Catalyst

Catalyst is a powerful, open-source Model-View-Controller (MVC) web framework for Perl 5, designed for building scalable and maintainable web applications and RESTful APIs. It emphasizes flexibility, testability, and leverages the rich ecosystem of Perl modules available on CPAN.

Key facts

First appeared: 2004
Category: web_framework
Problem solved: Catalyst was created to address the lack of a standardized, robust, and extensible MVC framework for Perl web development. Prior to Catalyst, Perl web applications often suffered from ad-hoc architectures, poor maintainability, and difficulty in scaling beyond simple scripts, especially when compared to emerging frameworks in other languages.
Platforms: web, macos, linux, windows

Related technologies

Template Toolkit
Perl 5
Moose
nginx
PSGI/Plack
Moo
HTML::Mason
Apache
DBIx::Class

Notable users

Various academic institutions
Companies with legacy Perl infrastructure (often internal tools)
BBC (Historically)