NAME
Plack::Middleware::Debug - display information about the current
request/response
SYNOPSIS
enable "Debug";
DESCRIPTION
The debug middleware offers a configurable set of panels that displays
information about the current request and response. The information is
generated only for responses with a status of 200 (OK) and a
Content-Type that contains text/html or application/xhtml+xml and is
embedded in the HTML that is sent back to the browser.
Note that the code is injected directly before the closing tag
(</body>) so if there is no such tag, the debug panel will not be
injected at all.
To enable the middleware, just use Plack::Builder as usual in your
.psgi file:
use Plack::Builder;
builder {
enable 'Debug', panels => [ qw(DBITrace Memory Timer) ];
$app;
};
The Debug middleware takes an optional panels argument whose value is
expected to be a reference to an array of panel specifications. If
given, only those panels will be enabled. If you don't pass a panels
argument, the default list of panels - Environment, Response, Timer,
Memory, Session and DBITrace - will be enabled, each with their default
settings, and automatically disabled if their target modules or
middleware components are not loaded.
Each panel specification can take one of three forms:
A string
This is interpreted as the base name of a panel in the
Plack::Middeware::Debug:: namespace, unless preceded by +, in which
case it's interpreted as an absolute name similar to how
Plack::Builder handles such names, e.g.
+My::Plack::Middleware::Debug::Something.
The panel class is loaded and a panel object is created with its
default settings.
An array reference
If you need to pass arguments to the panel object as it is created,
you may use this form (But see below).
The first element of the array reference has to be the panel base
name. The remaining elements are key/value pairs to be passed to the
panel.
For example:
builder {
enable 'Debug', panels =>
[ qw(Environment Response Timer Memory),
[ 'DBITrace', level => 2 ]
];
$app;
};
Because each panel is a middleware component, you can write this way
as well:
builder {
enable 'Debug'; # load defaults
enable 'Debug::DBITrace', level => 2;
$app;
};
Note that the <enable 'Debug'> line should come before other Debug
panels because of the order middleware components are executed.
Custom middleware
You can also pass a Panel middleware component. This might be useful
if you have custom debug panels in your framework or web application.
HOW TO WRITE YOUR OWN DEBUG PANEL
The Debug middleware is designed to be easily extensible. You might
want to write a custom debug panel for your framework or for your web
application. Each debug panel is also a Plack middleware component and
is easy to write one.
Let's look at the anatomy of the Timer debug panel. Here is the code
from that panel:
package Plack::Middleware::Debug::Timer;
use Time::HiRes;
use parent qw(Plack::Middleware::Debug::Base);
sub run {
my($self, $env, $panel) = @_;
my $start = [ Time::HiRes::gettimeofday ];
return sub {
my $res = shift;
my $end = [ Time::HiRes::gettimeofday ];
my $elapsed = sprintf '%.6f s', Time::HiRes::tv_interval $start, $end;
$panel->nav_subtitle($elapsed);
$panel->content(
$self->render_list_pairs(
[ Start => $self->format_time($start),
End => $self->format_time($end),
Elapsed => $elapsed ],
),
);
};
}
sub format_time { ... }
To write a new debug panel, place it in the Plack::Middleware::Debug::
namespace. In our example, the Timer panel lives in the
Plack::Middleware::Debug::Timer package.
The only thing your panel should do is to subclass
Plack::Middleware::Debug::Base. This does most of the things a
middleware component should do as a Plack middleware, so you only need
to override run method to profile and create the panel content.
sub run {
my($self, $env, $panel) = @_;
# Do something before the application runs
return sub {
my $res = shift;
# Do something after the application returns
};
}
You can create as many lexical variables as you need and reference that
in the returned callback as a closure, and update the content of of the
$panel which is Plack::Middleware::Debug::Panel object.
In our Timer example we want to list three key/value pairs: the start
time, the end time and the elapsed time. We use the render_list_pairs()
method to place the pairs in the order we want. There is also a
render_hash() and render_lines() method, to render a hash keys and
values, as well as just text lines (e.g. log messages).
BUGS AND LIMITATIONS
Please report any bugs or feature requests through the web interface at
http://rt.cpan.org.
INSTALLATION
See perlmodinstall for information and options on installing Perl
modules.
AVAILABILITY
The latest version of this module is available from the Comprehensive
Perl Archive Network (CPAN). Visit http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ to find a
CPAN site near you. Or see
http://search.cpan.org/dist/Plack-Middleware-Debug/.
The development version lives at
http://github.com/miyagawa/plack-middleware-debug/. Instead of sending
patches, please fork this project using the standard git and github
infrastructure.
AUTHORS
Marcel Grunauer, <marcel@cpan.org>
Tatsuhiko Miyagawa, <miyagawa@bulknews.net>
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
Copyright 2009 by Marcel GrĂ¼nauer
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.
SEE ALSO
The debug middleware is heavily influenced (that is, adapted from) the
Django Debug Toolbar - see
http://github.com/robhudson/django-debug-toolbar.