NAME
    Apache::Stage - Manage A Staging Directory

SYNOPSIS
      <Location /STAGE>
        # this location is served by normal apache. It's recommended to
        # restrict access to this location to registered authors of this
        # site, but a restriction isn't necessary
        ErrorDocument 403 /stage-redir
        ErrorDocument 404 /stage-redir
      </Location>

      <Location /stage-redir>
        # the name of this location must match the ErrorDocument redirects
        # above

        # PerlSetVar apache_stage_regex " ^ (/STAGE/[^/]*) (.*) $ "

        # This regex has to split a staged URI into two parts. It is
        # evaluated with the /ox switch in effect, so this will NOT be a
        # per-directory variable. The first part will be thrown away and
        # just the second part will be served if the original URI cannot
        # be accessed. In case of 301 and 302 redirects the first part
        # will be prepended again. The default regex is defined as above
        # which means that URIS will be split into "/STAGE/anyuser" and
        # the rest.

        SetHandler perl-script
        PerlHandler Apache::Stage
        Options ExecCGI

      </Location>

DESCRIPTION
    A staging place is a place where an author of an HTML document checks
    the look and feel of a document before it's uploaded to the final
    location. A staging place doesn't need to be a separate server, nor need
    it be a mirror of the "real" tree, and not even a tree of symbolic
    links. A sparse directory tree that holds nothing but the staged files
    will do.

    Apache::Stage implements a staging directory that needs a minimum of
    space. Per default the path for the per-user staging directory is
    hardcoded as

      /STAGE/any-user-name

    The code cares for proper internal and external redirects for any
    documents that are not in the stage directory tree. This means that all
    graphics are displayed as they will be later after the staged files will
    have been published. The following table describes what has been tested:

     Location              Redirect to       Comment

     /STAGE/u1/            /                 Homepage. Internal Redirect.

     /STAGE/u2/dir1        /dir1/            Really /dir1/index.html

     /STAGE/u3/dir2        /dir2/            Directory has no index.html
                                             Options Indexes is off, thus
                                             "Forbidden"

     /STAGE/u4/dir2/foo    /dir2/foo         Internal redirect.

     /STAGE/u5/bar         -                 Exists really, no redirect
                                             necessary

     /STAGE/u6             -                 Fails unless location exists

    The entries described in SYNOPSIS in the access.conf or an equivalent
    place define the name of the staging directory, the name of an internal
    location that catches the exception when a document is not in the
    staging directory, and the regular expression that transforms the
    staging URI into the corresponding public URI.

    With this setup only ErrorDocument 403 and 404 will be served by
    Apache::Stage. If you need coexistence with different ErrorDocument
    handlers, you will either have to disable them for /STAGE or integrate
    the code of Apache::Stage into an if/else branch based on the path.

HISTORY
    This module has not changed since 1997.

AUTHOR
    andreas.koenig@anima.de

LICENSE
    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
    under the same terms as Perl itself.

