Mason (Perl)
Encyclopedia
HTML::Mason, or Mason for short, is a web application framework
written in Perl
. It is distributed on CPAN
.
Its features make it a suitable backend for high load sites serving dynamic content, such as online newspapers or database driven e-commerce sites. The author claims that several popular web sites including Amazon.com
and Delicious are or were powered by Mason. An extensive list of sites using Mason can be found at Mason HQ.
The general style of Mason is similar to StoryServer
or even PHP
, but Mason uses Perl as its control language, and as such can use almost any CPAN
module.
Mason can be used with Apache HTTP Server
via mod perl
- for which Mason provides its own handler, HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler. It also has support for CGI
, and can therefore run on any CGI-enabled web server.
Web application framework
A web application framework is a software framework that is designed to support the development of dynamic websites, web applications and web services. The framework aims to alleviate the overhead associated with common activities performed in Web development...
written in Perl
Perl
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...
. It is distributed on CPAN
CPAN
CPAN, the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, is an archive of nearly 100,000 modules of software written in Perl, as well as documentation for it. It has a presence on the World Wide Web at and is mirrored worldwide at more than 200 locations...
.
Its features make it a suitable backend for high load sites serving dynamic content, such as online newspapers or database driven e-commerce sites. The author claims that several popular web sites including Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
and Delicious are or were powered by Mason. An extensive list of sites using Mason can be found at Mason HQ.
The general style of Mason is similar to StoryServer
StoryServer
StoryServer was the name the company Vignette gave to CNET's web publishing application "PRISM" when they bought it. It used a document publishing model to move templates through various workflow stages, and was thus quite useful to the newly formed Web publishing world.The templates were defined...
or even PHP
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
, but Mason uses Perl as its control language, and as such can use almost any CPAN
CPAN
CPAN, the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, is an archive of nearly 100,000 modules of software written in Perl, as well as documentation for it. It has a presence on the World Wide Web at and is mirrored worldwide at more than 200 locations...
module.
Mason can be used with Apache HTTP Server
Apache HTTP Server
The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache , is web server software notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. In 2009 it became the first web server software to surpass the 100 million website milestone...
via mod perl
Mod perl
mod_perl is an optional module for the Apache HTTP server. It embeds a Perl interpreter into the Apache server, so that dynamic content produced by Perl scripts can be served in response to incoming requests, without the significant overhead of re-launching the Perl interpreter for each request...
- for which Mason provides its own handler, HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler. It also has support for CGI
Common Gateway Interface
The Common Gateway Interface is a standard method for web servers software to delegate the generation of web pages to executable files...
, and can therefore run on any CGI-enabled web server.