Perl HTTP server not reading requests from clients

Question

I have created an HTTP server in Perl to accept requests from clients.

At the moment only one client is sending the request.

This is how my set-up is:

Client --> Server (this is proxy server as well connecting to the internet), Apache 2 running on Ubuntu.

This is the Perl code for my server:

#!/usr/bin/perl 

use IO::Socket::INET;
use strict;
use warnings;

use LWP::Simple;

# auto-flush on socket
$| = 1;
my $port = 7890;

# Create a listening port

my $socket = new IO::Socket::INET(
  LocalHost => '127.0.0.1',
  LocalPort => shift || $port,
  Proto     => 'tcp',
  Listen    => SOMAXCONN,
  Reuse     => 1
) or die "cannot create socket $!\n";

# open a file and write client requests to the file
$| = 1;
open(FH, '>>', '/home/suresh/clientrequest.txt')
    or die "could not open the /home/suresh/clientrequest : $!\n";

print FH "server waiting for client on port\n"
    or die "could not write to file : $!\n";

while (my $client_socket = $socket->accept()) {

  $client_socket->autoflush(1);

  #print FH "Welcome to $0 \n";

  my $client_address = $socket->peerhost();
  my $client_port    = $client_socket->peerport();
  print FH "connection from $client_address:$client_port\n";

  # read from connected client
  my $data = "";
  $client_socket->recv($data, 1024);
  print FH "Data received from $client_address:$client_port: $data\n";

  # write response data to the client
  $data = "Sucessfully processed your request";
  $client_socket->send($data);

  shutdown($client_socket, 1);
}

close(FH);
$socket->close();

When I bring this server up and try sending a request from a client, the request is written to the file, so it looks like the requests are captured by the server.

Can anyone please let me know what other configurations I need to do at server side and at client?

Answer 1

If you write

$| = 1;

then flushing is only activated for the default output filehandle. This is STDOUT unless changed with the select() builtin. So FH is not flushed here — I guess this was your intention. Instead, you have to write

FH->autoflush(1);