NAME

CGI::Application::Plugin::DevPopup - Runtime cgiapp info in a popup window

VERSION

version 1.08

SYNOPSIS

End user information

This module provides a plugin framework for displaying runtime information about your CGI::Application app in a popup window. A sample Timing plugin is provided to show how it works:

    BEGIN { $ENV{'CAP_DEVPOPUP_EXEC'} = 1; } # turn it on for real
    use CGI::Application::Plugin::DevPopup;
    use CGI::Application::Plugin::DevPopup::Timing;

    The rest of your application follows
    ...

Now whenever you access a runmode, a window pops up over your content, showing information about how long the various stages have taken. Adding other CAP::DevPopup plugins will get you more information. A HTML::Tidy plugin showing you how your document conforms to W3C standards is available: see CGI::Application::Plugin::HtmlTidy.

The output consists of a Table of Contents, and a bunch of reports. A rough translation into plain text could look like this:

    Devpopup report for My::App -> add_timing

    * Timings - Total runtime: 3.1178 sec.

    +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
    | Timings                                                               |
    +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
    | Application started at: Thu Sep 22 02:55:35 2005                      |
    | From                       To                         Time taken      |
    |-----------------------------------------------------------------------|
    | init                       prerun                     0.107513 sec.   |
    | prerun                     before expensive operation 0.000371 sec.   |
    | before expensive operation after expensive operation  3.006688 sec.   |
    | after expensive operation  load_tmpl(dp.html)         0.000379 sec.   |
    | load_tmpl(dp.html)         postrun                    0.002849 sec.   |
    +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

The reports expand and collapse by clicking on the ToC entry or the report header.

Developer information

Creating a new plugin for DevPopup is fairly simple. CAP::DevPopup registers a new callback point (named "devpopup_report"), which it uses to collect output from your plugin. You can add a callback to that point, and return your formatted output from there. The callback has this signature:

    sub callback($cgiapp_class, $outputref)

You pass your output to the devpopup object by calling

    $cgiapp_class->devpopup->add_report(
                title   => $title,
                summary => $summary,
                report  => $body,
    );

You are receiving $outputref, because DevPopup wants to be the last one to be called in the postrun callback. If you had wanted to act at postrun time, then please do so with this variable, and not through a callback at postrun.

The "on" switch

Since this is primarily a development plugin, and you wouldn't want it to run in your production code, an environment variable named CAP_DEVPOPUP_EXEC has to be set to 1 for this module to function, and it must be present at compile time. This means you should place it in a BEGIN{} block, or use SetEnv or PerlSetEnv (remember to set those before any PerlRequire or PerlModule lines).

Absence of the environment variable turns this module into a no-op: while the plugin and its plugins are still loaded, they won't modify your output.

Available Plugins

o CGI::Application::Plugin::DevPopup::Timing, CGI::Application::Plugin::DevPopup::Log and CGI::Application::Plugin::DevPopup::HTTPHeaders are bundled with this distribution.
o CGI::Application::Plugin::HtmlTidy integrates with this module.
o CGI::Application::Plugin::TT integrates with this module.

EXPORTS

•: devpopup
This method is the only one exported into your module, and can be used to access the underlying DevPopup object. See below for the methods that this object exposes.

METHODS

•: add_report( %fields )
Adds a new report about the current run of the application. The following fields are supported:

title
A short title for your report
summary
An optional one- or two-line summary of your findings
report
Your full output
severity
An optional value specifying the importance of your report. Accepted values are qw/debug info warning error fatal/. This value is used to color-code the report headers.
script
If you have custom javascript, then please pass it in through this field. Otherwise if it's embedded in your report, it will break the popup window. I will take care of the surrounding "<script"> tags, so just the code body is needed.

INSTALLATION

To install this module, run:

    cpan CGI::Application::Plugin::DevPopup

To mnually install this module, run the following commands:

    perl Makefile.PL
    make
    make test
    make install

AUTHOR

Rhesa Rozendaal, rhesa@cpan.org

BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature requests to bug-cgi-application-plugin-devpopup@rt.cpan.org, or through the web interface at <http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=CGI-Application-Plugin-DevPopup>. I will be notified, and then you'll automatically be notified of progress on your bug as I make changes.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Mark Stosberg for the initial idea, and for pushing me to write it.
Sam Tregar for providing me with the skeleton cgiapp_postrun.
Joshua Miller for providing the ::Log plugin.
Everybody on the cgiapp mailinglist and on #cgiapp for cheering me on :-)

COPYRIGHT & LICENSE

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.