Re: RFC HTTP::Cache module

Based on the feedback i have gotten from Ofer Nave and Nigel Horne, I
have realized that HTTP::Cache might be a too generic name for my
module, since it only handles simple get-requests. I will therefore
change the name of my module. If noone objects, I will upload my module
to CPAN as HTTP::SimpleCache on Thursday.

I think there is room for a more generic module for caching
HTTP-requests and responses. One could probably write such a module by
inheriting from LWP::UserAgent and making a new implementation of
simple_request. This would mean that the rest of LWP could be used as
normal with special headers, cookies, robots.txt processing etc.
However, I personally have very little interest in such a module right
now, and I don't think it's a good idea to write a module that I have no
intention of using. I will therefore leave it up to someone else and
publish my module as is (with the UserAgent suggestion from Ofer).

/Mattias

On mån, 2004-09-27 at 18:25, Mattias Holmlund wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have written a perl module that I want to publish on CPAN. The module
> implements a cache for http requests. It provides a single method get
> that fetches a url via http. The result of each get is stored in a
> cache on disk, and if the same url has been requested before, the
> proper ETag and If-Modified-Since headers are sent to the http server.
> The server can then respond that the object in the cache is up-to-date
> and HTTP::Cache will return a cached version of the data instead of
> fetching it from the server. This speeds up the HTTP get and saves
> bandwidth for both the server and the client.
> 
> The module is very simple to use. Simply create a HTTP::Cache object
> and call the get-method on the returned object to fetch a url. You do
> not have to care if the data is fetched from the server or from the
> cache (but you can find out if you want to know).
> 
> 
> Sample usage:
> 
> my $c = HTTP::Cache->new( {
>   BasePath  => "/tmp/cache", # Directory to store the cache in.
>   MaxAge    => 8*24,         # How many hours should items be
>                              # kept in the cache after they
>                              # were last accessed?
>                              # Default is 8*24.
>   Verbose   => 1,            # Print messages to STDERR.
>                              # Default is 0.
>   UserAgent => "my-spider",  # The user-agent string to use.
>                              # Default is "perl-http-cache".
> } );
> 
> my( $content, $error ) = $c->get( $url );
> 
> if( defined( $content ) )
> {
>   # Data retrieved and stored in $content.
>   # $error indicates if the data was found in the cache (0)
>   # if it was fetched from the server but equal to the cache (1)
>   # or if it was fetched from the server and different from the
>   # cache (2).
> }
> else
> {
>   print STDERR "Failed to fetch $url. " .
>     "Error returned by server: $error";
> }
> 
> Does anyone object to putting this module on CPAN or is it redundant?
> Is HTTP::Cache a good name for it?
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> 
> Mattias Holmlund
> 
> 
> 
> 
>