Perl frameworks are useful tools for fast and structured web development. These follows the MVC pattern, ensuring a clear separation of logic and presentation. In this article, I have compiled some of my best Perl MVC frameworks.
Catalyst
Catalyst is the most popular Perl MVC framework. It provides flexible feature rich environment for quickly building high-functionality applications. You can use almost anything with it: various templating systems, Moose, you name it and CPAN has got a plugin for it. If you’re thinking about building a medium or large scale web project than it is best for you.
- MVC: Yes
- Website:http://www.catalystframework.org
- Download: https://metacpan.org/pod/Catalyst::Runtime
Mojolicious
Mojolicious is a new way of implementing a MVC framwork with Perl. It is pure Perl framework without any Moose plugin etc. You can easily start your project with it. Mojolicious is feature rich framework such as lightweight, fast integrated template engine, expressive dispatcher that keeps routing rules in one place and much more.
- MVC: Yes
- Website:http://mojolicio.us/
- Download:https://metacpan.org/release/Mojolicious
Dancer
Dancer is a simple but powerful MVC web application framework for Perl. It’s a flexible but has some 3rd party module depencies. You can use available plugins from CPAN to provide useful extra features to make writing your applications even eaiser, and support for a wide range of template engines, logging methods, session storage methods, serialisers and much more. It’s very easy to start developing your first application through Dancer as it is very intuitive, minimalist and has very expressive syntax.
- MVC: Yes
- Website:http://www.perldancer.org/
- Download: http://www.perldancer.org
All the three Perl MVC frameworks are developed to a stage that they are fully ready for production use. They all have nice online documentation and an established user community. Choose any of them and you won’t go wrong.
So far Mojolicious and Dancer2 gets the job done pretty well, but I take Mojolicious over Catalyst and Dancer2. Mojolicious is like a sport car. Fast and you can drive anywhere quickly with Mojolicious MVC or Mojolicious::Lite micro framework. Dancer2 is like using a motorcycle. Light and slick to get to the destination, add anything that can help to be faster or with to be rich feature. Catalyst is like driving a bulldozer. Strong, heavy, slow. Has a lot of dependencies, feature rich, industry choice of MVC for bigger scale web applications.
In summary, Dancer2 for microservices like POD->PDF renderer, Catalyst for E-Commerce, Mojolicious for both. 🙂 (ever heard PHP Laravel or Lumen? Mojolicious is like that, just it’s Perl)
Nice list! I think catalyst is the best perl mvc framework. thanks!
Nice list! I think catalyst is the best perl mvc framework.