One of the first projects I did at work was to make a web/javascript based interface for a piece of hardware that we sell. The machine is very underpowered so pushing a lot of the complexity to the client makes sense. It was a great project and is one of the few that I haven’t had to make modifications to since I finished it nearly two years ago.

Well, it turns out we are making a new version of the hardware and I have to add a ton of options to the UI. That is pretty easy in general, but first I have to get the app up and running. There’s NO WAY I’m going to flash the firmware every time I need to make a change to the javascript. What do I do instead? Mock the hardware with Plack!

Here’s the code I’m using:

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use Plack::App::File;
my $app = Plack::App::File->new(root => ".")->to_app;

use Plack::Builder;
builder {
   mount '/settings.htm' =>
      Plack::App::File->new(file => "../Web Source/settings.js");
   mount '/WebResources/resources/css/extall.css.gz' =>
      Plack::App::File->new(file => "../Web Source/extall.css");
   mount '/WebResources/resources/css/xthemeblack.css.gz' =>
      Plack::App::File->new(file => "../Web Source/xthemeblack.css");
   mount "/WebResources/$_.gz" =>
      Plack::App::File->new(file => "../Web Source/$_") for (
      'extall.js',
      'extprototypeadapter.js',
      'harmony_config.css',
      'harmony_config.js',
      'prototype.js',
   );
   mount '/' => $app;
};

The first and second line make a basic file server which serves up all the images and whatnot. The rest, the mount commands that is, rearrange things so that instead of using our pre-gzipped files it points to my source files. That way we can leave the html static but I don’t have to waste time copying stuff all over the place all the time.

Awesome!