in reply to Persistant data with Mason

if you're needing access to this data from with Mason, you can use Mason's built in data caching. First you create a component file to encapsulate the data you want to share across requests and processes (i.e. "_getSharedData").
# mason component _getSharedData my $value = $m->cache->get("key"); return $value if(defined($value)); # compute $value here since it hasn't been stored yet $value = $$; $m->cache->set(key=>$value); return $value
Then you can call that component anytime you want to retrieve it.
my $value = $m->comp('/_getSharedData');
Note that Mason's cache, by default, is stored on disk but you can use any Cache::Cache sub-class that you want (Cache::SharedMemoryCache would allow you to share the data across processes without writing it to disk).
$m->cache(cache_class => 'SharedMemoryCache')->set(key=>$value); $value = $m->cache(cache_class => 'SharedMemoryCache')->get("key");
Also, $m->cache->get("key") is scoped to the component you are calling it from (so don't expect to be able to access the same data from another component without calling _getSharedData

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

HTH - Brian

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Re^2: Persistant data with Mason
by cowboy (Friar) on Feb 11, 2005 at 21:36 UTC
    I believe Cache::Cache recommends using Cache::FileCache rather than Cache::SharedMemoryCache. Other than that, I agree, a cache is probably the easiest way to go. Cache::FileCache on a tmpfs or other sort of ram disk, is quite quick. Alternatively, as others have suggested, a light weight DB backend also makes sharing easy.
Re: Persistant data with Mason
by crenz (Priest) on Feb 12, 2005 at 00:23 UTC
    Thanks, this is actually a very good suggestion. Using the environment won't work, as I'll be accessing the Perl interpreter's %ENV, not Apache's. I might dabble with Shared Memory directly some time, but for now, I think I'll just use Mason's caching capabilities to avoid reinventing the wheel...