specially configure the Net::SMTP object used internally, you may
           set %smtp_args and they will be passed on when that object is initialized.  "perldoc
           Net::SMTP" for more into on this topic.

           If you would like to include the output of an ASP page as the body of the mail
           message, you might do something like:

             my $mail_body = $Response->TrapInclude('mail_body.inc');
             $Server->Mail({ %mail, Body => $$mail_body });

       $Server->RegisterCleanup($sub)
            non-portable extension

           Sets a subroutine reference to be executed after the script ends, whether normally or
           abnormally, the latter occurring possibly by the user hitting the STOP button, or the
           web server being killed.  This subroutine must be a code reference created like:

            $Server->RegisterCleanup(sub { $main::Session->{served}++; });
              or
            sub served { $main::Session->{served}++; }
            $Server->RegisterCleanup(\&served);

           The reference to the subroutine passed in will be executed.  Though the subroutine
           will be executed in anonymous context, instead of the script, all objects will still
           be defined in main::*, that you would reference normally in your script.  Output
           written to $main::Response will have no affect at this stage, as the request to the
           www client has already completed.

           Check out the ./site/eg/register_cleanup.asp script for an example of this routine in
           action.

       $Server->Transfer($file, @args)
           New method from ASP 3.0.  Transfers control to another script.  The Response buffer
           will not be cleared automatically, so if you want this to serve as a faster
           $Response->Redirect(), you will need to call $Response->Clear() before calling this
           method.

           This new script will take over current execution and the current script will not
           continue to be executed afterwards.  It differs from Execute() because the original
           script will not pick up where it left off.

           As of Apache::ASP 2.31, this method now accepts optional arguments like
           $Response->Include & $Server->Execute.  $Server->Transfer is now just a wrapper for:

             $Response->Include($file, @args);
             $Response->End;

       $Server->URLEncode($string)
           Returns the URL-escaped version of the string $string. +'s are substituted in for
           spaces and special characters are escaped to the ascii equivalents.  Strings encoded
           in this manner are safe to put in urls... they are especially useful for encoding data
           used in a query string as in:

            $data = $Server->URLEncode("test data");
            $url = "http://localhost?data=$data";

            $url evaluates to http://localhost?data=test+data, and is a
            valid URL for use in anchor <a> tags and redirects, etc.

       $Server->URL($url, \%params)
           Will return a URL with %params serialized into a query string like:

             $url = $Server->URL('test.asp', { test => value });

           which would give you a URL of test.asp?test=value

           Used in conjunction with the SessionQuery* settings, the returned URL will also have
           the session id inserted into the query string, making this a critical part of that
           method of implementing cookieless sessions.  For more information on that topic please
           read on the setting in the CONFIG section, and the SESSIONS section too.

       $Server->XSLT(\$xsl_data, \$xml_data)
            * NON-PORTABLE API EXTENSION *

           This method takes string references for XSL and XML data and returns the XSLT output
           as a string reference like:

             my $xslt_data_ref = $Server->XSLT(\$xsl_data, \$xml_data)
             print $$xslt_data_ref;

           The XSLT parser defaults to XML::XSLT, and is configured with the XSLTParser setting,
           which can also use XML::Sablotron ( support added in 2.11 ), and XML::LibXSLT (
           support added in 2.29 ).  Please see the CONFIG section for more information on the
           XSLT* settings that drive this API.  The XSLT setting itself uses this API internally
           to do its rendering.

           This API was created to allow developers easy XSLT component rendering without having
           to render the entire ASP scripts via XSLT.  This will make an easy plugin architecture
           for those looking to integrate XML into their existing ASP application frameworks.

           At some point, the API will likely take files as arguments, but not as of the 2.11
           release.

SSI

       SSI is great!  One of the main features of server side includes is to include other files
       in the script being requested.  In Apache::ASP, this is implemented in a couple ways, the
       most crucial of which is implemented in the file include.  Formatted as

        <!--#include file=filename.inc-->

       ,the .inc being merely a convention, text from the included file will be inserted directly
       into the script being executed and the script will be compiled as a whole.  Whenever the
       script or any of its includes change, the script will be recompiled.

       Includes go a great length to promote good decomposition and code sharing in ASP scripts,
       but they are still fairly static.  As of version .09, includes may have dynamic runtime
       execution, as subroutines compiled into the global.asa namespace.  The first way to invoke
       includes dynamically is

        <!--#include file=filename.inc args=@args-->

       If @args is specified, Apache::ASP knows to execute the include at runtime instead of
       inlining it directly into the compiled code of the script.  It does this by compiling the
       script at runtime as a subroutine, and caching it for future invocations.  Then the
       compiled subroutine is executed and has @args passed into its as arguments.

       This is still might be too static for some, as @args is still hardcoded into the ASP
       script, so finally, one may execute an include at runtime by utilizing this API extension

          $Response->Include("filename.inc", @args);

       which is a direct translation of the dynamic include above.

       Although inline includes should be a little faster, runtime dynamic includes represent
       great potential savings in httpd memory, as includes are shared between scripts keeping
       the size of each script to a minimum.  This can often be significant saving if much of the
       formatting occurs in an included header of a www page.

       By default, all includes will be inlined unless called with an args parameter.  However,
       if you want all your includes to be compiled as subs and dynamically executed at runtime,
       turn the DynamicIncludes config option on as documented above.

       That is not all!  SSI is full featured.  One of the things missing above is the

        <!--#include virtual=filename.cgi-->

       tag.  This and many other SSI code extensions are available by filtering Apache::ASP
       output through Apache::SSI via the Apache::Filter and the Filter config options.  For more
       information on how to wire Apache::ASP and Apache::SSI together, please see the Filter
       config option documented above.  Also please see Apache::SSI for further information on
       the capabilities it offers.

EXAMPLES

       Use with Apache.  Copy the ./site/eg directory from the ASP installation to your Apache
       document tree and try it out!  You have to put "AllowOverride All" in your <Directory>
       config section to let the .htaccess file in the ./site/eg installation directory do its
       work.

       IMPORTANT (FAQ): Make sure that the web server has write access to that directory.
       Usually a

        chmod -R 0777 eg

       will do the trick :)

SESSIONS

       Cookies are used by default for user $Session support ( see OBJECTS ).  In order to track
       a web user and associate server side data with that client, the web server sets, and the
       web client returns a 32 byte session id identifier cookie.  This implementation is very
       secure and  may be used in secure HTTPS transactions, and made stronger with SecureSession
       and ParanoidSession settings (see CONFIG ).

       However good cookies are for this kind of persistent state management between HTTP
       requests, they have long been under fire for security risks associated with JavaScript
       security exploits and privacy abuse by large data tracking companies.

       Because of these reasons, web users will sometimes turn off their cookies, rendering
       normal ASP session implementations powerless, resulting in a new $Session generated every
       request.  This is not good for ASP style sessions.

   Cookieless Sessions
        *** See WARNING Below ***

       So we now have more ways to track sessions with the SessionQuery* CONFIG settings, that
       allow a web developer to embed the session id in URL query strings when use of cookies is
       denied.  The implementations work such that if a user has cookies turned on, then cookies
       will be used, but for those users with cookies turned off, the session ids will be parsed
       into document URLs.

       The first and easiest method that a web developer may use to implement cookieless sessions
       are with SessionQueryParse* directives which enable Apache::ASP to the parse the session
       id into document URLs on the fly.  Because this is resource inefficient, there is also the
       SessionQuery* directives that may be used with the $Server->URL($url,\%params) method to
       generate custom URLs with the session id in its query string.

       To see an example of these cookieless sessions in action, check out the
       ./site/eg/session_query_parse.asp example.

        *** WARNING ***

       If you do use these methods, then be VERY CAREFUL of linking offsite from a page that was
       accessed with a session id in a query string.  This is because this session id will show
       up in the HTTP_REFERER logs of the linked to site, and a malicious hacker could use this
       information to compromise the security of your site's $Sessions, even if these are run
       under a secure web server.

       In order to shake a session id off an HTTP_REFERER for a link taking a user offsite, you
       must point that link to a redirect page that will redirect a user, like so:

        <%
           # "cross site scripting bug" prevention
           my $sanitized_url =
               $Server->HTMLEncode($Response->QueryString('OffSiteUrl'));
        %>
        <html>
        <head>
        <meta http-equiv=refresh content='0;URL=<%=$sanitized_url%>'>
        </head>
        <body>
               Redirecting you offsite to
               <a href=<%=$sanitized_url%> >here</a>...
        </body>
        </html>

       Because the web browser visits a real page before being redirected with the <meta> tag,
       the HTTP_REFERER will be set to this page.  Just be sure to not link to this page with a
       session id in its query string.

       Unfortunately a simple $Response->Redirect() will not work here, because the web browser
       will keep the HTTP_REFERER of the original web page if only a normal redirect is used.

XML/XSLT

   Custom Tags with XMLSubsMatch
       Before XML, there was the need to make HTML markup smarter.  Apache::ASP gives you the
       ability to have a perl subroutine handle the execution of any predefined tag, taking the
       tag descriptors, and the text contained between, as arguments of the subroutine.  This
       custom tag technology can be used to extend a web developer's abilities to add dynamic
       pieces without having to visibly use <% %> style code entries.

       So, lets say that you have a table that you want to insert for an employee with contact
       info and the like, you could set up a tag like:

        <my:new-employee name="Jane" last="Doe" phone="555-2222">
          Jane Doe has been here since 1998.
        </my:new-employee>

       To render it with a custom tag, you would tell the Apache::ASP parser to render the tag
       with a subroutine:

         PerlSetVar XMLSubsMatch my:new-employee

       Any colons, ':', in the XML custom tag will turn into '::', a perl package separator, so
       the my:employee tag would translate to the my::employee subroutine, or the employee
       subroutine in the my package.  Any dash "-" will also be translated to an underscore "_",
       as dash is not valid in the names of perl subroutines.

       Then you would create the my::employee subroutine in the my perl package or whereever like
       so:

         package my;
         sub new_employee {
           my($attributes, $body) = @_;
           $main::Response->Include('new_employee.inc', $attributes, $body);
         }
         1;

         <!-- # new_employee.inc file somewhere else, maybe in Global directory -->
         <% my($attributes, $body) = @_; %>
         <table>
         <% for('name', 'last', 'phone') { %>
           <tr>
             <td><b><%=ucfirst $_ %></b>:</td>
             <td><%= $attributes->{$_} %></td>
           </tr>
         <% } %>
         <tr><td colspan=2><%= $body %></td></tr>
         </table>
         <!-- # end new_employee.inc file -->

       The $main::Response->Include() would then delegate the rendering of the new-employee to
       the new_employee.inc ASP script include.

       Though XML purists would not like this custom tag technology to be related to XML, the
       reality is that a careful site engineer could render full XML documents with this
       technology, applying all the correct styles that one might otherwise do with XSLT.

       Custom tags defined in this way can be used as XML tags are defined with both a body and
       without as it

         <my:new-employee>...</my:new-employee>

       and just

         <my:new-employee />

       These tags are very powerful in that they can also enclose normal ASP logic, like:

         <my:new-employee>
           <!-- normal ASP logic -->
           <% my $birthday = &HTTP::Date::time2str(time - 25 * 86400 * 365); %>

           <!-- ASP inserts -->
           This employee has been online for <%= int(rand()*600)+1 %>
           seconds, and was born near <%= $birthday %>.
         </my:new-employee>

       For an example of this custom XML tagging in action, please check out the
       ./site/eg/xml_subs.asp script.

   XSLT Tranformations
       XML is good stuff, but what can you use it for? The principle is that by having data and
       style separated in XML and XSL files, you can reformat your data more easily in the
       future, and you can render your data in multiple formats, just as easily as for your web
       site, so you might render your site to a PDA, or a cell phone just as easily as to a
       browser, and all you have to do is set up the right XSL stylesheets to do the
       transformation (XSLT).

       With native XML/XSLT support, Apache::ASP scripts may be the source of XML data that the
       XSL file transforms, and the XSL file itself will be first executed as an ASP script also.
       The XSLT transformation is handled by XML::XSLT or XML::Sablotron and you can see an
       example of it in action at the ./site/eg/xslt.xml XML script.

       To specify a XSL stylesheet, use the setting:

         PerlSetVar XSLT template.xsl

       where template.xsl could be any file.  By default this will XSLT transform all ASP scripts
       so configured, but you can separate xml scripts from the rest with the setting:

         PerlSetVar XSLTMatch xml$

       where all files with the ending xml would undergo a XSLT transformation.

       Note that XSLT depends on the installation of XML::XSLT, which in turn depends on
       XML::DOM, and XML::Parser.  As of version 2.11, XML::Sablotron may also be used by
       setting:

         PerlSetVar XSLTParser XML::Sablotron

       and XML::LibXSLT may be used, as of 2.29, by setting

         PerlSetVar XSLTParser XML::LibXSLT

       If you would like to install XML::Sablotron or XML::LibXSLT, you will first have to
       install the libraries that these perl modules use, which you can get at:

         libxslt - The XSLT C Library for Gnome
         http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT/

         Sablotron - Ginger Alliance
         http://www.gingerall.com

       For more on XML::XSLT, the default XSLT engine that Apache::ASP will use, please see:

         XML::XSLT
         http://xmlxslt.sourceforge.net/

       XML:XSLT was the first supported XSLT engine as has the benefit of being written in pure
       perl so that though while it is slower than the other solutions, it is easier to port.

       If you would like to cache XSLT tranformations, which is highly recommended, just set:

         PerlSetVar XSLTCache 1

       Please see the Cache settings in the CONFIG section for more about how to configure the
       XSLTCache.

   References
       For more information about XSLT, please see the standard at:

         http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt

       For their huge ground breaking XML efforts, these other XML OSS projects need mention:

         Cocoon - XML-based web publishing, in Java
         http://cocoon.apache.org/

         AxKit - XML web publishing with Apache & mod_perl
         http://www.axkit.org/

CGI

       CGI has been the standard way of deploying web applications long before ASP came along.
       In the CGI gateway world, CGI.pm has been a widely used module in building CGI
       applications, and Apache::ASP is compatible with scripts written with CGI.pm.  Also, as of
       version 2.19, Apache::ASP can run in standalone CGI mode for the Apache web server without
       mod_perl being available.  See "Standalone CGI Mode" section below.

       Following are some special notes with respect to compatibility with CGI and CGI.pm.  Use
       of CGI.pm in any of these ways was made possible through a great amount of work, and is
       not guaranteed to be portable with other perl ASP implementations, as other ASP
       implementations will likely be more limited.

       Standalone CGI Mode, without mod_perl
           As of version 2.19, Apache::ASP scripts may be run as standalone CGI scripts without
           mod_perl being loaded into Apache.  Work to date has only been done with mod_cgi
           scripts under Apache on a Unix platform, and it is unlikely to work under other web
           servers or Win32 operating systems without further development.

           To run the ./site/eg scripts as CGI scripts, you copy the ./site directory to some
           location accessible by your web server, in this example its
           /usr/local/apache/htdocs/aspcgi, then in your httpd.conf activate Apache::ASP cgi
           scripts like so:

            Alias /aspcgi/ /usr/local/apache/htdocs/aspcgi/
            <Directory /usr/local/apache/htdocs/aspcgi/eg/ >
              AddType application/x-httpd-cgi .htm
              AddType application/x-httpd-cgi .html
              AddType application/x-httpd-cgi .asp
              AddType application/x-httpd-cgi .xml
              AddType application/x-httpd-cgi .ssi
              AllowOverride None
              Options +ExecCGI +Indexes
            </Directory>

           Then install the asp-perl script from the distribution into /usr/bin, or some other
           directory.  This is so the CGI execution line at the top of those scripts will invoke
           the asp-perl wrapper like so:

            #!/usr/bin/perl /usr/bin/asp-perl

           The asp-perl script is a cgi wrapper that sets up the Apache::ASP environment in lieu
           of the normal mod_perl handler request.  Because there is no Apache->dir_config() data
           available under mod_cgi, the asp-perl script will load a asp.conf file that may define
           a hash %Config of data for populating the dir_config() data.  An example of a complex
           asp.conf file is at ./site/eg/asp.conf

           So, a trivial asp.conf file might look like:

            # asp.conf
            %Config = (
              'Global' => '.',
              'StateDir' => '/tmp/aspstate',
              'NoState' => 0,
              'Debug' => 3,
            );

           The default for NoState is 1 in CGI mode, so one must set NoState to 0 for objects
           like $Session & $Application to be defined.

       CGI.pm
           CGI.pm is a very useful module that aids developers in the building of these
           applications, and Apache::ASP has been made to be compatible with function calls in
           CGI.pm.  Please see cgi.htm in the ./site/eg directory for a sample ASP script written
           almost entirely in CGI.

           As of version 0.09, use of CGI.pm for both input and output is seamless when working
           under Apache::ASP.  Thus if you would like to port existing cgi scripts over to
           Apache::ASP, all you need to do is wrap <% %> around the script to get going.  This
           functionality has been implemented so that developers may have the best of both worlds
           when building their web applications.

           For more information about CGI.pm, please see the web site

             http://stein.cshl.org/WWW/software/CGI/

       Query Object Initialization
           You may create a CGI.pm $query object like so:

                   use CGI;
                   my $query = new CGI;

           As of Apache::ASP version 0.09, form input may be read in by CGI.pm upon
           initialization.  Before, Apache::ASP would consume the form input when reading into
           $Request->Form(), but now form input is cached, and may be used by CGI.pm input
           routines.

       CGI headers
           Not only can you use the CGI.pm $query->header() method to put out headers, but with
           the CgiHeaders config option set to true, you can also print "Header: value\n", and
           add similar lines to the top of your script, like:

            Some-Header: Value
            Some-Other: OtherValue

            <html><body> Script body starts here.

           Once there are no longer any cgi style headers, or the there is a newline, the body of
           the script begins. So if you just had an asp script like:

               print join(":", %{$Request->QueryString});

           You would likely end up with no output, as that line is interpreted as a header
           because of the semicolon.  When doing basic debugging, as long as you start the page
           with <html> you will avoid this problem.

       print()ing CGI
           CGI is notorious for its print() statements, and the functions in CGI.pm usually
           return strings to print().  You can do this under Apache::ASP, since print just
           aliases to $Response->Write().  Note that $| has no affect.

                   print $query->header();
                   print $query->start_form();

       File Upload
           CGI.pm is used for implementing reading the input from file upload.  You may create
           the file upload form however you wish, and then the data may be recovered from the
           file upload by using $Request->Form().  Data from a file upload gets written to a file
           handle, that may in turn be read from.  The original file name that was uploaded is
           the name of the file handle.

                   my $filehandle = $Request->Form('file_upload_field_name');
                   print $filehandle; # will get you the file name
                   my $data;
                   while(read($filehandle, $data, 1024)) {
                           # data from the uploaded file read into $data
                   };

           Please see the docs on CGI.pm (try perldoc CGI) for more information on this topic,
           and ./site/eg/file_upload.asp for an example of its use.  Also, for more details about
           CGI.pm itself, please see the web site:

               http://stein.cshl.org/WWW/software/CGI/

           Occasionally, a newer version of CGI.pm will be released which breaks file upload
           compatibility with Apache::ASP.  If you find this to occur, then you might consider
           downgrading to a version that works.  For example, one can install a working CGI.pm
           v2.78 for a working version, and to get old versions of this module, one can go to
           BACKPAN at:

               http://backpan.cpan.org/modules/by-authors/id/L/LD/LDS/

           There is also $Request->FileUpload() API extension that you can use to get more data
           about a file upload, so that the following properties are available for querying:

             my $file_upload = $Request->{FileUpload}{upload_field};
             $file_upload->{BrowserFile}
             $file_upload->{FileHandle}
             $file_upload->{ContentType}

             # only if FileUploadTemp is set
             $file_upload->{TempFile}

             # whatever mime headers are sent with the file upload
             # just "keys %$file_upload" to find out
             $file_upload->{?Mime-Header?}

           Please see the $Request section in OBJECTS for more information.

PERLSCRIPT

       Much work has been done to bring compatibility with ASP applications written in PerlScript
       under IIS.  Most of that work revolved around bringing a Win32::OLE Collection interface
       to many of the objects in Apache::ASP, which are natively written as perl hashes.

       New as of version 2.05 is new functionality enabled with the CollectionItem setting, to
       giver better support to more recent PerlScript syntax.  This seems helpful when porting
       from an IIS/PerlScript code base.  Please see the CONFIG section for more info.

       The following objects in Apache::ASP respond as Collections:

               $Application
               $Session
               $Request->FileUpload *
               $Request->FileUpload('upload_file') *
               $Request->Form
               $Request->QueryString
               $Request->Cookies
               $Response->Cookies
               $Response->Cookies('some_cookie')

         * FileUpload API Extensions

       And as such may be used with the following syntax, as compared with the Apache::ASP native
       calls.  Please note the native Apache::ASP interface is compatible with the deprecated
       PerlScript interface.

        C = PerlScript Compatibility   N = Native Apache::ASP

        ## Collection->Contents($name)
        [C] $Application->Contents('XYZ')
        [N] $Application->{XYZ}

        ## Collection->SetProperty($property, $name, $value)
        [C] $Application->Contents->SetProperty('Item', 'XYZ', "Fred");
        [N] $Application->{XYZ} = "Fred"

        ## Collection->GetProperty($property, $name)
        [C] $Application->Contents->GetProperty('Item', 'XYZ')
        [N] $Application->{XYZ}

        ## Collection->Item($name)
        [C] print $Request->QueryString->Item('message'), "<br>\n\n";
        [N] print $Request->{QueryString}{'message'}, "<br>\n\n";

        ## Working with Cookies
        [C] $Response->SetProperty('Cookies', 'Testing', 'Extra');
        [C] $Response->SetProperty('Cookies', 'Testing', {'Path' => '/'});
        [C] print $Request->Cookies(Testing) . "<br>\n";
        [N] $Response->{Cookies}{Testing} = {Value => Extra, Path => '/'};
        [N] print $Request->{Cookies}{Testing} . "<br>\n";

       Several incompatibilities exist between PerlScript and Apache::ASP:

        > Collection->{Count} property has not been implemented.
        > VBScript dates may not be used for Expires property of cookies.
        > Win32::OLE::in may not be used.  Use keys() to iterate over.
        > The ->{Item} property does not work, use the ->Item() method.

STYLE GUIDE

       Here are some general style guidelines.  Treat these as tips for best practices on
       Apache::ASP development if you will.

   UseStrict
       One of perl's blessings is also its bane, variables do not need to be declared, and are by
       default globally scoped.  The problem with this in mod_perl is that global variables
       persist from one request to another even if a different web browser is viewing a page.

       To avoid this problem, perl programmers have often been advised to add to the top of their
       perl scripts:

         use strict;

       In Apache::ASP, you can do this better by setting:

         PerlSetVar UseStrict 1

       which will cover both script & global.asa compilation and will catch "use strict" errors
       correctly.  For perl modules, please continue to add "use strict" to the top of them.

       Because its so essential in catching hard to find errors, this configuration will likely
       become the default in some future release.  For now, keep setting it.

   Do not define subroutines in scripts.
       DO NOT add subroutine declarations in scripts.  Apache::ASP is optimized by compiling a
       script into a subroutine for faster future invocation.  Adding a subroutine definition to
       a script then looks like this to the compiler:

         sub page_script_sub {
           ...
           ... some HTML ...
           ...
           sub your_sub {
             ...
           }
           ...
         }

       The biggest problem with subroutines defined in subroutines is the side effect of creating
       closures, which will not behave as usually desired in a mod_perl environment.  To
       understand more about closures, please read up on them & "Nested Subroutines" at:

         http://perl.apache.org/docs/general/perl_reference/perl_reference.html

       Instead of defining subroutines in scripts, you may add them to your sites global.asa, or
       you may create a perl package or module to share with your scripts.  For more on perl
       objects & modules, please see:

         http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.8.0/pod/perlobj.html

   Use global.asa's Script_On* Events
       Chances are that you will find yourself doing the same thing repeatedly in each of your
       web application's scripts.  You can use Script_OnStart and Script_OnEnd to automate these
       routine tasks.  These events are called before and after each script request.

       For example, let's say you have a header & footer you would like to include in the output
       of every page, then you might:

        # global.asa
        sub Script_OnStart {
          $Response->Include('header.inc');
        }
        sub Script_OnEnd {
          $Response->Include('footer.inc');
        }

       Or let's say you want to initialize a global database connection for use in your scripts:

        # global.asa
        use Apache::DBI;   # automatic persistent database connections
        use DBI;

        use vars qw($dbh); # declare global $dbh

        sub Script_OnStart {
          # initialize $dbh
          $dbh = DBI->connect(...);

          # force you to explicitly commit when you want to save data
          $Server->RegisterCleanup(sub { $dbh->rollback; });
        }

        sub Script_OnEnd {
          # not really necessary when using persistent connections, but
          # will free this one object reference at least
          $dbh = undef;
        }

FAQ

       The following are some frequently asked questions about Apache::ASP.

   Installation
       Examples don't work, I see the ASP script in the browser?
           This is most likely that Apache is not configured to execute the Apache::ASP scripts
           properly.  Check the INSTALL QuickStart section for more info on how to quickly set up
           Apache to execute your ASP scripts.

       Apache Expat vs. XML perl parsing causing segfaults, what do I do?
           Make sure to compile apache with expat disabled.  The ./make_httpd/build_httpds.sh in
           the distribution will do this for you, with the --disable-rule=EXPAT in particular:

            cd ../$APACHE
            echo "Building apache =============================="
            ./configure \
               --prefix=/usr/local/apache \
               --activate-module=src/modules/perl/libperl.a \
               --enable-module=ssl \
               --enable-module=proxy \
               --enable-module=so \
               --disable-rule=EXPAT

                              ^^^^^

           keywords: segmentation fault, segfault seg fault

       Why do variables retain their values between requests?
           Unless scoped by my() or local(), perl variables in mod_perl are treated as globals,
           and values set may persist from one request to another. This can be seen in as simple
           a script as this:

             <HTML><BODY>
               $counter++;
               $Response->Write("<BR>Counter: $counter");
             </BODY></HTML>

           The value for $counter++ will remain between requests.  Generally use of globals in
           this way is a BAD IDEA, and you can spare yourself many headaches if do "use strict"
           perl programming which forces you to explicity declare globals like:

             use vars qw($counter);

           You can make all your Apache::ASP scripts strict by default by setting:

             PerlSetVar UseStrict 1

       Apache errors on the PerlHandler or PerlModule directives ?
           You get an error message like this:

            Invalid command 'PerlModule', perhaps mis-spelled or defined by a
            module not included in the server configuration.

           You do not have mod_perl correctly installed for Apache.  The PerlHandler and
           PerlModule directives in Apache *.conf files are extensions enabled by mod_perl and
           will not work if mod_perl is not correctly installed.

           Common user errors are not doing a 'make install' for mod_perl, which installs the
           perl side of mod_perl, and not starting the right httpd after building it.  The latter
           often occurs when you have an old apache server without mod_perl, and you have built a
           new one without copying over to its proper location.

           To get mod_perl, go to http://perl.apache.org

       Error: no request object (Apache=SCALAR(0x???????):)
           Your Apache + mod_perl build is not working properly, and is likely a RedHat Linux RPM
           DSO build.  Make sure you statically build your Apache + mod_perl httpd, recompiled
           fresh from the sources.

       I am getting a tie or MLDBM / state error message, what do I do?
           Make sure the web server or you have write access to the eg directory, or to the
           directory specified as Global in the config you are using.  Default for Global is the
           directory the script is in (e.g. '.'), but should be set to some directory not under
           the www server document root, for security reasons, on a production site.

           Usually a

            chmod -R -0777 eg

           will take care of the write access issue for initial testing purposes.

           Failing write access being the problem, try upgrading your version of Data::Dumper and
           MLDBM, which are the modules used to write the state files.

   Sessions
       How can I use $Session to store complex data structures.
           Very carefully.  Please read the $Session documentation in the OBJECTS section.  You
           can store very complex objects in $Session, but you have to understand the limits, and
           the syntax that must be used to make this happen.

           In particular, stay away from statements that that have more than one level of
           indirection on the left side of an assignment like:

             $Session->{complex}{object} = $data;

       How can I keep search engine spiders from killing the session manager?
           If you want to disallow session creation for certain non web browser user agents, like
           search engine spiders, you can use a mod_perl PerlInitHandler like this to set
           configuration variables at runtime:

            # put the following code into httpd.conf and stop/start apache server
            PerlInitHandler My::InitHandler

            <Perl>

             package My::InitHandler;
             use Apache;

             sub handler {
               my $r = shift; # get the Apache request object

               # if not a Mozilla User Agent, then disable sessions explicitly
               unless($r->headers_in('User-Agent') =~ /^Mozilla/) {
                  $r->dir_config('AllowSessionState', 'Off');
               }

               return 200; # return OK mod_perl status code
             }

             1;

            </Perl>

           This will configure your environment before Apache::ASP executes and sees the
           configuration settings.  You can use the mod_perl API in this way to configure
           Apache::ASP at runtime.

           Note that the Session Manager is very robust on its own, and denial of service attacks
           of the types that spiders and other web bots normally execute are not likely to affect
           the Session Manager significantly.

       How can I use $Session to store a $dbh database handle ?
           You cannot use $Session to store a $dbh handle.  This can be awkward for those coming
           from the IIS/NT world, where you could store just about anything in $Session, but this
           boils down to a difference between threads vs. processes.

           Database handles often have per process file handles open, which cannot be shared
           between requests, so though you have stored the $dbh data in $Session, all the other
           initializations are not relevant in another httpd process.

           All is not lost! Apache::DBI can be used to cache database connections on a per
           process basis, and will work for most cases.

   Development
       VBScript or JScript supported?
           Yes, but not with this Perl module.  For ASP with other scripting languages besides
           Perl, you will need to go with a commercial vendor in the UNIX world.  Sun has such a
           solution.  Of course on Windows NT and Windows 2000, you get VBScript for free with
           IIS.

             Sun ONE Active Server Pages (formerly Sun Chili!Soft ASP)
             http://www.chilisoft.com

       How is database connectivity handled?
           Database connectivity is handled through perl's DBI & DBD interfaces.  In the UNIX
           world, it seems most databases have cross platform support in perl.  You can find the
           book on DBI programming at http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perldbi/

           DBD::ODBC is often your ticket on Win32.  On UNIX, commercial vendors like OpenLink
           Software (http://www.openlinksw.com/) provide the nuts and bolts for ODBC.

           Database connections can be cached per process with Apache::DBI.

       What is the best way to debug an ASP application ?
           There are lots of perl-ish tricks to make your life developing and debugging an ASP
           application easier.  For starters, you will find some helpful hints by reading the
           $Response->Debug() API extension, and the Debug configuration directive.

       How are file uploads handled?
           Please see the CGI section.  File uploads are implemented through CGI.pm which is
           loaded at runtime only for this purpose.  This is the only time that CGI.pm will be
           loaded by Apache::ASP, which implements all other cgi-ish functionality natively.  The
           rationale for not implementing file uploads natively is that the extra 100K in memory
           for CGI.pm shouldn't be a big deal if you are working with bulky file uploads.

       How do I access the ASP Objects in general?
           All the ASP objects can be referenced through the main package with the following
           notation:

            $main::Response->Write("html output");

           This notation can be used from anywhere in perl, including routines registered with
           $Server->RegisterCleanup().

           You use the normal notation in your scripts, includes, and global.asa:

            $Response->Write("html output");

       Can I print() in ASP?
           Yes.  You can print() from anywhere in an ASP script as it aliases to the
           $Response->Write() method.  Using print() is portable with PerlScript when using
           Win32::ASP in that environment.

       Do I have access to ActiveX objects?
           Only under Win32 will developers have access to ActiveX objects through the perl
           Win32::OLE interface.  This will remain true until there are free COM ports to the
           UNIX world.  At this time, there is no ActiveX for the UNIX world.

   Support and Production
       How do I get things I want done?!
           If you find a problem with the module, or would like a feature added, please mail
           support, as listed in the SUPPORT section, and your needs will be promptly and
           seriously considered, then implemented.

       What is the state of Apache::ASP?  Can I publish a web site on it?
           Apache::ASP has been production ready since v.02.  Work being done on the module is on
           a per need basis, with the goal being to eventually have the ASP API completed, with
           full portability to ActiveState PerlScript and MKS PScript.  If you can suggest any
           changes to facilitate these goals, your comments are welcome.

TUNING

       A little tuning can go a long way, and can make the difference between a web site that
       gets by, and a site that screams with speed.  With Apache::ASP, you can easily take a
       poorly tuned site running at 10 hits/second to 50+ hits/second just with the right
       configuration.

       Documented below are some simple things you can do to make the most of your site.

   Online Resources
       For more tips & tricks on tuning Apache and mod_perl, please see the tuning documents at:

         Stas Bekman's mod_perl guide
         http://perl.apache.org/guide/

       Written in late 1999 this article provides an early look at how to tune your Apache::ASP
       web site.  It has since been updated to remain current with Apache::ASP v2.29+

         Apache::ASP Site Tuning
         http://www.chamas.com/asp/articles/perlmonth3_tune.html

   Tuning & Benchmarking
       When performance tuning, it is important to have a tool to measure the impact of your
       tuning change by change.  The program ab, or Apache Bench, provides this functionality
       well, and is freely included in the apache distribution.

       Because performance tuning can be a neverending affair, it is a good idea to establish a
       threshold where performance is "good enough", that once reached, tuning stops.

   $Application & $Session State
       Use NoState 1 setting if you don't need the $Application or $Session objects. State
       objects such as these tie to files on disk and will incur a performance penalty.

       If you need the state objects $Application and $Session, and if running an OS that caches
       files in memory, set your "StateDir" directory to a cached file system.  On WinNT, all
       files may be cached, and you have no control of this.  On Solaris, /tmp is a RAM disk and
       would be a good place to set the "StateDir" config setting to.  When cached file systems
       are used there is little performance penalty for using state files.  Linux tends to do a
       good job caching its file systems, so pick a StateDir for ease of system administration.

       On Win32 systems, where mod_perl requests are serialized, you can freely use
       SessionSerialize to make your $Session requests faster, and you can achieve similar
       performance benefits for $Application if you call $Application->Lock() in your
       global.asa's Script_OnStart.

   Low MaxClients
       Set your MaxClients low, such that if you have that many httpd servers running, which will
       happen on busy site, your system will not start swapping to disk because of excessive RAM
       usage.  Typical settings are less than 100 even with 1 gig RAM!  To handle more client
       connections, look into a dual server, mod_proxy front end.

   High MaxRequestsPerChild
       Set your max requests per child thread or process (in httpd.conf) high, so that ASP
       scripts have a better chance being cached, which happens after they are first compiled.
       You will also avoid the process fork penalty on UNIX systems.  Somewhere between 50 - 500
       is probably pretty good.  You do not want to set this too high though or you will risk
       having your web processes use too much RAM.  One may use Apache::SizeLimit or
       Apache::GTopLimit to optimally tune MaxRequestsPerChild at runtime.

   Precompile Modules
       For those modules that your Apache::ASP application uses, make sure that they are loaded
       in your sites startup.pl file, or loaded with PerlModule in your httpd.conf, so that your
       modules are compiled pre-fork in the parent httpd.

   Precompile Scripts
       Precompile your scripts by using the Apache::ASP->Loader() routine documented below.  This
       will at least save the first user hitting a script from suffering compile time lag.  On
       UNIX, precompiling scripts upon server startup allows this code to be shared with forked
       child www servers, so you reduce overall memory usage, and use less CPU compiling scripts
       for each separate www server process.  These savings could be significant.  On a PII300
       Solaris x86, it takes a couple seconds to compile 28 scripts upon server startup, with an
       average of 50K RAM per compiled script, and this savings is passed on to the ALL child
       httpd servers, so total savings would be 50Kx28x20(MaxClients)=28M!

       Apache::ASP->Loader() can be called to precompile scripts and even entire ASP applications
       at server startup.  Note also that in modperl, you can precompile modules with the
       PerlModule config directive, which is highly recommended.

        Apache::ASP->Loader($path, $pattern, %config)

       This routine takes a file or directory as its first argument.  If a file, that file will
       be compiled.  If a directory, that directory will be recursed, and all files in it whose
       file name matches $pattern will be compiled.  $pattern defaults to .*, which says that all
       scripts in a directory will be compiled by default.

       The %config args, are the config options that you may want set that affect compilation.
       These options include: Debug, Global, GlobalPackage, DynamicIncludes, IncludesDir,
       InodeNames, PodComments, StatINC, StatINCMatch, UseStrict, XMLSubsPerlArgs, XMLSubsMatch,
       and XMLSubsStrict. If your scripts are later run with different config options, your
       scripts may have to be recompiled.

       Here is an example of use in a *.conf file:

        <Perl>
        Apache::ASP->Loader(
               '/usr/local/proj/site', "(asp|htm)\$",
               'Global' => '/proj/perllib',
               'Debug' => -3, # see system output when starting apache

               # OPTIONAL configs if you use them in your apache configuration
               # these settings affect how the scripts are compiled and loaded
               'GlobalPackage' => 'SomePackageName',
               'DynamicIncludes' => 1,
               'StatINC' => 1,
               'StatINCMatch' => 'My',
               'UseStrict' => 1,
               'XMLSubsMatch' => 'my:\w+',
               'XMLSubsStrict' => 0 || 1,
               );
        </Perl>

       This config section tells the server to compile all scripts in c:/proj/site that end in
       asp or htm, and print debugging output so you can see it work.  It also sets the Global
       directory to be /proj/perllib, which needs to be the same as your real config since
       scripts are cached uniquely by their Global directory.  You will probably want to use this
       on a production server, unless you cannot afford the extra startup time.

       To see precompiling in action, set Debug to 1 for the Loader() and for your application in
       general and watch your error_log for messages indicating scripts being cached.

   No .htaccess or StatINC
       Don't use .htaccess files or the StatINC setting in a production system as there are many
       more files touched per request using these features.  I've seen performance slow down by
       half because of using these.  For eliminating the .htaccess file, move settings into
       *.conf Apache files.

       Instead of StatINC, try using the StatINCMatch config, which will check a small subset of
       perl libraries for changes.  This config is fine for a production environment, and if used
       well might only incur a 10-20% performance penalty, depending on the number of modules
       your system loads in all, as each module needs to be checked for changes on a per request
       basis.

   Turn off Debugging
       Turn off system debugging by setting Debug to 0-3.  Having the system debug config option
       on slows things down immensely, but can be useful when troubleshooting your application.
       System level debugging is settings -3 through -1, where user level debugging is 1 to 3.
       User level debugging is much more light weight depending on how many $Reponse->Debug()
       statements you use in your program, and you may want to leave it on.

   Memory Sparing, NoCache
       If you have a lot (1000's+) of scripts, and limited memory, set NoCache to 1, so that
       compiled scripts are not cached in memory.  You lose about 10-15% in speed for small
       scripts, but save at least 10K RAM per cached script.  These numbers are very rough and
       will largely depend on the size of your scripts and includes.

   Resource Limits
       Make sure your web processes do not use too many resources like CPU or RAM with the handy
       Apache::Resource module.  Such a config might look like:

        PerlModule Apache::Resource
        PerlSetEnv PERL_RLIMIT_CPU  1000
        PerlSetEnv PERL_RLIMIT_DATA 60:60

       If ever a web process should begin to take more than 60M ram or use more than 1000 CPU
       seconds, it will be killed by the OS this way.  You only want to use this configuration to
       protect against runaway processes and web program errors, not for terminating a normally
       functioning system, so set these limits HIGH!

SEE ALSO

       perl(1), mod_perl(3), Apache(3), MLDBM(3), HTTP::Date(3), CGI(3), Win32::OLE(3)

NOTES

       Many thanks to those who helped me make this module a reality.  With Apache + ASP + Perl,
       web development could not be better!

       Special thanks go to my father Kevin & wife Lina for their love and support through it
       all, and without whom none of it would have been possible.

       Other honorable mentions include:

        !! Doug MacEachern, for moral support and of course mod_perl
        :) Helmut Zeilinger, Skylos, John Drago, and Warren Young for their help in the community
        :) Randy Kobes, for the win32 binaries, and for always being the epitome of helpfulness
        :) Francesco Pasqualini, for bug fixes with stand alone CGI mode on Win32
        :) Szymon Juraszczyk, for better ContentType handling for settings like Clean.
        :) Oleg Kobyakovskiy, for identifying the double Session_OnEnd cleanup bug.
        :) Peter Galbavy, for reporting numerous bugs and maintaining the OpenBSD port.
        :) Richard Curtis, for reporting and working through interesting module
           loading issues under mod_perl2 & apache2, and pushing on the file upload API.
        :) Rune Henssel, for catching a major bug shortly after 2.47 release,
           and going to great lengths to get me reproducing the bug quickly.
        :) Broc, for keeping things filter aware, which broke in 2.45,
           & much help on the list.
        :) Manabu Higashida, for fixes to work under perl 5.8.0
        :) Slaven Rezic, for suggestions on smoother CPAN installation
        :) Mitsunobu Ozato, for working on a japanese translation of the site & docs.
        :) Eamon Daly for persistence in resolving a MailErrors bug.
        :) Gert, for help on the mailing list, and pushing the limits of use on Win32
           in addition to XSLT.
        :) Maurice Aubrey, for one of the early fixes to the long file name problem.
        :) Tom Lancaster, for pushing the $Server->Mail API and general API discussion.
        :) Ross Thomas, for pushing into areas so far unexplored.
        :) Harald Kreuzer, for bug discovery & subsequent testing in the 2.25 era.
        :) Michael Buschauer for his extreme work with XSLT.
        :) Dariusz Pietrzak for a nice parser optimization.
        :) Ime Smits, for his inode patch facilitating cross site code reuse, and
           some nice performance enhancements adding another 1-2% speed.
        :) Michael Davis, for easier CPAN installation.
        :) Brian Wheeler, for keeping up with the Apache::Filter times,
           and pulling off filtering ASP->AxKit.
        :) Ged Haywood, for his great help on the list & professionally.
        :) Vee McMillen, for OSS patience & understanding.
        :) Craig Samuel, at LRN, for his faith in open source for his LCEC.
        :) Geert Josten, for his wonderful work on XML::XSLT
        :) Gerald Richter, for his Embperl, collaboration and competition!
        :) Stas Bekman, for his beloved guide, and keeping us all worldly.
        :) Matt Sergeant, again, for ever the excellent XML critique.
        :) Remi Fasol + Serge Sozonoff who inspired cookieless sessions.
        :) Matt Arnold, for the excellent graphics !
        :) Adi, who thought to have full admin control over sessions
        :) Dmitry Beransky, for sharable web application includes, ASP on the big.
        :) Russell Weiss again, for finding the internal session garbage collection
           behaving badly with DB_File sensitive i/o flushing requirements.
        :) Tony Merc Mobily, inspiring tweaks to compile scripts 10 times faster
        :) Paul Linder, who is Mr. Clean... not just the code, its faster too !
           Boy was that just the beginning.  Work with him later facilitated better
           session management and XMLSubsMatch custom tag technology.
        :) Russell Weiss, for being every so "strict" about his code.
        :) Bill McKinnon, who understands the finer points of running a web site.
        :) Richard Rossi, for his need for speed & boldly testing dynamic includes.
        :) Greg Stark, for endless enthusiasm, pushing the module to its limits.
        :) Marc Spencer, who brainstormed dynamic includes.
        :) Doug Silver, for finding most of the bugs.
        :) Darren Gibbons, the biggest cookie-monster I have ever known.
        :) Ken Williams, for great teamwork bringing full SSI to the table
        :) Matt Sergeant, for his great tutorial on PerlScript and love of ASP
        :) Jeff Groves, who put a STOP to user stop button woes
        :) Alan Sparks, for knowing when size is more important than speed
        :) Lincoln Stein, for his blessed CGI.pm module
        :) Michael Rothwell, for his love of Session hacking
        :) Francesco Pasqualini, for bringing ASP to CGI
        :) Bryan Murphy, for being a PerlScript wiz
        :) Lupe Christoph, for his immaculate and stubborn testing skills
        :) Ryan Whelan, for boldly testing on Unix in the early infancy of ASP

SUPPORT

   COMMUNITY
       Mailing List Archives
           Try the Apache::ASP mailing list archive first when working through an issue as others
           may have had the same question as you, then try the mod_perl list archives since often
           problems working with Apache::ASP are really mod_perl ones.

           The Apache::ASP mailing list archives are located at:

            http://groups.yahoo.com/group/apache-asp/
            http://www.mail-archive.com/asp%40perl.apache.org/

           The mod_perl mailing list archives are located at:

            http://forum.swarthmore.edu/epigone/modperl
            http://www.egroups.com/group/modperl/

       Mailing List
           Please subscribe to the Apache::ASP mailing list by sending an email to
           asp-subscribe[at]perl.apache.org and send your questions or comments to the list after
           your subscription is confirmed.

           To unsubscribe from the Apache::ASP mailing list, just send an email to
           asp-unsubscribe[at]perl.apache.org

           If you think this is a mod_perl specific issue, you can send your question to
           modperl[at]apache.org

       Donations
           Apache::ASP is freely distributed under the terms of the GPL license ( see the LICENSE
           section ). If you would like to donate time to the project, please get involved on the
           Apache::ASP Mailing List, and submit ideas, bug fixes and patches for the core system,
           and perhaps most importantly to simply support others in learning the ins and outs of
           the software.

   COMMERCIAL
       If you would like commercial support for Apache::ASP, please check out any of the
       following listed companies.  Note that this is not an endorsement, and if you would like
       your company listed here, please email asp-dev [at] chamas.com with your information.

       AlterCom
           We use, host and support mod_perl. We would love to be able to help anyone with their
           mod_perl Apache::ASP needs.  Our mod_perl hosting is $24.95 mo.

             http://altercom.com/home.html

       The Cyberchute Connection
           Our hosting services support Apache:ASP along with Mod_Perl, PHP and MySQL.

             http://www.Cyberchute.com

       GrokThis.net
           Web hosting provider.  Specializing in mod_perl and mod_python hosting,  we allow
           users to edit their own Apache configuration files and run their own Apache servers.

             http://grokthis.net

       OmniTI
           OmniTI supports Apache and mod_perl (including Apache::ASP) and offers competitive
           pricing for both hourly and project-based jobs. OmniTI has extensive experience
           managing and maintaining both large and small projects. Our services range from short-
           term consulting to project-based development, and include ongoing maintenance and
           hosting.

             http://www.omniti.com

       TUX IT AG
           Main business is implementing and maintaining infrastructure for big websites and
           portals, as well as developing web applications for our customers (Apache,
           Apache::ASP, PHP, Perl, MySQL, etc.)

           The prices for our service are about 900 EUR per day which is negotiable (for longer
           projects, etc.).

             http://www.tuxit.de

SITES USING

       What follows is a list of public sites that are using Apache::ASP.  If you use the
       software for your site, and would like to show your support of the software by being
       listed, please send your link to asp-dev [at] chamas.com

       For a list of testimonials of those using Apache::ASP, please see the TESTIMONIALS
       section.

               Zapisy - Testy
               http://www.ch.pwr.wroc.pl/~bruno/testy/

               SalesJobs.com
               http://www.salesjobs.com

               FreeLotto
               http://www.freelotto.com

               Hungarian TOP1000
               http://www.hungariantop1000.com

               Hungarian Registry
               http://www.hunreg.com

               Kepeslap.com
               http://www.kepeslap.com

               yourpostcardsite.com
               http://www.yourpostcardsite.com

               WebTime
               http://webtime-project.net

               Meet-O-Matic
               http://meetomatic.com/about.asp

               Apache Hello World Benchmarks
               http://chamas.com/bench/

               AlterCom, Advanced Web Hosting
               http://altercom.com/

               AmericanGamers.com
               http://www.AmericanGamers.com/

               ESSTECwebservices
               http://www.esstec.be/

               SQLRef
               http://comclub.dyndns.org:8081/sqlref/

               Bouygues Telecom Enterprises
               http://www.b2bouygtel.com

               Alumni.NET
               http://www.alumni.net

               Anime Wallpapers dot com
               http://www.animewallpapers.com/

               Chamas Enterprises Inc.
               http://www.chamas.com

               Cine.gr
               http://www.cine.gr

               Condo-Mart Web Service
               http://www.condo-mart.com

               Discountclick.com
               http://www.discountclick.com/

               HCST
               http://www.hcst.net

               International Telecommunication Union
               http://www.itu.int

               Integra
               http://www.integra.ru/

               Internetowa Gielda Samochodowa
               http://www.gielda.szczecin.pl

               Money FM
               http://www.moneyfm.gr

               Motorsport.com
               http://www.motorsport.com

               MLS of Greater Cincinnati
               http://www.cincymls.com

               NodeWorks Link Checker
               http://www.nodeworks.com

               OnTheWeb Services
               http://www.ontheweb.nu

               Prices for Antiques
               http://www.p4a.com

               redhat.com | support
               http://www.redhat.com/apps/support/

               Samara.RU
               http://portal.samara.ru/

               Spotlight
               http://www.spotlight.com.au

               USCD Electrical & Computer Engineering
               http://ece-local.ucsd.edu

TESTIMONIALS

       Here are testimonials from those using Apache::ASP.  If you use this software and would
       like to show your support please send your testimonial to Apache::ASP mailing list at
       asp[at]perl.apache.org and indicate that we can post it to the web site.

       For a list of sites using Apache::ASP, please see the SITES USING section.

       Red Hat
           We're using Apache::ASP on www.redhat.com. We find Apache::ASP very easy to use, and
           it's quick for new developers to get up to speed with it, given that many people have
           already been exposed to the ASP object model that Apache::ASP is based on.

           The documentation is comprehensive and easy to understand, and the community and
           maintainer have been very helpful whenever we've had questions.

             -- Tom Lancaster, Red Hat

       D. L. Fox
           I had programmed in Perl for some time ... but, since I also knew VB, I had switched
           to VB in IIS-ASP for web stuff because of its ease of use in embedding code with HTML
           ...  When I discovered Apache-ASP, it was like a dream come true.  I would much rather
           code in Perl than any other language.  Thanks for such a fine product!

       HOSTING 321, LLC.
           After discontinuing Windows-based hosting due to the high cost of software, our
           clients are thrilled with Apache::ASP and they swear ASP it's faster than before.
           Installation was a snap on our 25-server web farm with a small shell script and
           everything is running perfectly! The documentation is very comprehensive and everyone
           has been very helpful during this migration.

           Thank you!

            -- Richard Ward, HOSTING 321, LLC.

       Concept Online Ltd.
           I would like to say that your ASP module rocks :-) We have practically stopped
           developing in anything else about half a year ago, and are now using Apache::ASP
           extensively. I just love Perl, and whereever we are not "forced" to use JSP, we chose
           ASP. It is fast, reliable, versatile, documented in a way that is the best for
           professionals - so thank you for writing and maintaining it!

             -- Csongor Fagyal, Concept Online Ltd.

       WebTime
           As we have seen with WebTime, Apache::ASP is not only good  for the development of
           website, but also for the development of webtools. Since I first discoverd it, I made
           it a must-have in my society by taking traditional PHP users to the world of perl
           afficionados.

           Having the possibility to use Apache::ASP with mod_perl or mod_cgi make it
           constraintless to use because of CGI's universality and perl's portability.

             -- Gregoire Lejeune

       David Kulp
           First, I just want to say that I am very very impressed with Apache::ASP.  I just want
           to gush with praise after looking at many other implementations of perl embedded code
           and being very underwhelmed.  This is so damn slick and clean.  Kudos! ...

           ... I'm very pleased how quickly I've been able to mock up the application.  I've been
           writing Perl CGI off and on since 1993(!)  and I can tell you that Apache::ASP is a
           pleasure.  (Last year I tried Zope and just about threw my computer out the window.)

             -- David Kulp

       MFM Commmunication Software, Inc.
           Working in a team environment where you have HTML coders and perl coders, Apache::ASP
           makes it easy for the HTML folks to change the look of the page without knowing perl.
           Using Apache::ASP (instead of another embedded perl solution) allows the HTML jockeys
           to use a variety of HTML tools that understand ASP, which reduces the amount of code
           they break when editing the HTML.  Using Apache::ASP instead of M$ ASP allows us to
           use perl (far superior to VBScript) and Apache (far superior to IIS).

           We've been very pleased with Apache::ASP and its support.

       Planet of Music
           Apache::ASP has been a great tool.  Just a little background.... the whole site had
           been in cgi flat files when I started here.  I was looking for a technology that would
           allow me to write the objects and NEVER invoke CGI.pm... I found it and hopefuly I
           will be able to implement this every site I go to.

           When I got here there was a huge argument about needing a game engine and I belive
           this has been the key... Games are approx. 10 time faster than before. The games don't
           break anylonger. All in all a great tool for advancement.

             -- JC Fant IV

       Cine.gr
           ...we ported our biggest yet ASP site from IIS (well, actually rewrote), Cine.gr and
           it is a killer site.  In some cases, the whole thing got almost 25 (no typo) times
           faster...  None of this would ever be possible without Apache::ASP (I do not ever want
           to write ``print "<HTML>\n";'' again).

RESOURCES

       Here are some important resources listed related to the use of Apache::ASP for publishing
       web applications.  If you have any more to suggest, please email the Apache::ASP list at
       asp[at]perl.apache.org

   Articles
              Apache::ASP Introduction ( #1 in 3 part series )
              http://www.apache-asp.org/articles/perlmonth1_intro.html

              Apache::ASP Site Building ( #2 in 3 part series )
              http://www.apache-asp.org/articles/perlmonth2_build.html

              Apache::ASP Site Tuning ( #3 in 3 part series )
              http://www.apache-asp.org/articles/perlmonth3_tune.html

              Embedded Perl ( part of a series on Perl )
              http://www.wdvl.com/Authoring/Languages/Perl/PerlfortheWeb/index15.html

   Benchmarking
              Apache Hello World Benchmarks
              http://chamas.com/bench/

   Books
              mod_perl "Eagle" Book
              http://www.modperl.com

              mod_perl Developer's Cookbook
              http://www.modperlcookbook.org

              Programming the Perl DBI
              http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perldbi/

   Presentations
              Apache::ASP Tutorial, 2000 Open Source Convention ( PowerPoint )
              http://www.chamas.com/asp/OSS_convention_2000.pps

              Advanced Apache::ASP Tutorial, 2001 Open Source Convention ( Zipped PDF )
              http://www.chamas.com/asp/OSS_convention_2001.zip

              Advanced Apache::ASP Tutorial, 2001 Open Source Convention ( PDF )
              http://www.chamas.com/asp/OSS_convention_2001.pdf

   Reference Cards
               Apache & mod_perl Reference Cards
               http://www.refcards.com/

   Web Sites
               mod_perl Apache web module
               http://perl.apache.org

               mod_perl Guide
               http://perl.apache.org/guide/

               Perl Programming Language
               http://www.perl.com

               Apache Web Server
               http://www.apache.org

TODO

       There is no specific time frame in which these things will be implemented.  Please let me
       know if any of these is of particular interest to you, and I will give it higher priority.

   WILL BE DONE
        + Database storage of $Session & $Application, so web clusters
          may scale better than the current NFS/CIFS StateDir implementation
          allows, maybe via Apache::Session.
        + Sample Apache::ASP applications beyond ./site/eg
        + More caching options like $Server->Cache for user cache
          and $Response->Cache for page caching
        + Caching guide

   MAY BE DONE
        + VBScript, ECMAScript or JavaScript interpreters
        + Dumping state of Apache::ASP during an error, and being
          able to go through it with the perl debugger.

CHANGES

       Apache::ASP has been in development since 1998, and was production ready since its .02
       release.  Releases are always used in a production setting before being made publically
       available.

       In July 2000, the version numbers of releases went from .19 to 1.9 which is more relevant
       to software development outside the perl community.  Where a .10 perl module usually means
       first production ready release, this would be the equivalent of a 1.0 release for other
       kinds of software.

        + = improvement   - = bug fix    (d) = documentations

       $VERSION = 2.62; $DATE="2011/08/16"
            - Fixed 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' for AJAX POSTs post
              Firefox 3.x

            + First sourceforge.net hosted version

            + Incremented version number to actually match SVN branch tag

            + Switched to Big-endian date format in the documentation.
              Less chance of misunderstandings

       $VERSION = 2.61; $DATE="05/24/2008"
            - updated for more recent mod_perl 2 environment to trigger correct loading of modules

            + loads modules in a backwards compatible way for older versions of mod_perl 1.99_07 to 1.99_09

            + license changes from GPL to Perl Artistic License

       $VERSION = 2.59; $DATE="05/23/2005"
            + added "use bytes" to Response object to calculate Content-Length
              correctly for UTF8 data, which should require therefore at least
              perl version 5.6 installed

            + updated to work with latest mod_perl 2.0 module naming convention,
              thanks to Randy Kobes for patch

            + examples now exclude usage of Apache::Filter & Apache::SSI under mod_perl 2.0

       $VERSION = 2.57; $DATE="01/29/2004"
            - $Server->Transfer will update $0 correctly

            - return 0 for mod_perl handler to work with latest mod_perl 2 release
              when we were returning 200 ( HTTP_OK ) before

            - fixed bug in $Server->URL when called like $Server->URL($url)
              without parameters.  Its not clear which perl versions this bug
              affected.

       $VERSION = 2.55; $DATE="08/09/2003"
            - Bug fixes for running on standalone CGI mode on Win32 submitted
              by Francesco Pasqualini

            + Added Apache::ASP::Request::BINMODE for binmode() being
              called on STDIN after STDIN is tied to $Request object

            + New RequestBinaryRead configuration created, may be turned off
              to prevent $Request object from reading POST data

            ++ mod_perl 2 optimizations, there was a large code impact on this,
              as much code was restructured to reduce the differences between
              mod_perl 1 and mod_perl 2, most importantly, Apache::compat is
              no longer used

            + preloaded CGI for file uploads in the mod_perl environment

            - When XSLT config is set, $Response->Redirect() should work now
              Thanks to Marcus Zoller for pointing problem out

            + Added CookieDomain setting, documented, and added test to cover
              it in t/cookies.t . Setting suggested by Uwe Riehm, who nicely
              submitted some code for this.

       $VERSION = 2.53; $DATE="04/10/2003"
            + XMLSubs tags with "-" in them will have "-" replaced with "_" or underscore, so a
              tag like <my:render-table /> will be translated to &my::render_table() ... tags with
              - in them are common in extended XML syntaxes, but perl subs cannot have - in them only.

            + Clean setting now works on output when $Response->{ContentType} begins with text/html;
              like "text/html; charset=iso-8859-2" ... before Clean would only work on output marked
              with ContentType text/html.  Thanks to Szymon Juraszczyk for recommending fix.

            --Fixed a bug which would cause Session_OnEnd to be called twice on sessions in a certain case,
              particularly when an old expired session gets reused by and web browser... this bug was
              a result of a incomplete session cleanup method in this case.  Thanks to Oleg Kobyakovskiy
              for reporting this bug.  Added test in t/session_events.t to cover this problem going forward.

            - Compile errors from Apache::ASP->Loader() were not being reported.  They will
              be reported again now.  Thanks to Thanos Chatziathanassiou for discovering and
              documenting this bug.  Added test in t/load.t to cover this problem going forward.

            + use of chr(hex($1)) to decode URI encoded parameters instead of pack("c",hex($1))
              faster & more correct, thanks to Nikolay Melekhin for pointing out this need.

            (d) Added old perlmonth.com articles to ./site/articles in distribution
              and linked to them from the docs RESOURCES section

            (d) Updated documention for the $Application->SessionCount API

            + Scripts with named subroutines, which is warned against in the style guide,
              will not be cached to help prevent my closure problems that often
              hurt new developers working in mod_perl environments.  The downside
              is that these script will have a performance penalty having to be
              recompiled each invocation, but this will kill many closure caching
              bugs that are hard to detect.

            - $Request->FileUpload('upload_file', 'BrowserFile') would return
              a glob before that would be the file name in scalar form.  However
              this would be interpreted as a reference incorrectly.  The fix
              is to make sure this is always a scalar by stringifying
              this data internally.  Thanks to Richard Curtis for pointing
              out this bug.

       $VERSION = 2.51; $DATE="02/10/2003"
            + added t/session_query_parse.t test to cover use of SessionQueryParse
              and $Server->URL APIs

            - Fixed duplicate "&" bug associated with using $Server->URL
              and SessionQueryParse together

            + Patch to allow $Server->URL() to be called multiple times on the same URL
              as in $Server->URL($Server->URL($url, \%params), \%more_params)

            (d) Added new testimonials & sites & created a separate testimonials page.

            - SessionQueryParse will now add to &amp; to the query strings
              embedded in the HTML, instead of & for proper HTML generation.
              Thanks to Peter Galbavy for pointing out and Thanos Chatziathanassiou
              for suggesting the fix.

            - $Response->{ContentType} set to text/html for developer error reporting,
              in case this was set to something else before the error occured.
              Thanks to Philip Mak for reporting.

            - Couple of minor bug fixes under PerlWarn use, thanks Peter Galbavy
              for reporting.

            + Added automatic load of "use Apache2" for compat with mod_perl2
              request objects when Apache::ASP is loaded via "PerlModule Apache::ASP"
              Thanks to Richard Curtis for reporting bug & subsequent testing.

            - When GlobalPackage config changes, but global.asa has not, global.asa
              will be recompiled anyway to update the GlobalPackage correctly.
              Changing GlobalPackage before would cause errors if global.asa was
              already compiled.

            ++ For ANY PerlSetVar type config, OFF/Off/off will be assumed
               to have value of 0 for that setting.  Before, only a couple settings
               had this semantics, but they all do now for consistency.

            - Fix for InodeNames config on OpenBSD, or any OS that might have
              a device # of 0 for the file being stat()'d, thanks to Peter Galbavy
              for bug report.

            ++ Total XSLT speedups, 5-10% on large XSLT, 10-15% on small XSLT

            + bypass meta data check like expires for XSLT Cache() API use
              because XSLT tranformations don't expire, saves hit to cache dbm
              for meta data

            + use of direct Apache::ASP::State methods like FETCH/STORE
              in Cache() layer so we don't have to go through slower tied interface.
              This will speed up XSLT & and include output caching mostly.

            + minor optimizations for speed & memory usage

       $VERSION = 2.49; $DATE="11/10/2002"
            -- bug introduced in 2.47 cached script compilations for executing
               scripts ( not includes ) of the same name in different directories
               for the same Global/GlobalPackage config for an application.
               Fix was to remove optimization that caused problem, and
               created test case t/same_name.t to cover bug.

       $VERSION = 2.47; $DATE="11/06/2002"
            ++ Runtime speed enhancements for 15-20% improvement including:
              + INTERNAL API ReadFile() now returns scalar ref as memory optimization
              + cache InodeNames config setting in ASP object now for common lookups
              + removed CompileChecksum() INTERNAL API, since it was an unnecesary
                method decomposition along a common code path
              + removed IsChanged() INTERNAL API since compiling of scripts
                is now handled by CompileInclude() which does this functionality already
              + removed unnecessary decomp of IncludesChanged() INTERNAL API, which was along
                critical code path
              + do not call INTERNAL SearchDirs() API when compiling base script
                since we have already validated its path earlier
              + Use stat(_) type shortcut for stat() & -X calls where possible
              + Moved @INC initilization up to handler() & consolidated with $INCDir lib
              + removed useless Apache::ASP::Collection::DESTROY
              + removed useless Apache::ASP::Server::DESTROY
              + removed useless Apache::ASP::GlobalASA::DESTROY
              + removed useless Apache::ASP::Response::DESTROY

            - Default path for $Response->{Cookies} was from CookiePath
              config, but this was incorrect as CookiePath config is only
              for $Session cookie, so now path for $Response->{Cookies}
              defaults to /

            - Fixed bug where global.asa events would get undefined with
              StatINC and GlobalPackage set when the GlobalPackage library
              changed & get reloaded.

            (d) Documented long time config NoCache.

            -- Fixed use with Apache::Filter, capable as both source
               and destination filter.  Added ./site/eg/filter.filter example
               to demonstrate these abilities.

            + Use $r->err_headers_out->add Apache::Table API for cookies
              now instead of $r->cgi_header_out.  Added t/cookies.t test to
              cover new code path as well as general $Response->Cookies API.
              Also make cookies headers sorted by cookie and dictionary key
              while building headers for repeatable behavior, this latter was
              to facilitate testing.

            - fixed $Server->Mail error_log output when failing to connect
              to SMTP server.

            + added tests to cover UniquePackages & NoCache configs since this
              config logic was updated

            + made deprecated warnings for use of certain $Response->Member
              calls more loudly write to error_log, so I can remove the AUTOLOAD
              for Response one day

            - Probably fixed behavior in CgiHeaders, at least under perl 5.8.0, and
              added t/cgi_headers.t to cover this config.

            + removed $Apache::ASP::CompressGzip setting ability, used to possibly
              set CompressGzip in the module before, not documented anyway

            + removed $Apache::ASP::Filter setting ability to set Filter globally,
              not documented anyway

            + removed old work around for setting ServerStarting to 0
              at runtime, which was bad for Apache::DBI on win32 a long
              time ago:

               $Apache::ServerStarting and $Apache::ServerStarting = 0;

              If this code is still needed in Apache::ASP->handler() let
              me know.

            + check to make sure data in internal database is a HASH ref
              before using it for session garbage collection.  This is to
              help prevent against internal database corruption in a
              network share that does not support flock() file locking.

            + For new XMLSubs ASP type <%= %> argument interpolation
              activated with XMLSubsPerlArgs 0, data references can now
              be passed in addition to SCALAR/string references, so one
              can pass an object reference like so:

                <my:tag value="<%= $Object %>" />

              This will only work as long as the variable interpolation <%= %>
              are flushed against the containing " " or ' ', or else the object
              reference will be stringified when it is concatenated with
              the rest of the data.

              Testing for this feature was added to ./t/xmlsubs_aspargs.t

              This feature is still experimental, and its interface may change.
              However it is slated for the 3.0 release as default method,
              so feedback is appreciated.

            + For new XMLSubs ASP type <%= %> argument interpolation
              activated with XMLSubsPerlArgs 0, <% %> will no longer work,
              just <%= %>, as in

                <my:tag value="some value <%= $value %> more data" />

              This feature is still experimental, and its interface may change.
              However it is slated for the 3.0 release as default method,
              so feedback is appreciated.

       $VERSION = 2.45; $DATE="10/13/2002"
            ++New XMLSubsPerlArgs config, default 1, indicates how
             XMLSubs arguments have always been parsed.  If set to 0,
             will enable new XMLSubs args that are more ASP like with
             <%= %> for dynamic interpolation, such as:

               <my:xmlsub arg="<%= $data %>" arg2="text <%= $data2 %>" />

             Settings XMLSubsPerlArgs to 0 is experimental for now, but
             will become the default by Apache::ASP version 3.0

            ++Optimization for static HTML/XML files that are served up
             via Apache::ASP so that they are not compiled into perl subroutines
             first.  This makes especially native XSLT both faster & take
             less memory to serve, before XSL & XML files being transformed
             by XSLT would both be compiled as normal ASP script first, so
             now this will happen if they really are ASP scripts with embedded
             <% %> code blocks & XMLSubs being executed.

            +Consolidate some config data for Apache::ASP->Loader to use
             globals in @Apache::ASP::CompileChecksumKeys to know which
             config data is important for precompiling ASP scripts.

            +Further streamlined code compilation.  Now both base
             scripts and includes use the internal CompileInclude() API
             to generate code.

            -Fixed runtime HTML error output when Debug is set to -2/2,
             so that script correctly again gets rendered in final perl form.
             Added compile time error output to ./site/eg/syntax_error.htm
             when a special link is clicked for a quick visual test.

            -Cleaned up some bad coding practices in ./site/eg/global.asa
             associated changes in other example files.  Comment example
             global.asa some for the first time reader

            -DemoASP.pm examples module needed "use strict" fix, thanks
             to Allan Vest for bug report

            --$rv = $Response->Include({ File => ..., Cache => 1});
             now works to get the first returned value fetched from
             the cache.  Before, because a list was always returned,
             $rv would have been equal to the number of items returned,
             even if the return value list has just one element.

            (d) added site/robots.txt file with just a comment for
                search engine indexing

            -fixed ./site/eg/binary_write.htm to not use
             $Response->{ContentLength} because it does not exist.
             Fixed it to use $Response->AddHeader now instead

       $VERSION = 2.41; $DATE="09/29/2002"
            -Removed CVS Revision tag from Apache::ASP::Date, which
             was causing bad revision numbers in CPAN after CVS integration
             of Apache::ASP

            +removed cgi/asp link to ../asp-perl from distribution.  This
             link was for the deprecated asp script which is now asp-perl

       $VERSION = 2.39; $DATE="09/10/2002"
            -Turn off $^W explicitly before reloading global.asa.  Reloading
             global.asa when $^W is set will trigger subroutine redefinition
             warnings.  Reloading global.asa should occur without any problems
             under normal usage of the system, thus this work around.

             This fix is important to UseStrict functionality because warnings
             automatically become thrown as die() errors with UseStrict enabled,
             so we have to disable normal soft warnings here.

            -$Response->Include() runtime errors now throw a die() that
             can be trapped.  This was old functionality that has been restored.
             Other compile time errors should still trigger a hard error
             like script compilation, global.asa, or $Response->Include()
             without an eval()

            +Some better error handling with Debug 3 or -3 set, cleaned
             up developer errors messages somewhat.

       $VERSION = 2.37; $DATE="07/03/2002"
            -Fixed the testing directory structures for t/long_names.t
             so that tar software like Archive::Tar & Solaris tar that
             have problems with long file names will still be able
             to untar distribution successfully.  Now t/long_names.t
             generates its testing directory structures at runtime.

            -Fixes for "make test" to work under perl 5.8.0 RC2,
             courtesy of Manabu Higashida

            +SessionQueryForce setting created for disabling use of cookies
             for $Session session-id passing, rather requiring use of SessionQuery*
             functionality for session-id passing via URL query string.

             By default, even when SessionQuery* options are used, cookies will
             be used if available with SessionQuery* functionality acting only
             as a backup, so this makes it so that cookies will never be used.

            +Escape ' with HTMLEncode() to &#39;

            -Trying to fix t/server_mail.t to work better for platforms
             that it should skip testing on.  Updated t/server.t test case.

            +Remove exit() from Makefile.PL so CPAN.pm's automatic
             follow prereq mechanism works correctly.  Thanks to Slaven Rezic
             for pointing this out.

            +Added Apache::compat loading in mod_perl environment for better
             mod_perl 2.0 support.

       $VERSION = 2.35; $DATE="05/30/2002"
            +Destroy better $Server & $Response objects so that my
             closure references to these to not attempt to work in the future
             against invalid internal data. There was enough data left in these
             old objects to make debugging the my closure problem confusing, where
             it looked like the ASP object state became invalid.

            +Added system debug diagnostics to inspect StateManager group cleanup

            (d) Documentation update about flock() work around for
             Win95/Win98/WinMe systems, confirmed by Rex Arul

            (d) Documentation/site build bug found by Mitsunobu Ozato,
             where <% %> not being escaped correctly with $Server->HTMLEncode().
             New japanese documentation project started by him
             at http://sourceforge.jp/projects/apache-asp-jp/

            -InitPackageGlobals() called after new Apache::ASP object created so
             core system templates can be compiled even when there was a runtime
             compilation error of user templates.  Bug fix needed pointed out by
             Eamon Daly

       $VERSION = 2.33; $DATE="04/29/2002"
            - fixed up t/server_mail.t test to skip if a sendmail server
              is not available on localhost.  We only want the test to run
              if there is a server to test against.

            + removed cgi/asp script, just a symlink now to the ./asp-perl script
              which in this way deprecates it.  I had it hard linked, but the
              distribution did not untar very well on win32 platform.

            + Reordered the modules in Bundle::Apache::ASP for a cleaner install.

            - Fixed bug where XMLSubs where removing <?xml version ... ?> tag
              when it was needed in XSLT mode.

            + $Server->Mail({ CC => '...', BCC => '...' }), now works to send
              CC & BCC headers/recipients.

            + Removed $Apache::ASP::Register definition which defined the current
              executing Apache::ASP object.  Only one part of the application was
              using it, and this has been fixed.  This would have been an unsafe
              use of globals for a threaded environment.

            + Decreased latency when doing Application_OnStart, used to sleep(1)
              for CleanupMaster sync, but this is not necessary for Application_OnStart
              scenario

            + Restructure code / core templates for MailErrorsTo funcationality.
              Wrote test mail_error.t to cover this.  $ENV{REMOTE_USER} will now
              be displayed in the MailErrorsTo message when defined from 401 basic auth.

            + $Server->RegisterCleanup should be thread safe now, as it no longer relies
              on access to @Apache::ASP::Cleanup for storing the CODE ref stack.

            + test t/inode_names.t for InodeNames and other file tests covering case
              of long file names.

            - Fixed long file name sub identifier bug.  Added test t/long_names.t.

            + CacheDir may now be set independently of StateDir.  It used to default
              to StateDir if it was set.

            ++ Decomposition of modules like Apache::ASP::Session & Apache::ASP::Application
              out of ASP.pm file.  This should make the source more developer friendly.

              This selective code compilation also speeds up CGI requests that do not
              need to load unneeded modules like Apache::ASP::Session, by about 50%,
              so where CGI mode ran at about 2.1 hits/sec before, now for
              light requests that do not load $Session & $Application, requests
              run at 3.4 hits/sec, this is on a dual PIII-450 linux 2.4.x

            - Caching like for XSLTCache now works in CGI mode.
              This was a bug that it did not before.

            + $Server->File() API added, acts as a wrapper around
              Apache->request->filename Added test in t/server.t

            ++  *** EXPERIMENTAL / ALPHA FEATURE NOTE BEGIN ***

              New $PERLLIB/Apache/ASP/Share/ directory created to
              hold system & user contributed components, which will be found
              on the $Server->MapInclude() path, which helps $Response->Include
              search '.',Global,IncludesDir, and now Apache::ASP::Share for
              includes to load at runtime.

              The syntax for loading a shared include is to prefix the file
              name with Share:: as in:

               $Response->TrapInclude('Share::CORE/MailError.inc');

              New test to cover this at t/share.t

              This feature is experimental.  The naming convention may change
              and the feature may disappear altogether, so only use if you
              are interesting in experimenting with this feature & will
              provide feedback about how it works.

              *** EXPERIMENTAL / ALPHA FEATURE NOTE END ***

            + asp-perl script now uses ./asp.conf instead of ./asp.config
              for runtime configuration via %Config defined there.  Update docs
              for running in standalone CGI mode

            + Make use of MANFEST.SKIP to not publish the dev/* files anymore.

            - Script_OnEnd guaranteed to run after $Response->End, but
              it will not run if there was an error earlier in the request.

            + lots of new test cases covering behaviour of $Response->End
              and $Response->Redirect under various conditions like XMLSubs
              and SoftRedirect and global.asa Script_OnStart

            + asp-perl will be installed into the bin executables when
              Apache::ASP is installed.  asp-perl is the command line version
              of Apache::ASP that can also be used to run script in CGI mode.
              Test case covering asp-perl functionality.

            + asp CGI/command line script now called asp-perl.  I picked this
              name because Apache::ASP often has the name asp-perl in distributions
              of the module.

            + Apache::ASP::CGI::Test class now subclass of Apache::ASP::CGI.  To facilitate
              this Apache::ASP::CGI::init() now called OO like Apache::ASP::CGI->init()
              Fixed up places where the old style was called.  New Test class allows
              a dummy Apache request object to be built which caches header & body output
              for later inspection instead of writing it to STDOUT.

            - $Response->Redirect() under SoftRedirect 1 will not first Clear() buffer

            - $Response->Redirect() in an XMLSubs will work now ... behavior
              of $Response->Flush() being turned off in an XMLSubs was interfering with this.

            + srand() init tracking done better, thanks for patch from Ime Smits

            + Added file/directory being used for precompilation in
              Apache::ASP->Loader($file, ...) to output like:

               [Mon Feb 04 20:19:22 2002] [error] [asp] 4215 (re)compiled 22 scripts
                 of 22 loaded for $file

              This is so that when precompiling multiple web sites
              each with different directories, one can easier see the
              compile output relevant to the Loader() command being run.

            + better decomp of Apache::ASP site build files at ./build/* files,
              which is good should anyone look at it for ideas.

            + improved test suite to error when unintended output results from
              t/*.t test scripts.

            - () now supported in XMLSubsMatch config, added xmlsubsmatch.t test...
              specifically a config like

                PerlSetVar (aaa|bbb):\w+

              should now work.  Thanks for bug report from David Kulp.

            + Added an early srand() for better $ServerID creation

            + Work around for DSO problems where $r is not always correctly
              defined in Apache::ASP::handler().  Thanks to Tom Lear for patch.

       $VERSION = 2.31; $DATE="01/22/2002";
            + $Server->MapInclude() API extension created to wrap up Apache::ASP::SearchDirs
              functionality so one may do an conditional check for an include existence befor
              executing $Response->Include().  Added API test to server.t

            + $Server->Transfer() now allows arguments like $Response->Include(), and now acts just
              as a wrapper for:

                $Response->Include($file, @args);
                $Response->End();

              added test case at t/server_transfer.t

            + Removed dependency of StatINC functionality on Apache::Symbol.  Apache::Symbol
              is no longer required.  Added test of t/stat_inc.t for correct StatINC initialization
              for platforms where Devel::Symdump is present.

            + Better error message when $Request->Params has not been defined with RequestParams
              config & it gets used in script.  Added test case as t/request_params_none.t

            + Directories cannot now be included as scripts via $Response->Include(), added
              test case to t/include.t

            - No longer make $Response->Flush dependent on $Response->IsClientConnected() to
              be true to write output to client.  There have been spurious errors reported
              about the new ( >= 2.25 ) IsClientConnected code, and this will limit the impact
              of that functionality possibly not working still to those users explicitly using
              that API.

            + $Response->AddHeader($header_name, $value) now will set $Response members
              for these headers: Content-Type, Cache-Control, Expires.  This is to avoid
              both the application & Apache::ASP sending out duplicate headers.  Added
              test cases for this to t/response.t

            + split up Bundle::Apache::ASP into that, and Bundle::Apache::ASP::Extra
              the former with just the required modules to run, and the latter
              for extra functionality in Apache::ASP

            + new $Request->{Method} member to return $r->method of GET or POST that
              client browser is requesting, added t/request.t sub test to cover this member.

       $VERSION = 2.29; $DATE="11/19/2001";
            +Added some extra help text to the ./cgi/asp --help message
             to clarify how to pass arguments to a script from the command line.

            +When using $Server->Mail() API, if Content-Type header is set,
             and MIME-Version is not, then a "MIME-Version: 1.0" header will be sent
             for the email.  This is correct according to RFC 1521 which specifies
             for the first time the Content-Type: header for email documents.
             Thanks to Philip Mak for pointing out this correct behavior.

            +Made dependent on MLDBM::Sync version .25 to pass the taint_check.t test

            +Improved server_mail.t test to work with mail servers were relaying is denied

            +Added <html><body> tags to MailErrorsTo email

            --Fixed SessionCount / Session_OnEnd bug, where these things were not
             working for $Sessions that never had anything written to them.
             This bug was introduced in 2.23/2.25 release.

             There was an optimization in 2.23/2.25 where a $Session that was never
             used does not write its state lock file & dbm files to disk, only if
             it gets written too like $Session->{MARK}++.  Tracking of these NULL $Sessions
             then is handled solely in the internal database.  For $Session garbage
             collection though which would fire Session_OnEnd events and update
             SessionCount, the Apache::ASP::State->GroupMembers() function was just
             looking for state files on disk ... now it looks in the internal database
             too for SessionID records for garbage collection.

             Added a test at ./t/session_events.t for these things.

            +Some optimizations for $Session API use.

            +Added support for XSLT via XML::LibXSLT, patch courtesy of Michael Buschauer

            -Got rid of an warning when recompiling changing includes under perl 5.6.1...
             undef($code) method did not work for this perl version, rather undef(&$code) does.
             Stopped using using Apache::Symbol for this when available.

            -Make Apache::ASP script run under perl taint checking -T for perl 5.6.1...
             $code =~ tr///; does not work to untaint here, so much use the slower:
             $code =~ /^(.*)$/s; $code = $1; method to untaint.

            -Check for inline includes changing, included in a dynamic included
             loaded at runtime via $Response->Include().  Added test case for
             this at t/include_change.t.  If an inline include of a dynamic include
             changes, the dynamic include should get recompiled now.

            -Make OK to use again with PerlTaintCheck On, with MLDBM::Sync 2.25.
             Fixed in ASP.pm, t/global.asa, and created new t/taint_check.t test script

            +Load more modules when Apache::ASP is loaded so parent will share more
             with children httpd:
              Apache::Symbol
              Devel::Symdump
              Config
              lib
              MLDBM::Sync::SDBM_File

            +When FileUploadMax bytes is exceeded for a file upload, there will not
             be an odd error anymore resulting from $CGI::POST_MAX being triggered,
             instead the file upload input will simply be ignored via $CGI::DISABLE_UPLOADS.
             This gives the developer the opportunity to tell the user the the file upload
             was too big, as demonstrated by the ./site/eg/file_upload.asp example.

             To not let the web client POST a lot of data to your scripts as a form
             of a denial of service attack use the apache config LimitRequestBody for the
             max limits.  You can think of PerlSetVar FileUploadMax as a soft limit, and
             apache's LimitRequestBody as a hard limit.

            --Under certain circumstances with file upload, it seems that IsClientConnected()
             would return an aborted client value from $r->connection->aborted, so
             the buffer output data would not be flushed to the client, and
             the HTML page would return to the browser empty.  This would be under
             normal file upload use.  One work-around was to make sure to initialize
             the $Request object before $Response->IsClientConnected is called,
             then $r->connection->aborted returns the right value.

             This problem was probably introduced with IsClientConnected() code changes
             starting in the 2.25 release.

       $VERSION = 2.27; $DATE="10/31/2001";
            + Wrapped call to $r->connection->fileno in eval {} so to
              preserve backwards compatibility with older mod_perl versions
              that do not have this method defined.  Thanks to Helmut Zeilinger
              for catching this.

            + removed ./dev directory from distribution, useless clutter

            + Removed dependency on HTTP::Date by taking code into
              Apache::ASP as Apache::ASP::Date.  This relieves
              the dependency of Apache::ASP on libwww LWP libraries.
              If you were using HTTP::Date functions before without loading
              "use HTTP::Date;" on your own, you will have to do this now.

            + Streamlined code execution.  Especially worked on
              $Response->IsClientConnected which gets called during
              a normal request execution, and got rid of IO::Select
              dependency. Some function style calls instead of OO style
              calls where private functions were being invokes that one
              would not need to override.

            - Fixed possible bug when flushing a data buffer where there
              is just a '0' in it.

            + Updated docs to note that StateCache config was deprecated
              as of 2.23.  Removed remaining code that referenced the config.

            + Removed references to unused OrderCollections code.

            - Better Cache meta key, lower chance of collision with
              unrelated data since its using the full MD5 keyspace now

            + Optimized some debugging statements that resulted
              from recent development.

            + Tie::TextDir .04 and above is supported for StateDB
              and CacheDB settings with MLDBM::Sync .21. This is good for
              CacheDB where output is larger and there are not many
              versions to cache, like for XSLTCache, where the site is
              mostly static.

            + Better RESOURCES section to web site, especially with adding
              some links to past Apache::ASP articles & presentations.

       $VERSION = 2.25; $DATE="10/11/2001";
            + Improved ./site/apps/search application, for better
              search results at Apache::ASP site.  Also, reengineered
              application better, with more perl code moved to global.asa.
              Make use of MLDBM::Sync::SDBM_File, where search database
              before was engineering around SDBM_File's shortcomings.

            - Fix for SessionSerialize config, which broke in 2.23
              Also, added t/session_serialize.t to test suite to catch
              this problem in the future.

       $VERSION = 2.23; $DATE="10/11/2001";
            +Make sure a couple other small standard modules get loaded
             upon "PerlModule Apache::ASP", like Time::HiRes, Class::Struct,
             and MLDBM::Serializer::Data::Dumper.  If not available
             these modules won't cause errors, but will promote child httpd
             RAM sharing if they are.

            -XMLSubs args parsing fix so an arg like z-index
             does not error under UseStrict.  This is OK now:

              <my:layer z-index=3 top=0 left=0> HTML </my:layer>

            -Only remove outermost <SCRIPT> tags from global.asa
             for IIS/PerlScript compatibility.  Used to remove
             all <SCRIPT> tags, which hurt when some subs in globa.asa
             would be printing some JavaScript.

            +$Response->{IsClientConnected} now updated correctly
             before global.asa Script_OnStart.  $Response->IsClientConnect()
             can be used for accurate accounting, while
             $Response->{IsClientConnected} only gets updated
             after $Response->Flush().  Added test cases to response.t

            +$Server->HTMLEncode(\$data) API extension, now can take
             scalar ref, which can give a 5% improvement in benchmarks
             for data 100K in size.

            -Access to $Application is locked when Application_OnEnd &
             Application_OnStart is called, creating a critical section
             for use of $Application

            ++MLDBM::Sync used now for core DBM support in Apache::ASP::State.
             This drastically simplifies/stabilizes the code in there
             and will make it easier for future SQL database plugins.

            +New API for accessing ASP object information in non content
             handler phases:

               use Apache::ASP;
               sub My::Auth::handler {
                 my $r = shift;
                 my $ASP = Apache::ASP->new($r)
                 my $Session = $ASP->Session;
               }

             In the above example, $Session would be the same $Session
             object created later while running the ASP script for this
             same request.

             Added t/asp_object.t test for this.  Fixed global.asa to only
             init StateDir when application.asp starts which is the first
             test script to run.

            -Fixed on Win32 to make Apache::ASP->new($r) able to create
             multiple master ASP objects per request.  Was not reentrant
             safe before, particularly with state locking for dbms like
             $Application & $Session.

            ++Output caching for includes, built on same layer ( extended )
             as XSLTCache, test suite at t/cache.t.  Enabled with special
             arguments to

               $Response->Include(\%args, @include_args)
               $Response->TrapInclude(\%args, @include_args)
               $Server->Execute(\%args, @include_args)

             where %args = (
               File => 'file.inc',
               Cache => 1, # to activate cache layer
               Expires => 3600, # to expire in one hour
               LastModified => time() - 600, # to expire if cached before 10 minutes ago
               Key => $Request->Form, # to cache based on checksum of serialized form data,
               Clear => 1, # to not allow fetch from cache this time, will always execute include
             );

             Like the XSLTCache, it uses MLDBM::Sync::SDBM_File
             by default, but can use DB_File or GDBM_File if
             CacheDB is set to these.

             See t/cache.t for API support until this is documented.

            +CacheSize now supports units of M, K, B like

              CacheSize 10M
              CacheSize 10240K
              CacheSize 10000000B
              CacheSize 10000000

            -Better handling of $Session->Abandon() so multiple
             request to the same session while its being destroyed
             will have the right effect.

            +Optimized XMLSubs parsing.  Scripts with lots lof XMLSubs
             now parse faster for the first time.  One test script with
             almost 200 such tags went from a parse time of around 3 seconds
             to .7 seconds after optimizations.

            +Updated performance tuning docs, particularly for using
             Apache::ASP->Loader()

            +$Server->URL($url, \%params) now handles array refs
             in the params values like
               $Server->URL($url, { key => [ qw( value1 value2 ) ] })

             This is so that query string data found in
             $Request->QueryString that gets parsed into this form
             from a string like: ?key=value&key=value2 would be
             able to be reused passed back to $Server->URL to
             create self referencing URLs more easily.

            -Bug fix where XMLSubs like <s:td /> now works on perl
             5.005xx, thanks to Philip Mak for reporting & fix.

            +When searching for included files, will now join
             the absolute path of the directory of the script
             with the name of the file if its a relative file
             name like ./header.inc.  Before, would just look
             for something like ././header.inc by using '.'
             as the first directory to look for includes in.

             The result of this is that scripts in two directories
             configured with the same Global setting should be able
             to have separate local header.inc files without causing
             a cached namespace collision.

            +$Server->Config() call will return a hash ref
             to all the config setting for that request, like
             Apache->dir_config would.

            -StatINC setting with Apache::ASP->Loader() works again.
             This makes StatINC & StatINCMatch settings viable
             for production & development use when the system has
             very many modules.

            -Cookieless session support with configs like SessionQueryParse
             and SessionQuery now work for URLs with frags in them
             like http://localhost?arg=value#frag

            +@rv = $Response->Include() now works where there are
             multiple return values from an include like:
             <% return(1,2); %>

       $VERSION = 2.21; $DATE="8/5/2001";
            +Documented RequestParams config in CONFIG misc section.

            +Documented new XSLT caching directives.

            +Updated ./site/eg/.htaccess XSLT example config
             to use XSLTCache setting.

            +New FAQ section on why perl variables are sticky globals,
             suggested by Mark Seger.

            -push Global directory onto @INC during ASP script execution
             Protect contents of original @INC with local.  This makes
             things compatible with .09 Apache::ASP where we always had
             Global in @INC.  Fixed needed by Henrik Tougaard

            - ; is a valid separator like & for QueryString Parameters
             Fixed wanted by Anders

            -XSMLSubsMatch doc fix in CONFIG section

            +Reduces number of Session groups to 16 from 32, so
             session manager for small user sets will be that much faster.

            +optimizations for internal database, $Application, and $Session
             creation.

            +XSLTCache must be set for XSLT caching to begin using CacheDir

            +CacheDB like StateDB bug sets dbm format for caching, which
             defaults to MLDBM::Sync::SDBM_File, which works well for caching
             output sizes < 50K

            +CacheDir config for XSLT caching ... defaults to StateDir

            +CacheSize in bytes determines whether the caches in CacheDir
             are deleted at the end of the request.  A cache will be
             reset in this way back to 0 bytes. Defaults to 10000000 bytes
             or about 10M.

            +Caching infrastructure work that is being used in XSLT
             can be leveraged later for output caching of includes,
             or arbitrary user caching.

            -t/server_mail.t test now uses valid email for testing
             purposes ... doesn't actually send a mail, but for SMTP
             runtime validation purposes it should be OK.

            +fixed where POST data was read from under MOD_PERL,
             harmless bug this was that just generated the wrong
             system debugging message.

       $VERSION = 2.19; $DATE="7/10/2001";
            +update docs in various parts

            +added ./make_httpd/build_httpds.sh scripts for quick builds
             of apache + mod_perl + mod_ssl

            ++plain CGI mode available for ASP execution.
             cgi/asp script can now be used to execute ASP
             scripts in CGI mode.  See CGI perldoc section for more info.
             The examples in ./site/eg have been set up to run
             in cgi mode if desired.  Configuration in CGI section
             only tested for Apache on Linux.

            -Fixed some faulty or out of date docs in XML/XSLT section.

            +added t/server_mail.t test for $Server->Mail(), requires
             Net::SMTP to be configured properly to succeed.

            +Net::SMTP debugging not enabled by Debug 1,2,3 configs,
             not only when system debugging is set with Debug -1,-2,-3
             However, a Debug param passed to $Server->Mail() will
             successfully override the Debug -1,-2,-3 setting even
             when its Debug => 0

            -Check for undef values during stats for inline includes
             so we don't trigger unintialized warnings

            +Documented ';' may separate many directories in the IncludesDir
             setting for creating a more flexible includes search path.

       $VERSION = 2.17; $DATE="6/17/2001";
            +Added ASP perl mmm-mode subclass and configuration
             in editors/mmm-asp-perl.el file for better emacs support.
             Updated SYNTAX/Editors documentation.

            +Better debugging error message for Debug 2 or 3 settings
             for global.asa errors.  Limit debug output for lines
             preceding rendered script.

            -In old inline include mode, there should no longer
             be the error "need id for includes" when using
             $Response->Include() ... if DynamicIncludes were
             enabled, this problem would not have likely occured
             anyway.  DynamicIncludes are preferrable to use so
             that compiled includes can be shared between scripts.
             This bug was likely introduced in version 2.11.

            -Removed logging from $Response->BinaryWrite() in regular
             debug mode 1 or 2.  Logging still enabled in system Debug mode, -1 or -2

            -Removed other extra system debugging call that is really not
             necessary.

       $VERSION = 2.15; $DATE="06/12/2001";
            -Fix for running under perl 5.6.1 by removing parser optimization
             introduced in 2.11.

            -Now file upload forms, forms with ENCTYPE="multipart/form-data"
             can have multiple check boxes and select items marked for
             @params = $Request->Form('param_name') functionality.  This
             will be demonstrated via the ./site/eg/file_upload.asp example.

       $VERSION = 2.11; $DATE="05/29/2001";
            +Parser optimization from Dariusz Pietrzak

            -work around for global destruction error message for perl 5.6
             during install

            +$Response->{IsClientConnected} now will be set
             correctly with ! $r->connection->aborted after each
             $Response->Flush()

            +New XSLTParser config which can be set to XML::XSLT or
             XML::Sablotron.  XML::Sablotron renders 10 times faster,
             but differently.  XML::XSLT is pure perl, so has wider
             platform support than XML::Sablotron.  This config affects
             both the XSLT config and the $Server->XSLT() method.

            +New $Server->XSLT(\$xsl_data, \$xml_data) API which
             allows runtime XSLT on components instead of having to process
             the entire ASP output as XSLT.

            -XSLT support for XML::XSL 0.32.  Things broke after .24.

            -XSLTCacheSize config no longer supported.  Was a bad
             Tie::Cache implementation.  Should be file based cache
             to greatly increases cache hit ratio.

            ++$Response->Include(), $Response->TrapInclude(),
             and $Server->Execute() will all take a scalar ref
             or \'asdfdsafa' type code as their first argument to execute
             a raw script instead of a script file name.  At this time,
             compilation of such a script, will not be cached.  It is
             compiled/executed as an anonymous subroutine and will be freed
             when it goes out of scope.

            + -p argument to cgi/asp script to set GlobalPackage
             config for static site builds

            -pod commenting fix where windows clients are used for
             ASP script generation.

            +Some nice performance enhancements, thank to submissions from
             Ime Smits.  Added some 1-2% per request execution speed.

            +Added StateDB MLDBM::Sync::SDBM_File support for faster
             $Session + $Application than DB_File, yet still overcomes
             SDBM_File's 1024 bytes value limitation.  Documented in
             StateDB config, and added Makefile.PL entry.

            +Removed deprecated MD5 use and replace with Digest::MD5 calls

            +PerlSetVar InodeNames 1 config which will compile scripts hashed by
             their device & inode identifiers, from a stat($file)[0,1] call.
             This allows for script directories, the Global directory,
             and IncludesDir directories to be symlinked to without
             recompiling identical scripts.  Likely only works on Unix
             systems.  Thanks to Ime Smits for this one.

            +Streamlined code internally so that includes & scripts were
             compiled by same code.  This is a baby step toward fusing
             include & script code compilation models, leading to being
             able to compile bits of scripts on the fly as ASP subs,
             and being able to garbage collect ASP code subroutines.

            -removed @_ = () in script compilation which would trigger warnings
             under PerlWarn being set, thanks for Carl Lipo for reporting this.

            -StatINC/StatINCMatch fix for not undeffing compiled includes
             and pages in the GlobalPackage namespace

            -Create new HTML::FillInForm object for each FormFill
             done, to avoid potential bug with multiple forms filled
             by same object.  Thanks to Jim Pavlick for the tip.

            +Added PREREQ_PM to Makefile.PL, so CPAN installation will
             pick up the necessary modules correctly, without having
             to use Bundle::Apache::ASP, thanks to Michael Davis.

            + > mode for opening lock files, not >>, since its faster

            +$Response->Flush() fixed, by giving $| = 1 perl hint
             to $r->print() and the rest of the perl sub.

            +$Response->{Cookies}{cookie_name}{Expires} = -86400 * 300;
             works so negative relative time may be used to expire cookies.

            +Count() + Key() Collection class API implementations

            +Added editors/aasp.vim VIM syntax file for Apache::ASP,
             courtesy of Jon Topper.

            ++Better line numbering with #line perl pragma.  Especially
             helps with inline includes.  Lots of work here, & integrated
             with Debug 2 runtime pretty print debugging.

            +$Response->{Debug} member toggles on/off whether
             $Response->Debug() is active, overriding the Debug setting
             for this purpose.  Documented.

            -When Filter is on, Content-Length won't be set and compression
             won't be used.  These things would not work with a filtering
             handler after Apache::ASP

       $VERSION = 2.09; $DATE="01/30/2001";
            +Examples in ./site/eg are now UseStrict friendly.
             Also fixed up ./site/eg/ssi_filter.ssi example.

            +Auto purge of old stale session group directories, increasing
             session manager performance when using Sessions when migrating
             to Apache::ASP 2.09+ from older versions.

            +SessionQueryParse now works for all $Response->{ContentType}
             starting with 'text' ... before just worked with text/html,
             now other text formats like wml will work too.

            +32 groups instead of 64, better inactive site session group purging.

            +Default session-id length back up to 32 hex bytes.
             Better security vs. performance, security more important,
             especially when performance difference was very little.

            +PerlSetVar RequestParams 1 creates $Request->Params
             object with combined contents of $Request->QueryString
             and $Request->Form

            ++FormFill feature via HTML::FillInForm.  Activate with
             $Response->{FormFill} = 1 or PerlSetVar FormFill 1
             See site/eg/formfill.asp for example.

            ++XMLSubs tags of the same name may be embedded in each other
             recursively now.

            +No umask() use on Win32 as it seems unclear what it would do

            +simpler Apache::ASP::State file handle mode of >> when opening
             lock file.  saves doing a -e $file test.

            +AuthServerVariables config to init $Request->ServerVariables
             with basic auth data as documented.  This used to be default
             behavior, but triggers "need AuthName" warnings from recent
             versions of Apache when AuthName is not set.

            -Renamed Apache::ASP::Loader class to Apache::ASP::Load
             as it collided with the Apache::ASP->Loader() function
             namespace.  Class used internally by Apache::ASP->Loader()
             so no public API changed here.

            +-Read of POST input for $Request->BinaryRead() even
              if its not from a form.  Only set up $Request->Form
              if this is from a form POST.

            +faster POST/GET param parsing

       $VERSION = 2.07; $DATE="11/26/2000";
            -+-+ Session Manager
             empty state group directories are not removed, thus alleviating
             one potential race condition.  This impacted performance
             on idle sites severely as there were now 256 directories
             to check, so made many performance enhancements to the
             session manager.  The session manager is built to handle
             up to 20,000 client sessions over a 20 minute period.  It
             will slow the system down as it approaches this capacity.

             One such enhancement was session-ids now being 11 bytes long
             so that its .lock file is only 16 characters in length.
             Supposedly some file systems lookup files 16 characters or
             less in a fast hashed lookup.  This new session-id has
             4.4 x 10^12 possible values.  I try to keep this space as
             large as possible to prevent a brute force attack.

             Another enhancement was to limit the group directories
             to 64 by only allowing the session-id prefix to be [0-3][0-f]
             instead of [0-f][0-f], checking 64 empty directories on an
             idle site takes little time for the session manager, compared
             to 256 which felt significant from the client end, especially
             on Win32 where requests are serialized.

             If upgrading to this version, you would do well to delete
             empty StateDir group directories while your site is idle.
             Upgrading during an idle time will have a similar effect,
             as old Apache::ASP versions would delete empty directories.

            -$Application->GetSession($session_id) now creates
             an session object that only lasts until the next
             invocation of $Application->GetSession().  This is
             to avoid opening too many file handles at once,
             where each session requires opening a lock file.

            +added experimental support for Apache::Filter 1.013
             filter_register call

            +make test cases for $Response->Include() and
             $Response->TrapInclude()

            +Documented CollectionItem config.

            +New $Request->QueryString('multiple args')->Count()
             interface implemented for CollectionItem config.
             Also $Request->QueryString('multiple args')->Item(1) method.
             Note ASP collections start counting at 1.

            --fixed race condition, where multiple processes might
             try creating the same state directory at the same time, with
             one winning, and one generating an error.  Now, web process
             will recheck for directory existence and error if
             it doesn't.

            -global.asa compilation will be cached correctly, not
             sure when this broke.  It was getting reloaded every request.

            -StateAllWrite config, when set creates state files
             with a+rw or 0666 permissions, and state directories
             with a+rwx or 0777 permissions.  This allows web servers
             running as different users on the same machine to share a
             common StateDir config.  Also StateGroupWrite config
             with perms 0770 and 0660 respectively.

            -Apache::ASP->Loader() now won't follow links to
             directories when searching for scripts to load.

            +New RegisterIncludes config which is on by default only
             when using Apache::ASP->Loader(), for compiling includes
             when precompiling scripts.

            +Apache::ASP::CompileInclude path optimized, which underlies
             $Response->Include()

            +$Request->QueryString->('foo')->Item() syntax enabled
             with CollectionItem config setting.  Default syntax
             supported is $Request->QueryString('foo') which is
             in compatible.  Other syntax like $Request->{Form}{foo}
             and $Request->Form->Item('foo') will work in either case.

            +New fix suggested for missing Apache reference in
             Apache::ASP handler startup for RedHat RPMs.  Added
             to error message.

            --Backup flock() unlocking try for QNX will not corrupt the
             normal flock() LOCK_UN usage, after trying to unlock a file
             that doesn't exist.  This bug was uncovered from the below
             group deletion race condition that existed.

            -Session garbage collection will not delete new group
             directories that have just been created but are empty.
             There was a race condition where a new group directory would
             be created, but then deleted by a garbage collector before
             it could be initialized correctly with new state files.

            +Better random session-id checksums for $Session creation.
             per process srand() initialization, because srand()
             may be called once prefork and never called again.
             Call without arguments to rely on perl's decent rand
             seeding.  Then when calling rand() in Secret() we have
             enough random data, that even if someone else calls srand()
             to something fixed, should not mess things up terribly since
             we checksum things like $$ & time, as well as perl memory
             references.

            +XMLSubs installation make test.

            -Fix for multiline arguments for XMLSubs

       $VERSION = 2.03; $DATE="08/01/2000";
            +License change to GPL.  See LICENSE section.

            +Setup of www.apache-asp.org site, finally!

            -get rid of Apache::ASP->Loader() warning message for perl 5.6.0

       $VERSION = 2.01; $DATE="07/22/2000";
            +$data_ref = $Response->TrapInclude('file.inc') API
             extension which allows for easy post processing of
             data from includes

            +./site/eg/source.inc syntax highlighting improvements

            +XMLSubsMatch compile time parsing performance improvement

       $VERSION = 2.00; $DATE="07/15/2000";
            -UniquePackages config works again, broke a couple versions back

            +better error handling for methods called on $Application
             that don't exist, hard to debug before

       $VERSION = 1.95; $DATE="07/10/2000";
            !!!!! EXAMPLES SECURITY BUG FOUND & FIXED !!!!!

            --FIXED: distribution example ./site/eg/source.asp now parses
             out special characters of the open() call when reading local
             files.

             This bug would allow a malicious user possible writing
             of files in the same directory as the source.asp script.  This
             writing exploit would only have effect if the web server user
             has write permission on those files.

             !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

            -$0 now set to transferred file, when using $Server->Transfer

            -Fix for XMLSubsMatch parsing on cases with 2 or more args passed
             to tag sub that was standalone like
               <Apps:header type="header" title="Moo" foo="moo" />

       $VERSION = 1.93; $DATE="07/03/2000";
            -sub second timing with Time::HiRes was adding <!-- -->
             comments by HTML by default, which would possibly
             break specific programs looking for precise HTML output.
             Now this behavior must be explicitly turned on with
             the TimeHiRes config setting.

             These comments will only appear in HTML only if
             Debug is enabled as well.

             Timed log entries will only occur if
             system debugging is enabled, with Debug -1 or -2

       $VERSION = 1.91; $DATE="07/02/2000";
            +Documented XMLSubsMatch & XSLT* configuration
             settings in CONFIG section.

            +XSLT XSL template is now first executed as an
             ASP script just like the XML scripts.  This is
             just one step away now from implementing XSP logic.

            +$Server->Execute and $Server->Transfer API extensions
             implemented.  Execute is the same as $Request->Include()
             and $Server->Transfer is like an apache internal redirect
             but keeps the current ASP objects for the next script.

             Added examples, transfer.htm, and modified dynamic_includes.htm.

            +Better compile time error debugging with Debug 2 or -2.
             Will hilite/link the buggy line for global.asa errors,
             include errors, and XML/XSLT errors just like with
             ASP scripts before.

            +Nice source hiliting when viewing source for the example
             scripts.

            +Runtime string writing optimization for static HTML going
             through $Response.

            +New version numbering just like everyone else.  Starting at 1.91
             since I seem to be off by a factor of 10, last release would have
             been 1.9.

       $VERSION = 0.19; $DATE="NOT RELEASED";
            +XMLSubsMatch and XSLT* settings documented in
             the XML/XSLT section of the site/README.

            -XMLSubsMatch will strip parens in a pattern match
             so it does not interfere with internal matching use.

            +XSLT integration allowing XML to be rendered by XSLT
             on the fly.  XSLT specifies XSL file to transform XML.
             XSLTMatch is a regexp that matches XML file names, like \.xml$,
             which will be transformed by XSLT setting, default .*

             XSLTCacheSize when specified uses Tie::Cache to cached XML DOMs
             internally and cache XSLT transformations output per XML/XSL
             combination.  XML DOM objects can take a lot of RAM, so use
             this setting judiciously like setting to 100.  Definitely
             experiment with this value.

            +More client info in the error mail feature, including
             client IP, form data, query string, and HTTP_* client headers

            +With Time::HiRes loaded, and Debug set to non 0,
             will add a <!-- Apache::ASP served request in xx.xx seconds -->
             to text/html output, similar to Cocoon, per user request
             Will also add this to the system debug error log output
             when Debug is < 0

            -bug fix on object initialization optimization earlier
             in this release, that was introduced for faster event
             handler execution.

            +Apache::ASP::Parse() takes a file name, scalar, or
             scalar ref for arguments of data to parse for greater
             integration ability with other applications.

            +PodComments optimization, small speed increase at
             compilation time.

            +String optimization on internal rendering that avoids
             unnecessary copying of static html, by using refs.  Should
             make a small difference on sites with large amounts of
             static html.

            +CompressGzip setting which, when Compress::Zlib is installed,
             will compress text/html automatically going out to the web
             browser if the client supports gzip encoding.

            ++Script_OnFlush event handler, and auxiliary work optimizing
             asp events in general.  $Response->{BinaryRef} created which
             is a reference to outgoing output, which can be used
             to modify the data at runtime before it goes out to the client.

            +Some code optimizations that boost speed from 22 to 24
             hits per second when using Sessions without $Application,
             on a simple hello world benchmark on a WinNT PII300.

            ++Better SessionManagement, more aware of server farms that
             don't have reliable NFS locking.  The key here is to have only
             one process on one server in charge of session garbage collection
             at any one time, and try to create this situation with a snazzy
             CleanupMaster routine.  This is done by having a process register
             itself in the internal database with a server key created at
             apache start time.  If this key gets stale, another process can
             become the master, and this period will not exceed the period
             SessionTimeout / StateManager.

             ** Work on session manager sponsored by LRN, http://www.lrn.com.  **
             ** This work was used to deploy a server farm in production with  **
             ** NFS mounted StateDir. Thanks to Craig Samuel for his belief in **
             ** open source. :)                                                **

             Future work for server farm capabilities might include breaking
             up the internal database into one of 256 internal databases
             hashed by the first 2 chars of the session id.  Also on the plate
             is Apache::Session like abilities with locking and/or data storage
             occuring in a SQL database.  The first dbs to be done will include
             MySQL & Oracle.

            +Better session security which will create a new session id for an
             incoming session id that does not match one already seen.  This will
             help for those with Search engines that have bookmarked
             pages with the session ids in the query strings.  This breaks away
             from standard ASP session id implementation which will automatically
             use the session id presented by the browser, now a new session id will
             be returned if the presented one is invalid or expired.

            -$Application->GetSession will only return a session if
             one already existed.  It would create one before by default.

            +Script_OnFlush global.asa event handler, and $Response->{BinaryRef}
             member which is a scalar reference to the content about to be flushed.
             See ./site/eg/global.asa for example usage, used in this case to
             insert font tags on the fly into the output.

            +Highlighting and linking of line error when Debug is set to 2 or -2.

            --removed fork() call from flock() backup routine? How did
              that get in there?  Oh right, testing on Win32. :(
              Very painful lesson this one, sorry to whom it may concern.

            +$Application->SessionCount support turned off by default
             must enable with SessionCount config option.  This feature
             puts an unnecessary load on busy sites, so not default
             behavior now.

            ++XMLSubsMatch setting that allows the developer to
             create custom tags XML style that execute perl subroutines.
             See ./site/eg/xml_subs.asp

            +MailFrom config option that defaults the From: field for
             mails sent via the Mail* configs and $Server->Mail()

            +$Server->Mail(\%mail, %smtp_args) API extension

            +MailErrorsTo & MailAlertTo now can take comma
             separated email addresses for multiple recipients.

            -tracking of subroutines defined in scripts and includes so
             StatINC won't undefine them when reloading the GlobalPackage,
             and so an warning will be logged when another script redefines
             the same subroutine name, which has been the bane of at least
             a few developers.

            -Loader() will now recompile dynamic includes that
             have changed, even if main including script has not.
             This is useful if you are using Loader() in a
             PerlRestartHandler, for reloading scripts when
             gracefully restarting apache.

            -Apache::ASP used to always set the status to 200 by
             default explicitly with $r->status().  This would be
             a problem if a script was being used to as a 404
             ErrorDocument, because it would always return a 200 error
             code, which is just wrong.  $Response->{Status} is now
             undefined by default and will only be used if set by
             the developer.

             Note that by default a script will still return a 200 status,
             but $Response->{Status} may be used to override this behavior.

            +$Server->Config($setting) API extension that allows developer
             to access config settings like Global, StateDir, etc., and is a
             wrapper around Apache->dir_config($setting)

            +Loader() will log the number of scripts
             recompiled and the number of scripts checked, instead
             of just the number of scripts recompiled, which is
             misleading as it reports 0 for child httpds after
             a parent fork that used Loader() upon startup.

            -Apache::ASP->Loader() would have a bad error if it didn't load
             any scripts when given a directory, prints "loaded 0 scripts" now

       $VERSION = 0.18; $DATE="02/03/2000";
            +Documented SessionQuery* & $Server->URL() and
             cleaned up formatting some, as well as redoing
             some of the sections ordering for better readability.
             Document the cookieless session functionality more
             in a new SESSIONS section.  Also documented new
             FileUpload configs and $Request->FileUpload collection.
             Documented StatScripts.

            +StatScripts setting which if set to 0 will not reload
             includes, global.asa, or scripts when changed.

            +FileUpload file handles cleanup at garbage collection
             time so developer does not have to worry about lazy coding
             and undeffing filehandles used in code.  Also set
             uploaded filehandles to binmode automatically on Win32
             platforms, saving the developer yet more typing.

            +FileUploadTemp setting, default 0, if set will leave
             a temp file on disk during the request, which may be
             helpful for processing by other programs, but is also
             a security risk in that others could potentially read
             this file while the script is running.

             The path to the temp file will be available at
             $Request->{FileUpload}{$form_field}{TempFile}.
             The regular use of file uploads remains the same
             with the <$filehandle> to the upload at
             $Request->{Form}{$form_field}.

            +FileUploadMax setting, default 0, currently an
             alias for $CGI::POST_MAX, which determines the
             max size for a file upload in bytes.

            +SessionQueryParse only auto parses session-ids
             into links when a session-id COOKIE is NOT found.
             This feature is only enabled then when a user has
             disabled cookies, so the runtime penalty of this
             feature won't drag down the whole site, since most
             users will have cookies turned on.

            -StatINC & StatINCMatch will not undef Fnctl.pm flock
             functions constants like O_RDWR, because the code references
             are not well trackable.  This would result in sporadic 500 server
             errors when a changed module was reloaded that imported O_* flock
             functions from Fnctl.

            +SessionQueryParse & SessionQueryParseMatch
             settings that enable auto parsing session ids into
             URLs for cookieless sessions.  Will pick up URLs in
             <a href>, <area href>, <form action>, <frame src>,
             <iframe src>, <img src>, <input src>, <link href>
             $Response->Redirect($URL) and the first URL in
             script tags like <script>*.location.href=$URL</script>

             These settings require that buffering be enabled, as
             Apache::ASP will parse through the buffer to parse the URLs.

             With SessionQueryParse on, it will just parse non-absolute
             URLs, but with SessionQueryParseMatch set to some server
             url regexp, like ^http://localhost , will also parse
             in the session id for URLs that match that.

             When testing, the performance hit from this parsing
             a script dropped from 12.5 hits/sec on my WinNT box
             to 11.7 hits per second for 1K of buffered output.
             The difference is .007 of my PII300's processing power
             per second.

             For 10K of output then, my guess is that this speed
             of script, would be slowed to 6.8 hits per second.
             This kind of performance hit would also slow a
             script running at 40 hits per second on a UNIX box
             to 31 hits/sec for 1K, and to 11 hits/sec for 10K parsed.

             Your mileage may vary and you will have to test the difference
             yourself.  Get yourself a valid URL with a session-id in
             it, and run it through ab, or Socrates, with SessionQuery
             turned on, and then with SessionQueryParse set to see
             the difference.  SessionQuery just enables of session id
             setting from the query string but will not auto parse urls.

            -If buffering, Content-Length will again be set.
             It broke, probably while I was tuning in the past
             couple versions.

            +UseStrict setting compiles all scripts including
             global.asa with "use strict" turned on for catching
             more coding errors.  With this setting enabled,
             use strict errors die during compilation forcing
             Apache::ASP to try to recompile the script until
             successful.

            -Object use in includes like $Response->Write()
             no longer error with "use strict" programming.

            +SessionQuery config setting with $Server->URL($url, { %params } )
             alpha API extensions to enable cookieless sessions.

            +Debugging not longer produces internal debugging
             by default.  Set to -1,-2 for internal debugging
             for Debug settings 1 & 2.

            +Both StateSerializer & StateDB can be changed
             without affecting a live web site, by storing
             the configurations for $Application & $Session
             in an internal database, so that if $Session was
             created with SDBM_File for the StateDB (default),
             it will keep this StateDB setting until it ends.

            +StateSerializer config setting.  Default Data::Dumper,
             can also be set to Storable.  Controls how data is
             serialized before writing to $Application & $Session.

            +Beefed up the make test suite.

            +Improved the locking, streamlining a bit of the
             $Application / $Session setup process.  Bench is up to
             22 from 21 hits / sec on dev NT box.

            +Cut more fat for faster startup, now on my dev box
             I get 44 hits per sec Apache::ASP vs. 48 Embperl
             vs. 52 CGI via Apache::Registry for the HelloWorld Scripts.

            -Improved linking for the online site documentation,
             where a few links before were bad.

       $VERSION = 0.17; $DATE="11/15/99";
            ++20%+ faster startup script execution, as measured by the
             HelloWorld bench.  I cut a lot of the fat out of
             the code, and is now at least 20% faster on startup
             both with and without state.

             On my dev (NT, apache 1.3.6+mod_perl) machine, I now get:

                   42 hits per sec on Apache::ASP HelloWorld bench
                   46 hits per sec on Embperl (1.2b10) and
                   51 hits per sec for CGI Apache::Registry scripts

             Before Apache::ASP was clocking some 31 hits per sec.
             Apache::ASP also went from 75 to 102 hits per second
             on Solaris.

            +PerlTaintCheck On friendly.  This is mod_perl's way
             of providing -T taint checking.  When Apache::ASP
             is used with state objects like $Session or $Application,
             MLDBM must also be made taint friendly with:

               $MLDBM::RemoveTaint = 1;

             which could be put in the global.asa.  Documented.

            +Added $Response->ErrorDocument($error_code, $uri_or_string)
             API extension which allows for setting of Apache's error
             document at runtime.  This is really just a wrapper
             for Apache->custom_response() renamed so it syncs with
             the Apache ErrorDocument config setting.  Updated
             documentation, and added error_document.htm example.

            =OrderCollections setting was added, but then REMOVED
             because it was not going to be used.  It bound
             $Request->* collections/hashes to Tie::IxHash, so that data
             in those collections would be read in the order the
             browser sent it, when eaching through or with keys.

            -global.asa will be reloaded when changed.  This broke
             when I optimized the modification times with (stat($file))[9]
             rather than "use File::stat; stat($file)->mtime"

            -Make Apache::ASP->Loader() PerlRestartHandler safe,
             had some unstrict code that was doing the wrong thing.

            -IncludesDir config now works with DynamicIncludes.

            +DebugBufferLength feature added, giving control to
             how much buffered output gets shown when debugging errors.

            ++Tuning of $Response->Write(), which processes all
             static html internally, to be almost 50% faster for
             its typical use, when BufferingOn is enabled, and
             CgiHeaders are disabled, both being defaults.

             This can show significant speed improvements for tight
             loops that render ASP output.

            +Auto linking of ./site/eg/ text to example scripts
             at web site.

            +$Application->GetSession($session_id) API extension, useful
             for managing active user sessions when storing session ids
             in $Application.  Documented.

            -disable use of flock() on Win95/98 where it is unimplemented

            -@array context of $Request->Form('name') returns
             undef when value for 'name' is undefined.  Put extra
             logic in there to make sure this happens.

       $VERSION = 0.16; $DATE="09/22/99";
            -$Response->{Buffer} and PerlSetVar BufferingOn
             configs now work when set to 0, to unbuffer output,
             and send it out to the web client as the script generates it.

             Buffering is enabled by default, as it is faster, and
             allows a script to error cleanly in the middle of execution.

            +more bullet proof loading of Apache::Symbol, changed the
             way Apache::ASP loads modules in general.  It used to
             check for the module to load every time, if it hadn't loaded
             successfully before, but now it just tries once per httpd,
             so the web server will have to be restarted to see new installed
             modules.  This is just for modules that Apache::ASP relies on.

             Old modules that are changed or updated with an installation
             are still reloaded with the StatINC settings if so configured.

            +ASP web site wraps <font face="courier new"> around <pre>
             tags now to override the other font used for the text
             areas.  The spacing was all weird in Netscape before
             for <pre> sections.

            -Fixed Content-Length calculation when using the Clean
             option, so that the length is calculated after the HTML
             is clean, not before.  This would cause a browser to
             hang sometimes.

            +Added IncludesDir config option that if set will also be
             used to check for includes, so that includes may easily be
             shared between applications.  By default only Global and
             the directory the script is in are checked for includes.

             Also added IncludesDir as a possible configuration option
             for Apache::ASP->Loader()

            -Re-enabled the Application_OnStart & OnEnd events, after
             breaking them when implementing the AllowApplicationState
             config setting.

            +Better pre-fork caching ... StatINC & StatINCMatch are now
             args for Apache::ASP->Loader(), so StatINC symbols loading
             may be done pre-fork and shared between httpds.  This lowers
             the child httpd init cost of StatINC.  Documented.

            +Made Apache::ASP Basic Authorization friendly so authentication
             can be handled by ASP scripts.  If AuthName and AuthType Apache
             config directives are set, and a $Response->{Status} is set to
             401, a user will be prompted for username/password authentication
             and the entered data will show up in ServerVariables as:
               $env = $Request->ServerVariables
               $env->{REMOTE_USER} = $env->{AUTH_USER} = username
               $env->{AUTH_PASSWD} = password
               $env->{AUTH_NAME}   = your realm
               $env->{AUTH_TYPE}   = 'Basic'

             This is the same place to find auth data as if Apache had some
             authentication handler deal with the auth phase separately.

            -MailErrorsTo should report the right file now that generates
             the error.

       $VERSION = 0.15; $DATE="08/24/1999";
            --State databases like $Session, $Application are
             now tied/untied to every lock/unlock triggered by read/write
             access.  This was necessary for correctness issues, so that
             database file handles are flushed appropriately between writes
             in a highly concurrent multi-process environment.

             This problem raised its ugly head because under high volume,
             a DB_File can become corrupt if not flushed correctly.
             Unfortunately, there is no way to flush SDBM_Files & DB_Files
             consistently other than to tie/untie the databases every access.

             DB_File may be used optionally for StateDB, but the default is
             to use SDBM_File which is much faster, but limited to 1024 byte
             key/value pairs.

             For SDBM_Files before, if there were too many concurrent
             writes to a shared database like $Application, some of the
             writes would not be saved because another process
             might overwrite the changes with its own.

             There is now a 10 fold performance DECREASE associated
             with reading from and writing to files like $Session
             and $Application.  With rough benchmarks I can get about
             100 increments (++) now per second to $Session->{count}, where
             before I could get 1000 increments / second.

             You can improve this if you have many reads / writes happening
             at the same time, by placing locking code around the group like

                   $Session->Lock();
                   $Session->{count}++;
                   $Session->{count}++;
                   $Session->{count}++;
                   $Session->UnLock();

             This method will reduce the number of ties to the $Session database
             from 6 to 1 for this kind of code, and will improve the performance
             dramatically.

             Also, instead of using explicit $Session locking, you can
             create an automatic lock on $Session per script by setting
             SessionSerialize in your config to 1.  The danger here is
             if you have any long running scripts, the user will have
             to wait for it to finish before another script can be run.

             To see the number of lock/unlocks or ties/unties to each database
             during a script execution, look at the last lines of debug output
             to your error log when Debug is set to 1.  This can help you
             performance tweak access to these databases.

            +Updated documentation with new config settings and
             API extensions.

            +Added AllowApplicationState config option which allows
             you to leave $Application undefined, and will not
             execute Application_OnStart or Application_OnEnd.
             This can be a slight performance increase of 2-3% if
             you are not using $Application, but are using $Session.

            +Added $Session->Lock() / $Session->UnLock() API routines
             necessary additions since access to session is not
             serialized by default like IIS ASP.  Also prompted
             by change in locking code which retied to SDBM_File
             or DB_File each lock.  If you $Session->Lock / UnLock
             around many read/writes, you will increase performance.

            +Added StateCache config which, if set will cache
             the file handle locks for $Application and an internal
             database used for tracking $Session info.  This caching can
             make an ASP application perform up to 10% faster,
             at a cost of each web server process holding 2 more
             cached file handles open, per ASP application using
             this configuration.  The data written to or read from
             these state databases is not cached, just the locking
             file handles are held open.

            -Added in much more locking in session manager
             and session garbage collector to help avoid collisions
             between the two.  There were definite windows that the
             two would collide in, during which bad things could
             happen on a high volume site.

            -Fixed some warnings in DESTROY and ParseParams()

       $VERSION = 0.14; $DATE="07/29/1999";
            -CGI & StatINC or StatINCMatch would have bad results
             at times, with StatINC deleting dynamically compiled
             CGI subroutines, that were imported into other scripts
             and modules namespaces.

             A couple tweaks, and now StatINC & CGI play nice again ;)
             StatINCMatch should be safe to use in production with CGI.
             This affects in particular environments that use file upload,
             since CGI is loaded automatically by Apache::ASP to handle
             file uploads.

             This fix should also affect other seemingly random
             times when StatINC or StatINCMatch don't seem to do
             the right thing.

            +use of ASP objects like $Response are now "use strict"
             safe in scripts, while UniquePackages config is set.

            +Better handling of "use strict" errors in ASP scripts.
             The error is detected, and the developer is pointed to the
             Apache error log for the exact error.

             The script with "use strict" errors will be recompiled again.  Its seems
             though that "use strict" will only throw its error once, so that a script
             can be recompiled with the same errors, and work w/o any use strict
             error messaging.

       $VERSION = 0.12; $DATE="07/01/1999";
            -Compiles are now 10 +times faster for scripts with lots of big
             embedded perl blocks <% #perl %>

             Compiles were slow because of an old PerlScript compatibility
             parsing trick where $Request->QueryString('hi')->{item}
             would be parsed to $Request->QueryString('hi') which works.
             I think the regexp that I was using had O(n^2) characteristics
             and it took a really big perl block to 10 +seconds to parse
             to understand there was a problem :(

             I doubt anyone needed this compatibility, I don't even see
             any code that looks like this in the online PerlScript examples,
             so I've commented out this parsing trick for now.  If you
             need me to bring back this functionality, it will be in the
             form of a config setting.

             For information on PerlScript compatibility, see the PerlScript
             section in the ASP docs.

            -Added UniquePackages config option, that if set brings back
             the old method of compiling each ASP script into its own
             separate package.  As of v.10, scripts are compiled by default
             into the same package, so that scripts, dynamic includes & global.asa
             can share globals.  This BROKE scripts in the same ASP Application
             that defined the same sub routines, as their subs would redefine
             each other.

             UniquePackages has scripts compiled into separate perl packages,
             so they may define subs with the same name, w/o fear of overlap.
             Under this settings, scripts will not be able to share globals.

            -Secure field for cookies in $Response->Cookies() must be TRUE to
             force cookie to be secure.  Before, it just had to be defined,
             which gave wrong behavior for Secure => 0.

            +$Response->{IsClientConnected} set to one by default.  Will
             work out a real value when I upgrade to apache 1.3.6.  This
             value has no meaning before, as apache aborts the perl code
             when a client drops its connection in earlier versions.

            +better compile time debugging of dynamic includes, with
             Debug 2 setting

            +"use strict" friendly handling of compiling dynamic includes
             with errors

       $VERSION = 0.11; $DATE="06/24/1999";
            +Lots of documentation updates

            +The MailHost config option is the smtp server used for
             relay emails for the Mail* config options.

            +MailAlertTo config option used for sending a short administrative
             alert for an internal ASP error, server code 500.  This is the
             compliment to MailErrorsTo, but is suited for sending a to a
             small text based pager.  The email sent by MailErrorsTo would
             then be checked by the web admin for quick response & debugging
             for the incident.

             The MailAlertPeriod config specifies the time in minutes during
             which only one alert will be sent, which defaults to 20.

            +MailErrorsTo config options sends the results of a 500 error
             to the email address specified as if Debug were set to 2.
             If Debug 2 is set, this config will not be on, as it is
             for production use only.  Debug settings less than 2 only
             log errors to the apache server error log.

            -StatINCMatch / StatINC can be used in production and work
             even after a server graceful restart, which is essential for
             a production server.

            -Content-Length header is set again, if BufferingOn is set, and
             haven't $Response->Flush()'d.  This broke when I introduce
             the Script_OnEnd event handler.

            +Optimized reloading of the GlobalPackage perl module upon changes,
             so that scripts and dynamic includes don't have to be recompiled.
             The global.asa will still have to be though.  Since we started
             compiling all routines into a package that can be named with
             GlobalPackage, we've been undeffing compiled scripts and includes
             when the real GlobalPackage changed on disk, as we do a full sweep
             through the namespace.  Now, we skip those subs that we know to
             be includes or scripts.

            -Using Apache::Symbol::undef() to undefine precompiled scripts
             and includes when reloading those scripts.  Doing just an undef()
             would sometimes result in an "active subroutine undef" error.
             This bug came out when I started thrashing the StatINC system
             for production use.

            +StatINCMatch setting created for production use reloading of
             perl modules.  StatINCMatch allows StatINC reloading of a
             subset of all the modules defined in %INC, those that match
             $module =~ /$StatINCMatch/, where module is some module name
             like Class/Struct.pm

            +Reoptimized pod comment parsing.  I slowed it down to sync
             lines numbers in the last version, but found another corner I could cut.

       $VERSION = 0.10; $DATE="05/24/1999";
            += improvement; - = bug fix

            +Added index.html file to ./eg to help people wade through
             the examples.  This one has been long overdue.

            +Clean config option, or setting $Response->{Clean} to 1 - 9,
             uses HTML::Clean to compress text/html output of ASP scripts.
             I like the Clean 1 setting which is lightweight, stripping
             white space for about 10% compression, at a cost of less than
             a 5% performance penalty.

            +Using pod style commenting no longer confuses the line
             numbering.  ASP script line numbers are almost exactly match
             their compiled perl version, except that normal inline includes
             (not dynamic) insert extra text which can confuse line numbering.
             If you want perl error line numbers to entirely sync with your
             ASP scripts, I would suggest learning how to use dynamic includes,
             as opposed to inline includes.

            -Wrapped StatINC reloading of libs in an eval, and capturing
             error for Debug 2 setting.  This makes changing libs with StatINC
             on a little more friendly when there are errors.

            -$Request->QueryString() now stores multiple values for the
             same key, just as $Request->Form() has since v.07.  In
             wantarray() context like @vals = $Request->QueryString('dupkey'),
             @vals will store whatever values where associated with dupkey
             in the query string like (1,2) from: ?dupkey=1&dupkey=2

            +The GlobalPackage config directive may be defined
             to explicitly set the perl module that all scripts and global.asa
             are compiled into.

            -Dynamic includes may be in the Global directory, just like
             normal includes.

            +Perl script generated from asp scripts should match line
             for line, seen in errors, except when using inline (default)
             includes, pod comments, or <% #comment %> perl comments, which
             will throw off the line counts by adding text, removing
             text, or having an extra newline added, respectively.

            -Script_OnEnd may now send output to the browser.  Before
             $main::Response->End() was being called at the end of the
             main script preventing further output.

           ++All scripts are compiled as routines in a namespace uniquely
             defined by the global.asa of the ASP application.  Thus,
             scripts, includes, and global.asa routines will share
             all globals defined in the global.asa namespace.   This means
             that globals between scripts will be shared, and globals
             defined in a global.asa will be available to scripts.

             Scripts used to have their own namespace, thus globals
             were not shared between them.

            +a -o $output_dir switch on the ./cgi/asp script allows
             it to execute scripts and write their output to an output
             directory.  Useful for building static html sites, based on
             asp scripts.  An example use would be:

               asp -b -o out *.asp

             Without an output directory, script output is written to STDOUT

       $VERSION = 0.09; $DATE="04/22/1999";
            +Updated Makefile.PL optional modules output for CGI & DB_File

            +Improved docs on $Response->Cookies() and $Request->Cookies()

            +Added PERFORMANCE doc to main README, and added sub section
             on precompiling scripts with Apache::ASP->Loader()

            +Naming of CompileIncludes switched over to DynamicIncludes
             for greater clarity.

            +Dynamic includes can now reference ASP objects like $Session
             w/o the $main::* syntax.  These subs are no longer anonymous
             subs, and are now compiled into the namespace of the global.asa package.

            +Apache::ASP->Loader() precompiles dynamic includes too. Making this work
             required fixing some subtle bugs / dependencies in the compiling process.

            +Added Apache::ASP->Loader() similar to Apache::RegistryLoader for
             precompiling ASP scripts.  Precompile a whole site at server
             startup with one function call.

            +Prettied the error messaging with Debug 2.

            +$Response->Debug(@args) debugging extension, which
             allows a developer to hook into the module's debugging,
             and only have @args be written to error_log when Debug is greater
             than 0.

            -Put write locking code around State writes, like $Session
             and $Application.  I thought I fixed this bug a while ago.

            -API change: converted $Session->Timeout() and $Session->SessionID()
             methods into $Session->{Timeout} and $Session->{SessionID} properties.
             The use of these properties as methods is deprecated, but
             backwards compatibility will remain.  Updated ./eg/session.asp
             to use these new properties.

            +Implemented $Response->{PICS} which if set sends out a PICS-Label
             HTTP header, useful for ratings.

            +Implemented $Response->{CacheControl} and $Response->{Charset} members.
             By default, CacheControl is 'private', and this value gets sent out
             every request as HTTP header Cache-Control.  Charset appends itself
             onto the content type header.

            +Implemented $Request->BinaryRead(), $Request->{TotalBytes},
             documented them, and updated ./eg/form.asp for an example usage.

            +Implemented $Response->BinaryWrite(), documented, and created
             and example in ./eg/binary_write.htm

            +Implemented $Server->MapPath() and created example of its use
             in ./eg/server.htm

            -$Request->Form() now reads file uploads correctly with
             the latest CGI.pm, where $Request->Form('file_field') returns
             the actual file name uploaded, which can be used as a file handle
             to read in the data.  Before, $Request->Form('file_field') would
             return a glob that looks like *Fh::filename, so to get the file
             name, you would have to parse it like =~ s/^\*Fh\:\://,
             which you no longer have to do.  As long as parsing was done as
             mentioned, the change should be backwards compatible.

            +Updated  +enhanced documentation on file uploads.  Created extra
             comments about it as an FAQ, and under $Response->Form(), the latter
             being an obvious place for a developer to look for it.

            +Updated ./eg/file_upload.asp to show use of non file form data,
             with which we had a bug before.

            +Finished retieing *STDIN to cached STDIN contents, so that
             CGI input routines may be used transparently, along side with
             use of $Request->Form()

            +Cleaned up and optimized $Request code

            +Updated documentation for CGI input & file uploads.  Created
             file upload FAQ.

            +Reworked ./eg/cgi.htm example to use CGI input routines
             after doing a native read of STDIN.

            ++Added dynamic includes with <!--include file=file args=@args-->
             extension.  This style of include is compiled as an anonymous sub &
             cached, and then executed with @args passed to the subroutine for
             execution.  This is include may also be rewritten as a new API
             extension: $Response->Include('file', @args)

            +Added ./eg/compiled_includes.htm example documenting new dynamic includes.

            +Documented SSI: native file includes, and the rest with filtering
             to Apache::SSI

            +Turned the documentation of Filter config to value of Off so
             people won't cut and paste the On config by default.

            +Added SecureSession config option, which forces session cookie to
             be sent only under https secured www page requests.

            +Added StateDB config option allows use of DB_File for $Session, since
             default use of SDBM_File is limited.  See StateDB in README.

            +file include syntax w/o quotes supported like <!--#include file=test.inc-->

            +Nested includes are supported, with includes including each other.
             Recursive includes are detected and errors out when an include has been
             included 100 times for a script.  Better to quit early than
             have a process spin out of control. (PORTABLE ? probably not)

            +Allow <!--include file=file.inc--> notation w/o quotes around file names

            -PerlSetEnv apache conf setting now get passed through to
             $Request->ServerVariables. This update has ServerVariables
             getting data from %ENV instead of $r->cgi_env

            +README FAQ for PerlHandler errors

       $VERSION = 0.08; $DATE="02/06/1999";
            ++SSI with Apache::Filter & Apache::SSI, see config options & ./eg files
             Currently filtering only works in the direction Apache::ASP -> Apache::SSI,
             will not work the other way around, as SSI must come last in a set of filters

            +SSI file includes may reference files in the Global directory, better
             code sharing

            - <% @array... %> no longer dropped from code.

            +perl =pod comments are stripped from script before compiling, and associated
             PodComments configuration options.

            +Command line cgi/asp script takes various options, and allows execution
             of multiple asp scripts at one time.  This script should be used for
             command line debugging.  This is also the beginning of building
             a static site from asp scripts with the -b option, suppressing headers.

            +$Response->AddHeader('Set-Cookie') works for multiple cookies.

            -$Response->Cookies('foo', '0') works, was dropping 0 because of boolean test

            -Fixed up some config doc errors.

       $VERSION = 0.07; $DATE="01/20/1999";
            -removed SIG{__WARN__} handler, it was a bad idea.

            -fixes file locking on QNX, work around poor flock porting

            +removed message about Win32::OLE on UNIX platforms from Makefile.PL

            -Better lock garbage collection.  Works with StatINC seamlessly.

            -Multiple select forms now work in array context with $Response->Form()
                   @values = $Response->Form('multi');

            -Better CGI.pm compatibility with $r->header_out('Content-type'),
             improved garbage collection under modperl, esp. w/ file uploads

       $VERSION = 0.06; $DATE="12/21/1998";
            +Application_OnStart & Application_OnEnd event handlers support.

            -Compatible with CGI.pm 2.46 headers()

            -Compatible with CGI.pm $q = new CGI({}), caveat: does not set params

            +use strict; followed by use of objects like $Session is fine.

            -Multiple cookies may be set per script execution.

            +file upload implemented via CGI.pm

            ++global.asa implemented with events Session_OnStart and Session_OnEnd
             working appropriately.

            +StateDir configuration directive implemented.
             StateDir allows the session state directory to be specified separately
             from the Global directory, useful for operating systems with caching file
             systems.

            +StateManager config directive.  StateManager specifies how frequently
             Sessions are cleaned up, with 10 (default) meaning that old Sessions
             will be cleaned up 10 times per SessionTimeout period (default 20 minutes).

            +$Application->SessionCount() implemented, non-portable method.
                   : returns the number of currently active sessions

            -STOP button fix.  Users may hit STOP button during script
             execution, and Apache::ASP will cleanup with a routine registered
             in Apache's $r->register_cleanup.  Works well supposedly.

            +PerlScript compatibility work, trying to make ports smoother.
                   : Collection emulator, no ->{Count} property
                   : $.*(.*)->{Item} parsed automatically,
                     shedding the ->{Item} for Collection support (? better way ?)
                   : No VBScript dates support, just HTTP RFC dates with HTTP::Date
                   : Win32::OLE::in not supported, just use "keys %{$Collection}"

            +./cgi/asp script for testing scripts from the command line
                   : will be upgraded to CGI method of doing asp
                   : is not "correct" in anyway, so not documented for now
                     but still useful

            +strips DOS carriage returns from scripts automatically, so that
             programs like FrontPage can upload pages to UNIX servers
             without perl choking on the extra \r characters.

       $VERSION = 0.05; $DATE="10/19/1998";
            +Added PERFORMANCE doc, which includes benchmarks  +hints.

            +Better installation warnings and errors for other modules required.

            -Turned off StatINC in eg/.htaccess, as not everyone installs Devel::Symdump

            -Fixed AUTOLOAD state bug, which wouldn't let you each through state
             objects, like %{$Session}, or each %$Session, (bug introduced in v.04)

            +Parses ASP white space better.  HTML output matches author's intent
             by better dealing with white space surrounding <% perl blocks %>

            -Scalar insertion code <%=$foo%> can now span many lines.

            +Added include.t test script for includes.

            +Script recompiles when included files change.

            +Files can be included in script with
             SSI <!--#include file="filename"--> syntax, needs to be
             done in ASP module to allow compilation of included code and html
             into script.  Future chaining with Apache::SSI will allow static
             html includes, and other SSI directives

       $VERSION = 0.04; $DATE="10/14/1998";
            +Example script eg/cgi.htm demonstrating CGI.pm use for output.

            +Optimized ASP parsing, faster and more legible executing code
                   : try 'die();' in code with setting PerlSetVar Debug 2

            +Cleaned up code for running with 'use strict'

            -Fixed directory handle leak on Solaris, from not closing after opendir()

            +StatINC overhaul.  StatINC setting now works as it should, with
             the caveat that exported functions will not be refreshed.

            +NoState setting optimization, disallows $Application & $Session

            +$Application->*Lock() functions implemented

            -SoftRedirect setting for those who want scripts to keep running
             after a Redirect()

            +SessionSerialize setting to lock session while script is running
                   : Microsoft ASP style session locking
                   : For a session, scripts execute one at a time
                   : NOT recommended use, please see note.

            -MLDBM can be used for other things without messing up internal use
                   : before if it was used with different DB's and serializers,
                     internal state could be lost.

            --State file locking.  Corruption worries, and loss of data no more.

            +CGI header support, developer can use CGI.pm for *output*, or just print()
                   : print "Set-Cookie: test=cookie\n", and things will just work
                   : use CGI.pm for output
                   : utilizes $r->send_cgi_header(), thanks Doug!

            +Improved Cookie implementation, more flexible and complete
                   - Domain cookie key now works
                   : Expire times now taken from time(), and relative time in sec
                   : Request->Cookies() reading more flexible, with wantarray()
                     on hash cookie values, %hash = $Request->Cookie('test');

            -make test module naming correction, was t.pm, now T.pm for Unix

            +POD / README cleanup, formatting and HTML friendly.

       $VERSION = 0.03; $DATE="09/14/1998";
            +Installation 'make test' now works

            +ActiveX objects on Win32 implemented with $Server->CreateObject()

            +Cookies implemented: $Response->Cookies() & $Request->Cookies()

            -Fixed $Response object API, converting some methods to object members.
             Deprecated methods, but backwards compatible.

            +Improved error messaging, debug output

            +$, influences $Response->Write(@strings) behavior

            +perl print() works, sending output to $Response object

            +$Response->Write() prints scalars, arrays, and hashes.  Before only scalars.

            +Begin implementation of $Server object.

            +Implemented $Response->{Expires} and $Response->{ExpiresAbsolute}

            +Added "PerlSetVar StatINC" config option

            +$0 is aliased to current script filename

            +ASP Objects ($Response, etc.) are set in main package
             Thus notation like $main::Response->Write() can be used anywhere.

       $VERSION = 0.02; $DATE="07/12/1998";
            ++Session Manager, won't break under denial of service attack

            +Fleshed out $Response, $Session objects, almost full implementation.

            +Enormously more documentation.

            -Fixed error handling with Debug = 2.

            -Documentation fixed for pod2man support.  README now more man-like.

            -Stripped \r\n dos characters from installation files

            -755 mode set for session state directory when created

            -Loads Win32/OLE properly, won't break with UNIX

       $VERSION = 0.01; $DATE="06/26/1998";
            Syntax Support
            --------------
            Initial release, could be considered alpha software.
            Allows developers to embed perl in html ASP style.

            <!-- sample here -->
            <html>
            <body>
            <% for(1..10) { %>
                   counting: <%=$_%> <br>
            <% } %>
            </body>
            </html>

            ASP Objects
            -----------
            $Session, $Application, $Response, $Request objects available
            for use in asp pages.

            $Session & $Application data is preserved using SDBM files.

            $Session id's are tracked through the use of cookies.

            Security
            --------
            Timeouts any attempt to use a session id that doesn't already
            exist.  Should stop hackers, since there is no wire speed guessing
            cookies.

LICENSE

       Copyright (c) 1998-2008, Josh Chamas, Chamas Enterprises Inc.  All rights reserved.  This
       program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as
       Perl itself.

       Apache::ASP is a perl native port of Active Server Pages for Apache and mod_perl.