This is the README file for the bedrock project.

• See the NEWS file for changes and updates to Bedrock

Documentation	Description
README.md	Overview of Bedrock and this repository \
README-CI.md	Info on the GitHub Actions build system
README-Apache.md	Info on running Bedrock as an Apache application
README-LOGS.md	Guide to Bedrock logging

Build and Test Status

RPM Build Status (master branch)

Overview

Bedrock is a server side web development framework that can be used with Apache (and probably other web servers). It allows fullstack web developers to create dynamic web pages through the use of a small set of HTML-like tags that implement a robust templating system. Bedrock is an enabling technology that glues together HTML pages and dynamic data (HTML form data, data from databases, and system services) to create web applications.

Developers can extend Bedrock in interesting ways through the use of Perl plugins.

Bedrock differs significantly from most web application development environments that either generate HTML pages as output (e.g. CGIs, Servlets) or are themselves programs embedded within HTML pages (e.g. PHP, Mason, ASP, etc). By allowing the developer to assemble pages from object oriented components, Bedrock allows front-end web developers and back-end developers to collaborate effectively using familiar, well documented interfaces.

Although Bedrock has grown to include many features, some of which are not found in other web application environments, some interesting and robust applications can be built with only 7 Bedrock tags and the built-in objects $input, $header, $session, and $config:

<if>
<null>
<var>
<sqlselect>
<sql>
<sqlconnect>
<foreach>

Running Bedrock in a Shell

Bedrock can also be run in a shell as a templating engine.

echo '<trace --output $env>' | bedrock
echo 'Bedrock says <var $input.text>' | bedrock text='Hello World!'

Installation

RPM

To install Bedrock from rpm, visit http://repo.openbedrock.net.

Manual Installation

You'll need a few Perl modules installed on your system before you start, but configure will look for them and let you know if you're ready to build Bedrock.

See the Prerequisites section below for other programs that must be installed and configured on your system before you can install the Bedrock package.

git clone https://github.com/rlauer6/openbedrock.git
cd openbedrock
./bootstrap
./configure --prefix=/usr
make && sudo make install
bedrock --version

Installing as a CPAN Distribution

Experimental

Bedrock is not and may never be, uploaded to CPAN, however it is possible to create a distribution tarball capable of being installed using cpanm.

Prerequisites

In addition to the prerequistes for manually installing Bedrock you will also need the artifacts listed below.

• make-cpan-dist

Follow the instructions below to create a distribution tarball.

./bootstrap
./configure
cd cpan
make cpan

After running the above recipe you should have a tarball in the cpan directory.

tar xfvz Bedrock-3.3.0.tar.gz
cd Bedrock-3.3.0.tar.gz
perl Makefile.PL
make && make install

Differences Between the CPAN Distribution and Manual Installation

The manual installation method assumes you are trying to install all of the components of Bedrock in order to create a web application. Accordingly, a manual install will by default, install an Apache virtual host and all of the necessary Apache configuration files automatically. Using the CPAN distribution tarball will install the core Bedrock system modules that will allow you to use Bedrock as a templating engine programmatically (using Perl modules) or using the command line (bedrock.pl).

Additional files that make up the web framework are included in the distribution but are not automatically installed into your web application hierarchy.

A separate utility is included for configuring your web environment that should be run after installing Bedrock from the distribution tarball.

See man bedrock-site-install for more details.

Why Isn't Bedrock on CPAN

There are many good templating modules (e.g. Template::Toolkit, Mason, HTML::Template) that are well supported by the Perl community. Newer web application frameworks like Mojolicious are rapidly replacing the use of templating packages alone as a web development framework. Bedrock was born in the late 90's when other solutions were being born as well. It was used (and is still used today) by the company that funded its development.

Testing the Installation

There are some tests you can run that will exercise Bedrock tags and other Perl modules if you've installed Bedrock manually. After installing all of the pre-requisites and installing Bedrock, try:

cd src/main/perl
make test

...and

cd src/main/perl/lib/
make test

More Information

• See the NEWS file for changes for this release, and a running list of changes from previous releases. Any incompatibilities with previous versions will be noted in the 'NEWS' file.

Prerequisites

Bedrock is intended to be built on Unix and Unix-like systems, so expects a standard set of utilities (cat, sed, awk, rm, ...) to be present. These utilities are not explicitly listed below as prerequisites as they should be present on any modern Unix or GNU/Linux system (or Cygwin, if the Universe hates you ;-). We also do not explicitly list those Perl modules that are part of the core library shipped with Perl (e.g., Data::Dumper, MIME::Base64, etc.)

The various Bedrock components are primarily implemented in Perl, so of course, a Perl installation is needed. Current Bedrock development is done using Perl 5.16, but any 5.10.x+ features that are used should be conditional. This means that Bedrock should work with versions of Perl prior to 5.16 as well.

Here's a list (not guaranteed to be complete) of the packages you may need to install:

• automake
• autoconf
• apache2
• make

Ubuntu/Debian

Ubuntu support via Debian packages will likely never happen, however we believe Bedrock will run on Ubuntu using the manual installation method or as a CPAN distribution.

At one time a Debian package was available for Bedrock, however the packaging scripts have gone out of maintenance. Volunteers welcome. I'm going to try to resurrect the Debian packaging scripts and see if we can get a first class package for Ubuntu users. In the interim, take a look at the setup-ubuntu.sh script as a starting point.

If you want to install Bedrock on Debian based system like Ubunutu, first satisfy the Bedrock Perl dependencies using apt-get or install them manually from CPAN.

Perl module dependencies are listed in the configure.ac file. Some are marked as optional although you may need to have them installed to build the distribution. While you may be able to load these modules from Debian repositories, using cpanm https://metacpan.org/pod/App::cpanminus is preferable as it will get you the latest version of these modules.

After satisfying dependencies, build and install Bedrock in the standard Unix way:

 $ ./configure --prefix=/usr
 $ make
 $ sudo make install

Testing

There is a comprehensive set of unit tests that test Bedrock and many of the classes that make up Bedrock. See the README.md files in src/main/perl and src/main/perl/lib for details on testing your Bedrock installation.

Performance

• Bedrock running as a CGI should work with no compatibility issues under Apache 1.x/2.x+
• For increased performance use mod_perl with Apache 2.2/2.4.

Creating a persistent Session Database

Bedrock implements persistent user sessions using an application plugin called BLM::Startup::UserSession. The reference implementation installed by Bedrock uses a MySQL database to persist user data.

There are also implementations using PostgreSQL, SQLite and even Redis.

To create the database and table necessary to use the Bedrock $session object, you'll want to do something similar to:

$ cat /usr/share/bedrock/create-session.sql | mysql -u root -p bedrock

More Information on Sessions

• See perldoc BLM::Startup::UserSession for more details.