Product Description
“Do you learn best by example and experimentation? This book is ideal. Have your favorite editor and compiler ready–you’ll encounter example code you’ll want to try right away. You’ve picked the right book–this is sure to become the de facto standard guide to writing Apache modules.”–Rich Bowen, coauthor, Apache Administrators Handbook, Apache Cookbook, and The Definitive Guide to Apache mod_rewrite
“A first-rate guide to getting the most out of Apache as a… More >>
The Apache Modules Book: Application Development with Apache
Tags: Apache, apache cookbook, apache modules, Application, application development, Book, book application, coauthor, definitive guide, Development, Modules, product description, rich bowen
#1 by Mark D. Schaeffer on April 13, 2010 - 9:02 pm
I have no idea why this book got consistantly high ratings. I can only surmise that the people who have used this book are already Apache geeks.
I have a lot of development experience in server development, and have developed in IIS among many other things. I’ve only used Apache to serve static pages and I wanted to develop an Apache module to replace my use of the IIS ISAPI (i.e. building a DLL). No matter how sophisticated or smart you are, when starting on a new project you need basic direction on how to get started, ESPECIALLY with the development environment. We’re all familiar with the “Hello World” concept. Let me give you my “Hello World” experience with this lousy book:
It starts off encouraging as it give some broad concepts of Apache.
But it rapidly degrades into massive amounts of information with no conceptual framework on how all these things fit together. The first 4 chapters read largely like a reference book (i.e. you see lots of information that might be useful in the future, but you’re totally confused). But it’s not as good as a reference book because it’s not indexed that way.
Finally in Chapter 5 it gets to the Hello World applicaiton. Again, extremely confusing, but at least there is a source code example. I thought to myself, “OK, finally I’m going to see if I can something basic working by just typing in the code”. I’m working on Windows in Developer Studio. So I went to [...] and downloaded the binaries and the source. The book, said NOTHING about how to download Apache and what components you need, but I figure, OK, well apache is widely used, so this should be pretty straight forward…… NOT if you’re developing modules!!!
I typed in the code example, and immediatley I couldn’t figure out how to compile it as I was missing headers. I installed the apache source components, and found headers, but not all of them!. Then I saw, OK, I have to use a tool called “apxs” which is clearly indicated in the book. OK, I thought I’ll try that instead of first trying to compile it in my development environment. Guess what? “apxs” is not installed with Apache!!!! I thought, “OK this is frustrating, OK, well it can’t be difficult to find”. Well after several hours I some some win32 version that had to be installed with perl. OK, so I downloaded Active Perl, and ran that scripts. Well that failed, because it toldPme I needed “libhttpd”. What the heck is that? I’m smart, but I can’t read the minds of the Apache developers and the author of the book. I started looking around for the apache-dev module which appears to contain “apxs”, but that is nowhere to be found. I found something in Debian but that was a rat hole of confusion and wasted time. Well needless to say after googling around for 2 DAYS! I found no solution! Can you imagine how aggravating that is.
So I’m going to return this %^&^#%%# book
And I still don’t understand how development works. This lousy author provided no conceptual framework! Can you use your own compiler (e.g. Dev Studio)? How do you test, how do you debug. I have to build an interface to MySQL, and I want to debug that in my environment first then debug while the server is running. a There appears to be some information at the end of the book, but I quite frankly have no desire to continue wasting my time with this crappy book!
Rating: 1 / 5
#2 by W Boudville on April 13, 2010 - 10:05 pm
With all the buzz in recent years about various scripting languages like PHP or Perl, it is refreshing to see a book that takes an unabashed advocacy of plain old C. This is a solidly C programming book, showing how you can change a module or, more ambitiously, add a new module to Apache. It shows the conceptual framework of Apache; deliberately designed to permit third party extensions.
The text also describes an important practical case, where you are making a module, but want to link to a pre-existing library. In essence, your module extends both Apache and that library. Then there are the usual complications, like several modules linking to different versions of a library. Kew suggests avoiding linking in libraries, because of reasons like this. But he allows that other opinions exist.
Some programmers should look at the sections on filter chains. A very useful way to understand and arrange analysis. Decomposing an intricate analysis into different filtering stages can be useful in terms of writing and debugging the code. Apache is well suited to let you take this approach.
Of course, those of you programming in C should be well aware that this runs into scaling limits as the source code lengthens. Which is one of the reasons that many C programmers moved to C++ or Java. But so long as your modules are under 100 000 lines [roughly], then using C should be fine.
Rating: 5 / 5
#3 by Brian McCallister on April 13, 2010 - 10:13 pm
This should be considered a required resource if you need to learn about writing apache modules. It is the best introduction available to writing modules for Apache 2, and holds up well as a reference.
Rating: 5 / 5
#4 by Midwest Book Review on April 14, 2010 - 12:17 am
Apache is more than a popular Web server; it’s a versatile and complex platform covered well in THE APACHE MODULES BOOK, the first guide for developers who already work with Apache and want to make the most of its features. From code security and basic processing to C-based shortcuts and techniques, APACHE MODULES BOOK uses real-world code examples and techniques to provide an excellent manual of basics. Perfect for any serious programmer’s Apache reference collection.
Rating: 5 / 5
#5 by Brooks A. Sizemore on April 14, 2010 - 12:20 am
This book came recommended to me from a well-learned Apache module developer, and I can’t laud it enough. It is simply impossible to find another reference text out there that covers this topic with this level of completeness. I’m not really sure why the HTTP RFC and the Apache Software License is tacked on to the end of the book, but the real content of the book make it well worth the relatively hefty price tag.
Rating: 4 / 5