[Catalyst] Serving server-dependent static content

[Perrin Harkins]

On 8/12/07, mreece at vinq.com <mreece at vinq.com> wrote:
> a lot of times, 'static' content is found via database queries.  and
> sometimes that content needs to be protected from unauthorized viewers,
> and your authorization mechanisms are already built into your application,
> so you can't just use Alias/Rewrite directives to still have apache serve
> up that tree.
>
> that said, is there a way to have catalyst defer back to the web server,
> after deciding not to issue a 403?

If you use mod_perl, you can do this with a $r->set_handler call.

Other things that would work:

mod_auth_tkt.  You set an auth token when people log in, and then you
can specify group-based content protection for your static files on
your front-end proxy server.  This works really well.

Perlbal, created by the LiveJournal crew.  It's a proxy server that
can make a request to your backend app just for auth and then server
the static file itself.

- Perrin