Mason (Perl)

HTML::Mason, or Mason for short, is a web application framework written in Perl. It is distributed on CPAN.

Its features make it a suitable backend for high-load sites serving dynamic content, such as online newspapers or database-driven e-commerce sites. Several popular web sites including Amazon.com and Delicious are or were powered by Mason. An extensive list of sites using Mason can be found at Mason HQ.

The general style of Mason is similar to StoryServer or even PHP, but Mason uses Perl as its control language, and as such can use almost any CPAN module.

Mason can be used with Apache HTTP Server via mod_perl – for which Mason provides its own handler, HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler. It also has support for Common Gateway Interface (CGI), and can therefore run on any CGI-enabled web server.