OpenInteract Glossary
- action
- An action is a configuration directive that maps a URL to
a handler. You setup actions within a package in the
action.perl
file, and default actions are defined
in the server.perl
file.
- handler
- A handler is a piece of Perl code that ultimately returns
a fragment of HTML, or more generally, text. The handler
manages action security and manipulates objects (fetches,
creates, saves, removes) and hands the data to the template
for display.
- package
- Unit of distribution for a given functionality. This
includes all of the necessary configuration, templates, Perl
code, etc. You can install, upgrade and remove packages to or
from your website. You configure a package using the
action.perl
and spops.perl
files.
- server
- An Apache/mod_perl process that runs the code making up
one or more websites. You configure the server using
httpd.conf
and httpd_modperl.conf
files.
- stash class
- A stash class is Perl code that holds objects and other
information for a website from request to request. Every
website has its own stash class. (Not to be confused with Perl
package symbol tables.)
- template
- A template is a piece of text that contains template
processing directives interspersed with other text. Normally
in OpenInteract, this will be Template Toolkit processing
directives interspersed with HTML.
- tool
- Loosely speaking, a package implements a tool. This is not
exactly true, since a package can choose to implement more
than one tool. In general, you will find that there is a
one-to-one mapping between a package and a tool. A tool
consists of a set of templates that manipulate a common set of
objects.
- website
- An instantiation of the base OpenInteract framework plus a
set of user-defined packages. You configure the website using
the
server.perl
file.