Jugal Kolita was asking about cgi scripting in Lisp, but with current
implemenations of Lisp, and their monolithic view, perhaps Lisp isn't
the most practical "Web Scripter" in the "parentheses empowered"
community.
But what about implementing the web app as a server, not a Web Server
like CL-HTTPD, but an app server. Then use a small C program, or
whatever, as just a cgi glue routine that reroutes the stdin to
the server, and spits the results back out to stdout.
Of course, it would be nicer to hack Apache to handle the link
directly, rather than going through a glue program, but, hey, baby
steps, eh?
This gives the Web App a consistent state that it doesn't have to save
and reload all of the time, just store a reference on the web page. It
removes any issues of startup from the equation, and, heck, if you're
doing the development in something like ACL, you can be living in
Emacs with the server running, while you test it from a web browser,
making development an interactive process rather than the batch
process web development tends to be.
This seems to me to be a good compromise between having to use
CL-HTTPD, which Jugal doesn't want to do, and leveraging off of one of
the best aspects of CL, it's development environment. Plus, you get
full pop, balls out, high powered, nitro burning, turbo charged CL.
Plus, I think the coding will be a lot easier for more sophisticated
apps, because it really helps in the state problem many people fight
with.
Maybe there is a way to create a wrapper environment that emulated the
interface a CL apps would use to interact with CL-HTTPD, but instead
uses this skeleton with a generic web server. Then, once you've
convinced your skeptical colleagues about the great benefits of CL,
you can say "Ya know, this would run even better with a CL based web
server", and then your app just plugs right in.
Anyway, it was just a thunk.
--
Will Hartung - Rancho Santa Margarita. It's a dry heat. ······@netcom.com
1990 VFR750 - VFR=Very Red "Ho, HaHa, Dodge, Parry, Spin, HA! THRUST!"
1993 Explorer - Cage? Hell, it's a prison. -D. Duck