[Catalyst] PDF::Reuse and Catalyst app

[ogmoid at gmail.com]

On Wed, Dec 05, 2007 at 07:52:15PM -0800, Michael Higgins wrote:
> Hello, all --
> 
> I've finally gotten some traction with this project, was hoping to get
> a bit of input before I go much further in case I'm digging a hole.

> [snip]

> Ultimately, I'll put this in a mod_perl environment... any pointers there?

* Serve the PDF (previews) statically.

    Write them somewhere Static::Simple/Apache can find them. Redirect the
    request there.

* If your PDF generation takes non-trivial time: look into generating it in
  another process (spawned or as part of a job queue).

    Tying up Catalyst processes to generate/send data (in mod_perl especially)
    will hurt eventually.


My experience comes from a Cat site doing variable data (printing) where we
used a $proprietary PDF generator (used somewhat unpleasant Postscript-ish
script syntax - but was a Linux native binary and very fast). We generally
had more problems with content or rendering of the PDFs themselves than
generating and shipping them.

HTH
-Nate