This is the README file for the bedrock project.

• See http://twiki.openbedrock.net for more information about the Bedrock framework.
• See the NEWS file changes and updates.

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>

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

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

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

You'll need a few Perl modules installed on your system before you start, but configure will look for them before you can 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 install
bedrock --version

There are some tests you can run that will exercise Bedrock tags and other Perl modules. 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

• 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.

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 5.8.x+ features that are used should be conditional. This means that Bedrock should work with versions of Perl prior to 5.16 as well.

Ubuntu support via Debian packages will likely never happen, however believe Bedrock will run on Ubuntu using the manual installation method.

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 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 or install them manually from CPAN. Here's a list (not guaranteed to be complete) of the packages you may need to install:

Programs...

• unzip
• automake
• autoconf
• apache2
• make

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

There is a comprehensive set of unit test 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.

• 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.

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 and SQLite.

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

• See perldoc /usr/lib/bedrock/perl5/BLM/Startup/UserSession.pm for more details.

• See http://twiki.openbedrock.net for more helpful hints.