Initialization

Catalyst initializes itself in two stages:

1.

When the Catalyst module is imported in the main application module, it stores any options.

2.

When "__PACKAGE__->setup" is called, it evaluates any options stored ("-Debug"), and makes the application inherit from Catalyst (if that hasn't already been done with an explicit "use base 'Catalyst';" or "extends 'Catalyst';". Any specified plugins are then loaded, the application module is made to inherit from the plugin classes. It also sets up a default log object and ensures that the application module inherits from "Catalyst" and from the selected specialized Engine module.

3.

Catalyst automatically loads all components it finds in the $class::Controller, $class::C, $class::Model, $class::M, $class::View and $class::V namespaces (using Module::Pluggable). As each is loaded, if it has a COMPONENT method then this method will be called, and passed that component's configuration. It then returns an instance of the component, which becomes the $self when methods in that component are called later.

4.

Each controller has it's "register_actions" method called. At this point, the subroutine attributes are retrieved from the metaclass, parsed, and used to build instances of Catalyst::Action, which are then registered with the dispatcher.

Request Lifecycle

For each request Catalyst builds a context object, which includes information about the request, and then searches the action table for matching actions.

The handling of a request can be divided into three stages: preparation of the context, processing of the request, and finalization of the response. These are the steps of a Catalyst request in detail; every step can be overloaded to extend Catalyst.

    handle_request
      prepare
        prepare_request
        prepare_connection
        prepare_query_parameters
        prepare_headers
        prepare_cookies
        prepare_path
        prepare_body (unless parse_on_demand)
          prepare_body_parameters
          prepare_parameters
          prepare_uploads
        prepare_action
      dispatch
      finalize
        finalize_uploads
        finalize_error (if one happened)
        finalize_headers
          finalize_cookies
        finalize_body

These steps are normally overloaded from engine classes, and may also be extended by plugins. For more on extending Catalyst, see Catalyst::Manual::ExtendingCatalyst.

The engine class populates the Catalyst request object with information from the underlying layer (PSGI) during the prepare phase, then push the generated response information down to the underlying layer during the finalize phase.