Sebastian Riedel about Perl and the Web

Mojolicious 8.0 released: Perl real-time web framework

Mon, 17 Sep 2018 10:56:49 +0200

I’m excited to announce the release of Mojolicious 8.0 (Supervillain).

This release marks the culmination of a 2 year development cycle, reaching its conclusion last week at Mojoconf in Norway. Where we were fortunate enough to have the whole core team present, for many very productive discussions and some crazy fun experiments to get async/await working with Perl and Mojolicious.

The project has been growing steadily in the past few years, with many companies relying on Mojolicious to develop new code bases, and even 20 year old behemoths like Bugzilla getting ported to Mojolicious. To support the continued growth we’ve decided to make a few organizational changes. From now on all new development will be consolidated in a single GitHub organization. And our official IRC channel (say hi!) with almost 200 regulars will be moving to Freenode (#mojo on irc.freenode.net), to make it easier for people not yet part of the Perl community to get involved.

When it comes to new features, this is probably our biggest release yet with 26 major features. For a complete overview you can take a look at the slides from my Mojoconf talk or watch the video. Here’s a list of the highlights:

New logo: See above. :)
Promises/A+: A new module and pattern for working with event loops.
Roles: A new way to extend Mojo classes.
Subprocesses: Mix event loops and computationally expensive tasks.
Placeholder types: Avoid repretitive routes.
Mojo::File: A brand new module for dealing with file systems.
Cpanel::JSON::XS: Process JSON much much faster now.
Mojo::PG: Many new SQL::Abstract extensions for Postgres features.
Minion: Our job queue now has an admin ui.

As usual there is a lot more to discover, see Changes on GitHub for the full list of improvements.

Have fun!

Mojolicious 7.0 released: Perl real-time web framework

Tue, 19 Jul 2016 08:20:32 +0200

I’m excited to announce the release of Mojolicious 7.0 (Doughnut).

While the community around Mojolicious keeps growing, you might be surprised to hear that the distribution itself has actually been shrinking. This is a very good thing, even with all the features we added over the years, we’ve managed to reduce the code size from 11247 lines in 2010, to 8490 lines today.

As you can see, it’s not a new trend, we put a lot of emphasis on iterative improvements, and that includes finding more efficient solutions to already solved problems. At the same time the number of tests has grown with every release, and we have now reached a very comfortable test coverage score of 95% with 11245 tests.

With every release so far, we’ve also seen significant performance improvements. This is once again the case in 7.0, even though it keeps getting harder to find opportunities for optimizations. And especially ones that would show up on the “requests per second” benchmarks we run regularly.

Additionally, we’ve refactored a few internals, to make sure that our built-in HTTP and WebSocket servers can scale efficiently with large numbers of CPU cores, which have become much more commonly available.

While the main focus this year has been on stability, there are also a few new features, here’s a list of the highlights:

Named variables in all templates: Mojo::Template now supports named variables natively. (example)
HTTP methods: An “_method” query parameter can now be used to override the request method. (example)
SNI: Now also on the server-side. (example)
Windows: Full support for Ubuntu on Windows, including zero downtime software upgrades.
Validation filters: Parameters can now be filtered before validation. (example)
WebSocket subprotocols: We now support WebSocket subprotocol negotiation. (example)
Minion: Our little job queue got much faster and now has support for parallel processing, multiple named queues, retrying failed jobs automatically and job dependencies.
Code of conduct: Diversity matters a lot to us, and therefore we have decided to adopt a code of conduct.

And as usual there is a lot more to discover, see Changes on GitHub for the full list of improvements.

P.S.: We now have stickers.

Have fun!

Mojolicious 6.0 released: Perl real-time web framework

Fri, 27 Feb 2015 00:00:25 +0100

It fills me with great joy to announce the release of Mojolicious 6.0 (Clinking Beer Mugs).

This has been the first major release for the newest member of our core team, please welcome Jan Henning Thorsen. It would appear that 2015 will be remembered as the year of the 6.0 releases, but the year is still young and there’s a lot more for us to look forward to. The IETF has just approved HTTP/2, which may, for better or worse, change completely how we develop web applications, and we can’t wait to see where this will lead us. There will also be a Mojoconf this year, in New York, preparations have already begun and we should be able to share more details very soon.

As real-time web technologies are becoming more and more mainstream, the community has matured, but kept up a steady growth rate. We have been able to reinforce our position as the most starred Perl project on GitHub, and every day there are now hundreds of users browsing through the official documentation. The mailing-list is actually just about to reach 1000 subscribers, thanks everyone!

The main focus this year has been performance, pretty much everything got faster and/or scales better. But there are also quite a few new features, here’s a list of the highlights:

Nested helpers: Organize your helpers into namespaces, like the new built-in helper reply->asset. (example)
SOCKS5 support: Through IO::Socket::Socks. (example)
Non-blocking name resolution support: Through Net::DNS::Native.
New Mojo::DOM: Completely redesigned API and experimental support for case-insensitive attribute selectors like [foo=“bar” i].
RFC 3339 support: Almost every new REST API uses it. (example)
Content negotiation: Now with If-None-Match and If-Modified-Since. (example)
IPv6 everywhere: IO::Socket::IP has become so reliable that we now use it for everything, all the time.
No more “wantarray()”: To prevent security vulnerabilities, it is gone from the entire code base.
Mojo::Pg and Minion: Had stable 1.0 releases and have since become official spin-off projects.

And as usual there is a lot more to discover, see Changes on GitHub for the full list of improvements.

Have fun!

Mojolicious 5.0 released: Perl real-time web framework

Thu, 29 May 2014 22:30:00 +0200

I’m excited to announce the release of Mojolicious 5.0 (Tiger Face).

It is named after the location of our very first Mojoconf, which has been a huge success and ended just a few days ago. The Oslo Perl Mongers have really done an amazing job putting it all together, and we would love to see this turn into a yearly event, so if you’d like to host the next Mojoconf in 2015, please get in touch!

The community keeps growing fast, and just a few months ago we’ve actually been the very first Perl project on GitHub to be starred more than 1000 times. On IRC we now see about 170 regulars and the mailing-list has grown to over 800 subscribers, thanks everyone!

There are many new features this year, for a quick overview you can take a look at the slides from my Mojoconf talk. Here’s a list of the highlights:

Redesigned: All new exception and not_found pages. (usage example)
Form validation: Simple and extensible. (example)
CSRF protection: You can’t have form validation without it. (example)
Template variants: When responsive web design is not enough. (example)
All new Mojo::DOM: With support for many different node types and new ways to manipulate HTML. (example)
New hooks: The framework got a lot more extensible with hooks like around_action and before_render.
SO_REUSEPORT: A new way to do zero downtime restarts and high performance web servers. (example)
Rotating secrets: More security without having to invalidate existing sessions. (example)
Non-blocking bridges: A new way to reuse non-blocking code. (example)
Cheap helpers: You can now have as many as you like.
Optional placeholders everywhere: Even at the beginning of your route pattern.
RFC 7159: Support for the new JSON spec.
permessage-deflate: WebSocket compression.
Minion: A new spin-off project, because every full-stack framework needs a job queue. (example)

And as usual there is a lot more to discover, see Changes on GitHub for the full list of improvements.

Have fun!

Mojoconf 2014

Thu, 13 Feb 2014 17:30:00 +0100

I’m very happy to announce that this year Mojolicious will be getting its very own conference, from the 23rd to 25th of May 2014 the Oslo Perl Mongers will be hosting the very first Mojoconf. And the whole core team will be there to talk about Perl and the Web!

Convos: Chatting in the cloud with Mojolicious

Thu, 12 Dec 2013 14:26:00 +0100

If you like IRC and Perl, we’ve got a real treat for you! Our friends at Nordaaker have just open sourced Convos.

Convos is the simplest way to use IRC. It is always online, and accessible to your web browser, both on desktop and mobile. Run it on your home server, or cloud service easily.

Have fun!

Mojolicious 4.0 released: Perl real-time web framework

Wed, 15 May 2013 22:29:00 +0200

It fills me with great joy to announce our classiest release yet, Mojolicious 4.0 (Top Hat).

This is the first major release for the newest member of our core team, please welcome Dr. Joel Berger, he was responsible for many of the new features. It has only been 11 months since our 3.0 release and the new development process is working out very well for us so far. The community keeps growing fast, we’ve now been starred almost 900 times on GitHub and the IRC channel regularly reaches more than 150 visitors, thanks everyone!

While the main focus of this release has been on the removal of legacy APIs, there are also quite a few new features, here are the highlights:

Content generators: “json” and “form” generators are built right in. (example)
JSON WebSocket messages: Native serialization and deserialization support. (example)
JSON WebSocket tests: Just as easy to use as their HTTP equivalents. (example)
Event synchronization: Avoid callback spaghetti with delays. (example)
Scalability: The event loop got a lot better at managing more than 10k concurrent connections. (example)
Smooth restarting: The Morbo development web server does not have any noticeable downtime while restarting anymore.
Hooks: The framework got more extensible with new hooks. (example)
GZip: Compression is now transparently supported by the user agent.
HTML5 forms: Tag helpers have been added for many of the new form elements. (example)
Session expiration: Can now be controlled with a relative value that persists within the session. (example)
GET/POST parameters: Retrieve multiple values at once with the much more secure multi name form. (example)
JSON Pointers: Now fully RFC 6901 compliant. (example)
Monotonic clock support: All built-in web servers are now very resilient to time jumps.

And as usual there is a lot more to discover, see Changes on GitHub for the full list of improvements.

Have fun!

Mangolicious

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 13:03:00 +0100

I’m very happy to announce the first alpha release of Mango, a new pure-Perl non-blocking I/O MongoDB driver, and the latest Mojolicious spin-off project.

If you’ve ever worked with the official MongoDB driver for Perl, you’re probably well aware of its many shortcomings, so i’m not gonna ramble on about it… it’s basically the only driver i could find that still defaults to unsafe writes.

While MongoDB itself can be a bit quirky as well, it is also a hell of a lot of fun to work with, especially for rapid prototyping HTML5 web applications. Now that real-time web technologies such as WebSockets are becoming more and more popular, there is a growing demand for versatile non-blocking datastores that work well with event loops. So Mango has been designed from the ground up with the same hybrid architecture as the popular Mojo::UserAgent, and both share the same general characteristics.

Some of the most important features are:

Clean blocking and non-blocking hybrid API.
All operations are safe by default, you have to work to lose data.
Fast and simple installation, no C compiler needed.
Optimized for use with Mojolicious.

And of course here’s the obligatory example application. ;)

https://gist.github.com/kraih/4756855

So, what are you waiting for? Get yourself a free account over at MongoHQ or MongoLab and start writing awesome web applications.

Have fun!

Mojolicious 3.0 released: Perl real-time web framework

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 23:44:00 +0200

It fills me with great joy to announce the release of Mojolicious 3.0 (Rainbow).

This marks the first major release for our newly formed core team, consisting of Glen Hinkle, Marcus Ramberg, Abhijit Menon-Sen and yours truly. A lot has happened during the last 8 months since our 2.0 release, most design decisions are now made by majority vote. The core feature set is not changing much anymore, and we are in the process of refocusing our efforts on making Mojolicious more approachable for beginners and easier to extend. The community is still growing fast, and we’ve just passed 666 watchers on GitHub, thanks everyone! :)

There are many new features, here are the highlights:

TLS and IPv6: Support for both has been greatly improved.
Commands: The command system has been completely revamped. (example)
Plugins: Generator and CPAN upload commands make extending Mojolicious easier than ever. (example)
Event loops: Mojolicious no longer needs to control the event loop. (example)
Content negotiation: Write more RESTful web services. (example)
JSON Pointers: Many features dealing with JSON got a lot smarter. (example)
Flexible router: Routes can now be rearranged. (example)
Flexible renderer: Serve templates and static files from as many DATA sections and paths as you like. (example)
Asset plugins: Easily bundle assets such templates and static files with plugins. (example)
Not found page: Is now actually a development tool.
Hypnotoad: Doesn’t require a separate configuration file anymore. (example)
WebSockets: Fully RFC 6455 compliant. (example)
Relaxed placeholders: Now look like “/#foo” instead of “/(.foo)”. (example)
I18N plugin: Maintained as a separate distribution from now on.

And as usual there is a lot more to discover, see Changes on GitHub for the full list of improvements.

Have fun!

A new look for Mojolicious

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 12:34:00 +0200

You may remember last year when we introduced all-new not found and server error pages for Mojolicious. Well, it’s that time of the year again, and we’ve recently been modernizing some of them. While both raptor pages still pass with flying colors, the more artsy development mode not found page only got mixed reviews. So it has been redesigned from scratch, and turned into more of a development tool, listing all the routes of your application.

The server error page only needed a few small refinements for both to have a similar look and feel, hope you like it.

Have fun!

Mojolicious in the cloud: Hello Heroku!

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 20:46:00 +0200

A lot has changed in the world of cloud hosting since the last time i took a closer look at one of the providers. Almost all of them support Perl these days, directly or indirectly. One of the most prominent ones is Heroku, and today we are going to use their official tools and a custom buildpack to deploy a Mojolicious::Lite application into the cloud.

First of all you need to sign up for a free account and install the Heroku Toolbelt, the heroku command line client will be available afterwards and take care of the rest.

https://gist.github.com/kraih/2899489

Only three files are required to make an application deployable to Heroku, the application script itself, a “Makefile.PL” containing a list of CPAN dependencies, and an executable “Perloku” script telling Heroku how to start the Mojolicious web server.

https://gist.github.com/kraih/2899522

For our little experiment we will only be using a very minimalistic application.

https://gist.github.com/kraih/2899530

And the only dependency is Mojolicious, but any CPAN module you specify can be installed automatically.

https://gist.github.com/kraih/2899541

My favorite Heroku feature is that we are allowed to run our own web server, which enables many of those nifty real-time web features to just work. The port to be used for listening will simply be passed along via environment variable.

https://gist.github.com/kraih/2899544

And those were all the preparations required, now we can just deploy our application withgit.

https://gist.github.com/kraih/2899556

I’ve also heard rumors that Glen “tempire” Hinkle might be working on new Mojolicious commands to make the whole process even easier, but you’ll have to visit (or watch the live stream of) his talk at YAPC::NA 2012 to learn more about that. ;)

Have fun!

Video

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 05:51:00 +0200

Mojolicious hack of the day: Mojolyst

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 10:57:00 +0100

Today i’ve got a real hack for you. We are going to hijack the Mojolicious router and turn it into a more Catalyst-ish decentralized one, just by using a plugin. Controllers are discovered on application startup and their routes composed automatically, even templates in the DATA sections of each controller are supported. :)

https://gist.github.com/kraih/2149176

Have fun!

Mojolicious hack of the day: More AnyEvent, oh my

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 03:30:00 +0100

Ever since we added AnyEvent support to Mojolicious through EV, it has been a very popular feature. But so far it required Mojolicious to be in control of the event loop, which limited its usefulness quite a bit. That has changed now, both our web server and user agent have become pretty much indistiguishable from normal AnyEvent components. Today i’m going to demonstrate how you can non-blockingly search Twitter for Perl with the user agent, from a PSGI application running inside the AnyEvent based Twiggy web server. In fact, it should work with any non-blocking capable web framework, such as Catalyst.

https://gist.github.com/kraih/1868865

Have fun!

Mojolicious and DBIx::Class

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:22:00 +0100

If you’ve ever been wondering how a well designed DBIx::Class model for Mojolicious and Mojolicious::Lite applications would look like, Glen Hinkle got you covered with his latest release.

The example application demonstrates DBIx::Class integration, how to test your web app with Test::Mojo, as well as how to use EP templates with and without tag helpers. For those unfamiliar with testing in general, there are even examples of DBIC schema tests.

Have fun!

A logo for MetaCPAN

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 09:01:00 +0100

In case you’ve missed it, there is currently a logo contest for MetaCPAN in progress. I’m generally not a big fan of contests, but since it’s for the Perl community, i’m participating as well. Here’s what i came up with. (the official entry should later show up here)

No fonts were harmed in the making of this logo, every character is custom made. I tried to combine a retro and futuristic feel, to highlight the long history of Perl and the fact that the CPAN is still science fiction for many programming languages. The three flying pixels are a metaphor for modules, small building blocks that can be combined to form something new. Hope you like it.

Have fun!

A Mojolicious 2011

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 15:30:00 +0100

Happy new year everyone, it’s amazing how much Mojolicious has progressed and grown in 2011, Marcus Ramberg has prepared a little retrospection for us.

A new year is upon us, and I figured this would be good time to take a look at the improvements in the Mojolicious framework in the last year. There has been a dazzling number of releases, 122 in fact, including the current release, 2.42.

Have fun!

Mojocast #5 Mojo::UserAgent

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 02:42:00 +0100

Merry christmas everyone, today Glen “tempire” Hinkle has a special treat for us. In this Mojocast he demonstrates why interacting with the web from Perl has never been this much fun before, you should take a look!

Mojocast Monday brings you a high-level overview of Mojo::UserAgent, the client side of Mojolicious. DOM Walking, CSS selectors, and watching live requests are just a couple of the things you’ll see.

Have fun!

Mojocast #4 Stash, Flash, and Sessions

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 06:56:00 +0100

Happy Mojocast monday everyone. This time Glen “tempire” Hinkle will explain to you the very important task of sharing data between the various parts of a Mojolicious application. So, what are you waiting for? Get over there and learn web development with Perl in no time!

Have fun!

Mojolicious hack of the day: WebSockets

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 23:36:00 +0100

By now you’ve probably heard about WebSockets, and that they are the future of web development, but so far there are very little examples that really show how easy to use they actually are. So today we are going to explore the wonderful world of events in Mojolicious a bit and build a little application that forwards all framework log messages to a browser window. (works best in Chrome)

https://gist.github.com/kraih/1330053

Have fun!