How come Catalyst::Controller::WrapCGI doesn't get any post data? - perl

Question

Whenever I POST something to a page with Catalyst::Controller::WrapCGI I notice that my old CGI script doesn't get any POST data.. Data inside the body of the HTTP request. What am I doing wrong and how do I fix this?

Answer 1

In my case, this was because I was using Catalyst::Controller::WrapCGI v0.35 and Catalyst::Controller::REST. This created a problem.. My configuration looked like this,
package MyApp::Controller::REST;
__PACKAGE__->config(namespace => '');
BEGIN { extends 'Catalyst::Controller::REST' }
and
package MyApp::Controller::Root;
__PACKAGE__->config(namespace => '');
BEGIN { extends 'Catalyst::Controller::WrapCGI' }
However, Catalyst::Controller::REST installs a begin action on line 298
sub begin : ActionClass('Deserialize') { }
And, that -- in my case -- was delegating to Catalyst::Action::Deserialize::JSON which is smart enough to seek($body,0,0) but too dumb and inconsiderate to do that for the next guy down the chain.... Code below from here
if(openhandle $body) {
seek($body, 0, 0); # in case something has already read from it
while ( defined( my $line = <$body> ) ) {
$rbody .= $line;
}
}
And, to make matters even worse, the next guy down the chain in this example is Catalyst::Controller::WrapCGI which not just fails to clean up for the next guy, but fails to set it up for itself (code from here),
if ($body) { # Slurp from body filehandle
local $/; $body_content = <$body>;
}
That should look like (at the very least)
if ($body) { # Slurp from body filehandle
local $/;
seek($body,0,0);
$body_content = <$body>;
}
That's why we can't have nice things... I opened a bug in C:C:WrapCGI to get this resolved.