18.2. Sharing Data Between Various Handlers

Sometimes you want to set some data in one of the early handler phases and make it available in the latter handlers. For example, say you set some data in a TransHandler and you want the PerlHandler to be able to access it as well.

To accomodate this, Apache maintains a "notes" table (tables are implemented by the Apache::Table module) in the request record. This table is simply a list of key/value pairs. One handler can add its own key/value entry to the notes table, and later the handler for a subsequent phase can retrieve the stored data. Notes are maintained for the life of the current request and are deleted when the transaction is finished. The notes( ) method is used to manipulate the notes table, and a note set in one Apache module (e.g., mod_perl) can later be accessed in another Apache module (e.g., mod_php).