HTTP::CryptoCookie provides a method for the secure storage and transmitting of any perl data structure (except coderefs or other objects, as are the normal restrictions for FreezeThaw).
The structure is frozen, compressed, encrypted, then ASCII-armoured and finally sent to the browser. The order reverses itself when a cookie is read.
Multiple cookies may be sent simultaneously. This module was originally created for use under mod_perl and has been used under both HTML::Mason and Template::Toolkit.
READ THE POD DOCUMENTATION. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
The tests use the following data structure:
my $struct = {
foo => 'bar',
sing => [qw(do re me fa so la ti da)],
sung => {
one => 1,
two => 2,
},
blargh => [1..25],
};
On a 1.2GHz PPC (Mac OS X 10.4.X iBook) the average time to set this cookie (not including the transmit to the HTTP client) is between 4ms and 5.5ms (depending on what else the machine is doing). Yes, Virginia, despite the numerous steps this module takes, it is fast. Expect much faster performance on relatively recent hardware.
I've run it on x86, PPC, and SPARC. You should have no portability issues, even when setting the cookie on one architecture and reading the cookie on another.
INSTALLATION
To install this module type the following:
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install
DEPENDENCIES
This module requires these other modules and libraries:
Test::More
CGI::Cookie
Crypt::CBC
Crypt::Rijndael
Digest::SHA256
Convert::ASCII::Armour
Compress::Zlib
FreezeThaw
Time::HiRes
COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE
Copyright (C) 2003-2005, Dave Paris (a-mused) <amused@pobox.com>. All Rights Reserved.
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.