[Catalyst] Re: Best practice - serving static content

[Andy Grundman]

Will Hawes wrote:
> While playing with the ServerDB example version 1.01, I noticed that a template is added to the stash in the end() method in ServerDB.pm:
> 
> $c->stash->{template} = "server/list.xhtml";
> 
> Curious as to why this is needed, I commented it out and found that I started getting errors similar like this under the test server:
> 
> Couldn't render template "file error - static: not found"
> 
> I checked Catalyst::Plugin::Static (version 0.07) and found that it only fills $c->res if static content has been modified since it was last requested. If not, it returns status 304, clears the response headers and exits. 
> 
> The ServerDB app (and Hops, and most of example code I have seen) all do something like this in the end() method of the main controller:
> 
> $c->forward( 'ServerDB::V::TT' ) unless $c->res->output;

You're right, that template default shouldn't really be there.  I 
believe the correct code should be something like this:

sub end : Global {
     my ($self, $c) = @_;

     $c->forward('MyApp::V::TT')
	unless ( $c->res->output || !$c->stash->{template} );

     # for easy debugging
     die if $c->req->params->{die} && $c->debug;
}

This way static content will not bother with forwarding to the view, 
improving performance somewhat.

-Andy