Step 1: Install Foswiki

Follow the installation instructions.  Using CGI is easiest to set up, if you watch the gotcha I found with running bin/configure.  FCGI is much faster, and works well once you install the extension, and if your host supports it.  (Mine does!)

I have had a little trouble getting the Apache config right, and have had to make several changes to get it working in my webserver configuration.  Make sure the virtual host is correct (not the default *), that the logs are as you want them, and to add a redirect for / to /foswiki/ if you want that.

Step 2: Configure Foswiki

Use the bin/configure script to configure Foswiki.  Mostly this is paths and mail.  Add the FastCGI if you want to use that.

Step 3: Add Admin Users

I like to create a user (or users) for administration and put them in the AdminGroup so they have full rights to everything.  This is easier than using the special admin user.  I like to create a “FirstnameAdmin” user – I’m LouAdmin, usually – for each administrator.  Get the admin to create them and then use the magic ‘admin’ user to add them to the AdminGroup.

Step 4: Add Game Groups

For each game, you’ll want two groups.  GamePlayers and GameGMs.  Create them, using tools in Main/WikiGroups

Step 5: Add Users

Have the GM(s) and player(s) create accounts.  Add them appropriately to the GM and Player groups for each game.  The GMs does not have to be in the player group.

Step 6: Add Webs

Create a Web for GamePlayers and GameGMs.  (System/ManagingWebs).  Then, set each of those to be limited to the the correct groups.  Go to the WebPreferences setting for each web (GamePlayers/WebPreferences, for example) and update ALLOWWEBVIEW to the appropriate groups.  The Player web should have the players and the GMs, and the GMs should have only the GMs.

The GM web should look something like this:

• Set DENYWEBVIEW =
• Set ALLOWWEBVIEW = %USERSWEB%.GameGMsGroup, %USERSWEB%.AdminGroup
• Set DENYWEBCHANGE =
• Set ALLOWWEBCHANGE =
• Set DENYWEBRENAME =
• Set ALLOWWEBRENAME =

The Players web is the same, but includes the players in ALLOWWEBVIEW:

• Set ALLOWWEBVIEW = %USERSWEB%.GameGMsGroup, %USERSWEB%.GamePlayersGroup, %USERSWEB%.AdminGroup

In this modern age, where many (if not all) of the people at my gaming table have laptops or tablets, the use of a Wiki should be perfect.  However, many wikis have a strong feeling of “The Wiki Way”, which says everyone should be able to see and edit everything so that the experience and knowledge of everyone can be gathered and stored.

There’s at least two problems with this for a gaming Wiki.  First, the gaming Wiki’s probably on the Internet, where “anyone can edit” translates into “instantly defaced by spammers”.  That’s not ever good, and it seems to be ignored by many of the Wiki packages.

The second problem is that the GM needs a private place on the Wiki to conspire against the players.  If there’s more than one GM collaborating, they need to share information.  The players need to be kept out, so the things there can be a surprise when the game plays out.

It’s great if the players have a place to put their collective notes and information as well.  Some GMs want access to those, and some won’t.  Some will think these should be hidden to only players in the game, and some won’t.  (If the player characters are doing anything salacious or gaming anything subversive, it is perhaps best not to have those on Google.)

Enter Foswiki.  Foswiki allows access control by groups.  The next articles will detail how to set up Foswiki for RPG use.

When you install Foswiki, the installaiton guide sends you to an Apache Config File Generator. One of the options is to use cgi, or Fast CGI. Since I’ve used Fast CGI before and I know it works on my server, I selected that.

I got the configure program running, but the wiki would only 404.

I dug in and discovered the FastCGI configuration uses a foswiki.fcgi script, which wasn’t anywhere in my archive.

There’s a reason: It’s an extension you have to install. Foswiki dosen’t ship with FastCGI support.

You can install it through Configure; go to Extensions, click the Find and Install Extensions button, then install FastCGIEngineContrib.

A kind user there, gac410, knew this and got me straightened right out right away. Thanks again, gac!

Naturally, I turned this on.

Then I tried to run the “configure” script. It wouldn’t run, telling me I needed to run configure.

The short-url change aliases / to bin/view. That includes ‘configure’.

In short, don’t use the Short URL option until you’re done with configure, or turn it off to do so.

Commenting out the three lines in the Apache config is enough to turn it off briefly to run configure.

When you’re testing with Catalyst::Test and running a local test, you don’t actually fire up a web server and talk over the wire.  It loads your program’s library in to the test script, and calls the functions with the same objects given to it by the other servers.

Your Cat app runs, but all as functions in your program.

Since this is your program – and a test script is just a funny Perl program – you can load libraries and add additional things to the namespace.

My original question was about manipulating what user was logged by playing with the cookie cache, but it should apply to any value in the session.  You could check them, to see that the internal state of your program is what you think it is, or you could fiddle with them, to test that it does the right things.

What I’d never thought of before was to look at their test cases for ways to do it.

Both Tomas Doran and Peter Karman made good suggestions of places to look for things that would help with my authentication issue.

There seems to be a way to jigger it in, but adding some real support for it might be better. Others seemed to agree.

How?  What’s best?

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Along the way, I’ve tripped over some really smart people doing some amazing work to make Perl more modern and more usable.  They seem to be people with great ideas who didn’t want to wait for Perl 6 and went and did something.  That’ been great to find and I’m learning a ton of things.

Maybe it’s interesting to hear how a competent Perl programmer found these new things, and that’s what I’ll start with today.

One of my projects has been a long time coming, at least partly because it was a lower priority than my day job.  It was also the first big web site I tried to build on my own, and I’ve had a lot to learn.

The original version, circa 2002, ran on HTML::Template, DBI, and an open source database called Firebird.  I’d wound up writing my own framework, much of it to get HTML::Template to behave the way I wanted, and to manage and cache database connections.

The first thing to go was actually DBI.  I started looking for an ORM after I tried Rails.  I knew I didn’t like Rails (too rigid for me!) but I wanted to stop writing interface functions for every SQL query I ever wanted to run.  I found DBIx::Class, and converted right over.  I was able to throw away a huge amount of dull code, and replace it with nice classes.  I didn’t ferret out all the SQL, but got most of it.

The next thing to go was Firebird.  The DBD::Firebird couldn’t handle some things I needed.  I ran in to similar (but worse!) issues with Firebird and Rails.  (DBD::Firebird couldn’t handle multiple concurrent queries, in certain cases.  Ruby’s Firebird database driver would core dump ruby!)  Because I was using almost entirely DBIx::Class, this really wasn’t too hard.  Postgres was the replacement, and it has been working very well.

The last thing to go was my own framework.  I really didn’t want to lose it, because it was clear to me, simple and straightforward.  However, there were things I was running in to that were not easy to solve with it, and I scratched my head and looked around for how other people had solved those problems.

I found Catalyst.

After much consideration, I took the plunge, and started a new project with Catalyst, and began moving my data over.  Wow, was I lost for a long time!

I still spend some time lost, in fact.  The scary part is that there’s two other people working on this with me, and I’m suddenly the Catalyst expert they’re talking to.

The hardest part of the migration has actually been the changes I wanted to make in the first place.  One of the things my old framework was not handling well was Single Sign On (SSO), and Catalyst hasn’t got that out of the box either.  Catalyst is closer, though.

HTML::Template went away when I moved to Catalyst.  I decided I was going to try and do things the Catalyst way, and that seemed to be Template::Toolkit.  A big glass of kool-aid later, we have new templates.  And they’re really nice, and I’m glad I switched.

The last raw SQL got tripped over and ripped out as well.  Everything is DBIx::Class now, even things which are easy in SQL and wind up being a little ugly in DBIx::Class.

I learned a ton about Catalyst’s Authentication system by figuring out how to get Catalyst::Authentication::AuthTkt to allow you to be signed out and see parts of the site.

I’ve also untangled a bunch of things my old framework put together that should really be separted in to the model and the view.  The model is getting richer and more complete, and all the logic for how things must interact is going there.  The view really just facilitates getting the right stuff in the right place for the templates.

Better design!  It’s one of the reasons I liked Catalyst, because it had that division, and mine was too weak.  It’s taking a while to move the code over, though.

I see that Catalyst has moved to Moose.  I’m reading about Moose.  There are parts I think are great, and parts I don’t get yet.  They’ll come, I suspect.

In reading about Moose, I’ve found a whole bunch of people writing about Modern Perl.  It’s a great phrase, and a great idea.  I may not be at the forefront of it, but I’m trying to follow along, to read the blogs, find the articles, learn the new techniques.

I’m trying to write more too, and to figure out how to contribute and be more a part of this community of really smart people.  One thing I discovered years ago is that if I spend time around smart people, I become smarter myself.  That’s always a good goal.

Matt Trout posted a link on his blog saying for Modern Perl to be a success, it needs to come out of the Perl Echo Chamber and in to the blogosphere.  Well, that’s the essence of what he said.  I can try to help.  I may not be famous, or known world-wide, but I’m using the tools every day, and I can put words on the screen about it.

I may use the blog as a way to reply to some of the others, who I haven’t found good ways to reply to.

So, here goes.  Blogging For Perl.  Away we go!