CGI::GuruMeditation -- Guru Meditation for CGIs
This is a small module accompanying the CGI module, providing the display of an error screen (somewhat resembling the classical red-on-black blinking Guru Meditation from the good-old AmigaOS before version 2.04) in case of abnormal termination of a CGI.
The module simply installs a $SIG{__DIE__} handler which sends a HTTP response showing a HTML/CSS based screen which optionally includes the Perl run-time error message,
an excerpt from the CGI source code and the Perl run-time environment variables.
This provides both optically more pleasant and functionally more elaborate error messages for CGIs.
This module supports both the regular CGI and the Apache/mod_perl CGI environment.
The following options can be passed either during module importing or with the configure function:
Set an explicit name for the CGI application.
Default is derived from CGI environment variable SCRIPT_FILENAME.
This is disabled for identification reasons in the error screen signature text.
Enables (1) or disables (0) debugging informations like the run-time error message, the source-code excerpt and the run-time environment variables.
This small module actually was a quick hack and proof of concept during the development of OSSP quos in 2004. It was later found useful and reusable enough for other CGIs and encapsulated into a stand-alone module. It was worked-off in July 2006 to support Apache/mod_perl, configuration options, debug information, etc. In September 2006 run-time stack backtrace information was added and the visual appearance further improved.
Ralf S. Engelschall <rse@engelschall.com>
Under the Apache/mod_perl CGI environment compile-time errors cannot be catched due to the design of mod_perl and its use of the Perl eval construct.
CGI, CGI::Carp.
