HTML::FormHandler slow in Catalyst with mod_perl

Question

I'm using HTML::FormHandler with my mod_perl/Catalyst app to generate a form for my users. It works fine, the only problem is that it slows down page load time by a lot. Here is my subroutine that creates the new form:

sub edit : Chained('base') PathPart Args(0) {
    my ( $self, $c ) = @_; 

    my $form = myapp::Form::Account::Edit->new;

    #validation stuff, etc
    #...
}

Just adding in the one line "my $form = myapp::Form::Account::Edit->new;" causes my page load time to go from 50ms up to anywhere from 500-1000ms. I know some people could argue that 500-1000ms page load time for a site is still good, but I'm expecting this site to get high traffic, and right now it's taking that long for a page to load with just one user. I know that HTML::FormHandler is big, as it uses Moose, but after it's loaded once shouldn't it already be loaded? Is there any way I can speed up long this is taking, or is this just the price of using HTML::FormHandler? I'd really like to keep using it if I could, as it makes my life as the coder much easier :)

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 05 '13 at 17:11

3

You can also build the form in a Moose attribute for the controller, making the form persistent. This means that information from the last request will still be in the form object and will be cleared at the beginning of the next request (or could be cleared by the programmer after the form is rendered). You also have to clear any additional attributes you've added to the form, or ensure that they're set on every 'process' call.

answered Feb 05 '13 at 17:11

gshank

336
1
3

Could you give an example of this? I'm not really sure how to do this. – srchulo Feb 06 '13 at 01:23
Thanks! I figured out how to do this and it ended up improving my speed a lot. – srchulo Feb 09 '13 at 23:17

user1126070 · Answer 2 · 2013-01-31T09:43:05.327

1

You could load a module with mod_perl, before your apps calling it.

http://www.conceptsolutionsbc.com/perl-articles-mainmenu-41/29-perl-and-apache/55-modperl-part-2-pre-loading-perl-modules

#put his to apache config file:
PerlModule HTML::FormHandler;

EDIT:

To speed up thing at runtuime you could use memoize to speed up things.

Create a new sub, called get_form_handler and memoize its output.

You could even use Cache-FastMmap to store this object (output) at once and share between proceses.

Regards,

edited Jan 31 '13 at 09:43

answered Jan 30 '13 at 08:43

user1126070

5,059
1
16
15

That's a good idea for the initial load time, but it doesn't change the times once it has already been loaded. – srchulo Jan 30 '13 at 09:03
What about memoize? If the output is always the same you could memoize its output. – user1126070 Jan 31 '13 at 09:24
How would I memoize a function of this format? myapp::Form::Account->new? I tried doing `memoize(&myapp::Form::Acount->new)`, but it's not aware of the `new` at the end and there's an error. However, I can't just do `new`, because there is more than one new method. – srchulo Feb 02 '13 at 03:54
1

You could create a subroutine, get_form, and you could memoize this sub. – user1126070 Feb 04 '13 at 07:59

HTML::FormHandler slow in Catalyst with mod_perl

2 Answers2