One of the modules I have recently released to CPAN reads JSON data from STDIN on a webserver.

One of the benefits of writing tests (and particularly of TDD) is that it can give you a signal about your interface: if something is difficult to write tests for, maybe it's the interface that should change.

Reading from STDIN on a webserver sounds very much like CGI. That's not a problem as such, but there are many other interfaces where data from the web browser is not passed via STDIN. Already FastCGI, which is only a tiny step away from CGI, does not use that simple interface (but FCGI and CGI::Fast can do a lot to hide that fact). And when it comes to other interfaces to webservers, like modperl, STDIN is not used at all (again, there are compatibility layers like ModPerl::Registry).

In other words, passing a handle to the reading function might be a smarter solution. Perhaps, your module should not fetch the data at all, but just accept the data as a scalar value. Both would also allow for easier testing.

Alexander

--
Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)

In reply to Re^2: STDIN typeglob by afoken
in thread STDIN typeglob by Bod

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