Re: [9fans] httpd scripting

[Robby <rtr@blueyonder.co.uk>]

In article <20030602163818.316ebbf5.spam@broster.co.uk>,
	spam@broster.co.uk (Ian Broster) writes:
>> the "code fragments in the HTML" model is not very scalable
>>
>> in fact, content management becomes a total nightmare
>
> I've come to the conclusion that neither 'code in HTML' nor 'HTML
> in code' are very good! Neither are easy to read, quotes mess
> everything up and it's hard to debug.
>
> My thought is to try to raise the abstraction higher.
> Here's how I'd like to code a server generated page.
>
> int some_data[5][5]; /*eg*/
> create_my data(some_data);
> ...
> {
>  new_web_page(template);
>  add(some_data, how_to_add_intgers);
>  add(sometext, how_to_add_text);
>  ...
>  done(); /* composes the page and writes it out*/
> }
>
>
> Note that the ordering is not 'linear'. It doesn't matter which
> order the add() calls come. the 'how_to_add_text' things
> (whatever they are?) describe how the thing is presented in
> the markup language.
>
> Perhaps this has overtones of a Tk-like interface.
> Perhaps it's more object oriented. One
> day, I'd like to try to find the time to investigate.
> Maybe something already exists?
>
> ian

This kind of reminds me of a posting to comp.compilers, which I love to whip
out whenever somebody wants to understand function pointers or variable
arguments. I don't know if this "just" works in plan9, though. I haven't
had the need to try something like this out yet.

Robby


> From telnet@wagner.Princeton.EDU.composers Wed Jul  8 06:40:19 1998
> Newsgroups: comp.compilers
> Subject: Re: writing an assembler!
> Date: 8 Jul 1998 01:40:01 -0400
> Organization: Chemistry Department, Princeton University
> Message-ID: <98-07-062@comp.compilers>
> Keywords: macros, design
> Lines: 70

> In article <98-07-005@comp.compilers>, "Dr Richard A. O'Keefe" <ok@atlas.otago.ac.nz> writes:
> > These days, my language of choice for doing this would be Lisp or Ada
> > (sensible macros are about *trees*, not strings!) but you can
> > certainly use C as an assembler quite effectively.
> > [It's a disgusting hack, but it's a great disgusting hack. -John]
>
> You can get away with tree-like behavior in C if you use varargs stuff.
> I'll risk my reputation (:-)) by admitting to an even more disgusting hack:
> ---
> void new_section(char *title, char *img_name, int h, int w) {
>     emit(html_list,
> 	    html_p,
> 	    html_hr,
> 	    html_br,
>             html_region, "center",
>                 html_region, "h1",
> 	            html_text, title,
>             html_tag, "img",
> 	        html_param, "src", html_string, fname,
> 	        html_param, "height", html_text, h,
> 	        html_param, "width", html_text, w,
> 	        0,
>             0);
> }
> ---
> typedef void (*html_func)(va_list *);
>
> void emit(html_func first, ...) {
>     va_list ap;
>
>     va_start(ap, first);
>     (*first)(&ap);
>     va_end(ap);
> }
>
> void html_list(va_list *ap) {
>     html_func f;
>
>     while (1) {
> 	f = va_arg(ap, html_func);
> 	if (f == 0) break;
>
> 	(*f)(ap);
>     }
> }
>
> [etc]
> ---
>
> A disgusting hack?  Absolutely.
>
> But it's also an order of magnitude more powerful than any other
> dynamic HTML tool I've worked with, and it only took me an hour or so
> to implement.
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Tim Hollebeek
> email: tim@wfn-shop.princeton.edu
> URL: http://wfn-shop.princeton.edu/~tim
>
> [Wow, that's loathsome.  I really like it. -John]