This simple module is designed to be a partial replacement for the standard Apache mod_dir module. One of the things that module does is to redirect browsers to a directory URL ending in a slash when they request the directory without the slash. Since mod_dir seems do its thing during the Apache response phase, if you use a Perl handler, it won't run. This can be problematic if the Perl handler doesn't likewise take the directory redirecting into account.
A good example is HTML::Mason. If you've disabled Mason's decline_dirs parameter (MasonDeclineDirs 0 in httpd.conf), and there's a dhandler in the directory /foo, then for a request for /foo, /foo/dhandler will respond. This can wreak havoc if you use relative URLs in the dhandler. What really should happen is that a request for /foo will be redirected to /foo/ before Mason ever sees it.
This is the problem that this module is designed to address. Configuration would then look something like this:
<Location /foo>
PerlSetVar MasonDeclineDirs 0
PerlModule Apache::Dir
PerlModule HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler
SetHandler perl-script
PerlFixupHandler Apache::Dir
PerlHandler HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler
</Location>
Apache::Dir can also be configured to handle the request during the response cycle, if you wish. Just specify it before any other Perl handler to have it execute first:
<Location /foo>
PerlSetVar MasonDeclineDirs 0
PerlModule Apache::Dir
PerlModule HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler
SetHandler perl-script
PerlHandler Apache::Dir HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler
</Location>
mod_perl
David E. Wheeler <david@justatheory.com>
Copyright 2004-2011 by David Wheeler. Some Rights Reserved.
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.