STDIN or via CGI::Fast -- neither of which are available to me

STDIN not available? EH?? I've never seen an environment where stdin wasn't available. Even if you opened STDIN directly

close STDIN;
open STDIN,"< myfile.text" or die "myfile.txt: $!";
... do stuff
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nginx-embedded perl module

never heard of it :)

So http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpPerlModule? In that case,

;P

local *STDIN;
open STDIN, '<',  $r->request_body_file or die $!;
binmode STDIN;
my $q = CGI->new( \*STDIN );
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:)

my $body = Nginx_Body ( $r );
my $uploads     = $body->upload;     # hashref
## cleanup temp files
undef $uploads;
undef $body;

sub Nginx_Body {
    my $r = shift;
    my $tmpdir = shift;
    
    my $content_type   = $r->headers_in('Content-Type');
    my $content_length = $r->headers_in('Content-Length');

    my $body   = HTTP::Body->new( $content_type, $content_length );
    $body->tmpdir( $tmpdir ) if $tmpdir;
    my $length = $content_length;

    open my($bodyfh),  '<:raw',  $r->request_body_file or die $!;

    while ( $length ) {
        my $read = read(
            $bodyfh,
            my $buffer,
            ( $length < 8192 ) ? $length : 8192
        );
        my $bufferlength = length($buffer);
        die "IMPOSSIBLE $read != $bufferlength " if $read != $bufferle
+ngth ;
        $length -= $bufferlength;
        
        $body->add( $buffer );
    }
    return $body;
}
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Although, after reading a bit from Nginx - full-featured perl support for nginx nginx might have this feature already , or at least it should :)

Your afterthought speculation is correct. I probably should have pointed out straight away that the Nginx:: module and related others such as are found on CPAN is/are not the same as the interface module distributed with nginx (called simply nginx::, notice lower case). This confused me greatly at first.

Indeed, If I gather right, the Nginx (capitalized) module is a relic from early nginx distribution days. While now (apparently) deprecated, unfortunately it contained API features not present in the (current) nginx distribution's module. So, for example, there is no $r->upload() method. There's also no $r->headers_in() method (note plural) to enumerate all headers; one must anticipate them in order to use $r->header_in() for each.

In any case, after seeing your code, and to my optimistic delight, HTTP::Body does indeed look like it will put the uploaded "parts" in temporary files, with metadata information in a $body->upload() hash accessor. So thanks for that suggestion! I'll try that one too before reporting back, too.