TcpMap

SYNOPSIS

host_and_port_specification catalog_specification ...

DESCRIPTION

The TcpMap directive defines a list of host addresses and ports that the Interchange server should listen on (when running in Inet mode using tlink link program, of course).

In the past, Interchange had its own built-in Web server which also allowed for binding of specific catalogs to specific ports. Since this built-in server is long gone now, its behavior was replaced by a combination of aliases on the real Web server and Interchange catalog definitions. See the section called “EXAMPLES” for clarification.

By default, Interchange listens on all IP addresses, on port 7786. The port number comes from the ASCII values of letters M and V, which stood for "MiniVend" (see Interchange About and History page for more background information).

host_and_port_specification defines hostnames and ports to bind to. Self-explanatory examples include 7786, *:7786, 127.0.0.1:7786 or myhost.mydomain.local:7786.

catalog_specification is the name of the catalog to offer on selected hostname and port. Since there is no more built-in Web server in Interchange, the only sensible definition is "-".

DIRECTIVE TYPE AND DEFAULT VALUE

Global directive

EXAMPLES

Example: Defining TcpMap

The following makes Interchange listen on three ports.

TcpMap 7786 - 7787 - 7788 -

Example: Mass-defining TcpMap

To define a large number of ports, the "here document" capability of Interchange configuration engine can be used:

TcpMap <<EOD
  *:7786   -
  127.0.0.1:7787   -
  myhost.mydomain.local:7788   -
  *:7789   -
EOD

Example: Offering specific catalogs on specific ports

Even though the internal Web server in Interchange is gone, tlink (Inet link program) still relies only on the SCRIPT_PATH environment variable to determine which catalog was requested. This means that the functional equivalent of catalogs bound to ports can still be achieved (without TcpMap), by the use of Web server location aliases and Interchange script path aliases. Actually, you'd probably want to do this just to reduce the length of HTML links.

Here's an example of needed Apache Web server configuration:

ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
ScriptAlias /CATALOG_NAME /usr/lib/cgi-bin/ic/CATALOG_NAME
<Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin">
  AllowOverride None
  Options ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
  Order allow,deny
  Allow from all
</Directory>

And here's the appropriate catalog definition in interchange.cfg:

Catalog CATALOG_NAME /PATH/TO/CATALOG/CATALOG_NAME /cgi-bin/ic/CATALOG_NAME /CATALOG_NAME

NOTES

AVAILABILITY

TcpMap is available in Interchange versions:

4.6.0-5.9.0 (git-head)

SOURCE

Interchange 5.9.0:

Source: lib/Vend/Config.pm
Line 430

['TcpMap',           'hash',             ''],

Source: lib/Vend/Config.pm
Line 3188 (context shows lines 3188-3205)

sub parse_hash {
my($item,$settings) = @_;
if (! $settings) {
  return $HashDefaultBlank{$item} ? '' : {};
}

my $c;

if(defined $C) {
  $c = $C->{$item} || {};
}
else {
  no strict 'refs';
  $c = ${"Global::$item"} || {};
}

return hash_string($settings,$c);
}

AUTHORS

Interchange Development Group

Name