The document discusses using Plack::App::Proxy middleware to create a proxy for the CPAN search site that adds syntax highlighting and formatting. It demonstrates how to set up the proxy with a simple PSGI application and modify the POD documentation and module source code views through content filtering. Known issues with the approach are listed, along with potential other uses of Plack proxies beyond modifying CPAN.

1. Mangling CPAN with Plack::App::Proxy Olaf Alders Toronto Perl Mongers September 30, 2010 [email_address] twitter.com/wundercounter

2. What is PSGI/Plack? “ Superglue interface between perl web application frameworks and web servers, just like Perl is the duct tape of the internet. PSGI is an interface between Perl web applications and web servers, and Plack is a Perl module and toolkit that contains PSGI middleware, helpers and adapters to web servers. PSGI and Plack are inspired by Python's WSGI and Ruby's Rack.” http://plackperl.org

3. Plack::App::Proxy Plack middleware which allows you to map a local url to another local (or remote) url. Easier to set up than Apache's mod_proxy

4. Doesn't require Apache

5. Doesn't appear to have the same security implications

6. How can we (ab)use this? search.cpan.org is a great resource

7. I wish it had syntax highlighting

8. I don't want to use a Firefox plugin (Greasemonkey)

9. Using Plack, I will subvert CPAN to my will

10. I have also enlisted @ioncache to help me out

11. Introducing cpan-mangler http://github.com/oalders/cpan-mangler

12. Install and Run git clone http://github.com/ioncache/Plack-Middleware-HTMLify.git git clone http://github.com/oalders/cpan-mangler.git cpanm Plack Plack::App::Proxy cd cpan-mangler plackup -I../Plack-Middleware-HTMLify/lib

13. Documentation before:

15. Documentation after:

17. Is there more? POD now looks much better

18. How about the module source?

19. Module source before:

21. Module source after: