Configure Apache With PHP And Perl (MS Windows)

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We need to figure out what that "PerlHandler ModPerl::Registry" line does. We did get Perl to work without that line, but that involved calling Perl.exe to run the script instead of running through the perl .dll's.

One of the very first lines in a Perl/mod_perl file that sends output as an HTML document must be...

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

Other server-side web languages do NOT require such and handle things in a different manner. Perl works in different ways and provides a variety of different advantages as well as disadvantages.

The Apache httdp.conf File

So you want to know how? Insert the following lines into your httpd.conf file.

Color-coded as follows:

# apache_comment
apache1_directive
apache2_directive
perl_directive

Note We tried the Options +ExecCGI directive with the plus prefix and without. We noticed no difference in execution. We feel the plus aids in readability, but it also adds an extra byte (or more) to the size of httpd.conf.

#
# We recommend using forward slashes in identifying paths
#	within httpd.conf.
#

#
# PHP
#
LoadModule php5_module "C:/Program Files/php526/bin/php5apache2_2.dll"
PHPIniDir "C:/Program Files/php"

#
# Perl 5.10 - change the line to perl58.dll if needed.
#
# The LoadFile MUST come BEFORE the LoadModule directive.
#
#
LoadFile "C:/Program Files/ActiveState/Perl/bin/perl510.dll"
LoadModule perl_module modules/mod_perl.so

#
# ... Other Apache directives ...
#

#
# Finally, the PHP types and Perl types...
#
<IfModule alias_module>
	<IfModule mime_module>
		# PHP Types
		AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps
		AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .php5 .php4 .php3 .phtml .phpt
		# Perl handlers / types
		<Files ~ "\.(cgi|pl|plx)$">
			#
			# Next line commented out.
			# Does NOT work. Why?
			#
			# DefaultType text/html
			SetHandler perl-script
			Options +ExecCGI
			PerlHandler ModPerl::Registry
			PerlSendHeader On
		</Files>
	</IfModule>
</IfModule>

Simple HTML Test Page

Please note, that the following works when Apache gets configured properly for mod_perl on a Windows system. However, for Linux operating systems, you may need to include a shebang line.

##
## Simple HTML Test Page Presented Via mod_perl
##
use strict;
use warnings;
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

print "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"ISO-8859-1\"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN\"
  \"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd\">
<html xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml\" lang=\"en\" xml:lang=\"en\">
<head>
<meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1\" />
<title>Simple Apache Server Test Page</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Hello World</h1>
<p>Welcome to the simple XHTML Apache Test Page Presented By Perl</p>
<body></html>
";

The SheBang Line

Linux operating systems (and some other OS, including Windows) require a shebang line sometimes as the first line of any Perl file.

#!perl.exe -w

We did get Windows to require the shebang. But with mod_perl running and processing the Perl source code, the requirement for the shebang line no longer exists. In the ways of Perl, we get rid of the shebang line when designing a web page to make a web page slightly smaller.

These Menus Are Written In Perl

The original source code for these menus resides below. Things changed, and we did NOT update the code below, so if you notice some differences, you now know why.

sub print_menu {
 # Index, Text, URI, LF
 my @aMenus = (
  [0, 'Apache / mod_perl / Windows', 'http://www.microcosmotalk.com/tech/mod_perl/', 0],
  [1, 'Simple mod_perl HTML Test', '#simple_html_test_page', 0],
  [2, 'Linux SheBang', '#shebang', 1],
  [3, 'These Menus', '#these_menus', 0],
  [4, 'Bibliography', '#bibliography', 0],
  [5, 'Misc', '#misc', 0]
 );
 my $iNumberMenus = 5;
 my $s1 = "<p class=\"pc\">";	# p init
 my $s2 = " | ";		# separator
 my $s3 = "</p>\n";		# p terminator
 my $sA1 = "<a href=\"";	# <a href=" initializer
 my $sA2 = "\">";		# "> terminator
 my $sA3 = "</a>";		# </a> terminator
 my $sA1T = "";
 my $sA2T = "";
 my $sA3T = "";
 my $sBR = "";
 my $i = 0;
 my $iBR = 0;
 my $sText = "";
 my $sURI = "";
	
	print $s1;
	print "[" . @_[0] . "] ";
	
	while ($i <= $iNumberMenus) {
		$iBR = $aMenus[$i][3];
		# if (@_[3] == 1) {
		if ($iBR == 1) {
			$s2 = "";
			$sBR = "<br />\n";
		} else {
			$s2 = " | ";
			$sBR = "";
		}
		
		if ($i == $iNumberMenus) { $s2 = ""; }
		# current links
		if (@_[0] == $i) {
			$sText = $aMenus[$i][1];
			$sURI = "";
			$sA1T = $sURI;
			$sA2T = $sURI;
			$sA3T = $sURI;
		} else {
			$sText = $aMenus[$i][1];
			$sURI = $aMenus[$i][2];
			$sA1T = $sA1;
			$sA2T = $sA2;
			$sA3T = $sA3;
		}
		
		print $sA1T . $sURI . $sA2T . $sText . $sA3T . $s2 . $sBR;
		$i++;
	}
	print $s3;
}