CGI in Ada?

CGI in Ada?

[Eric James DeArment]

Does anyone know if it's possible to do CGI programming in Ada?

+-------------------------------------------------+
| "It is what sustained us through our            |
|  days, the truth that was in our hearts         |
|  and strength in our arms, and fulfillment      |
|  in our tongues."-Oisin Mac Finn                |
| 					          |
|  Eric DeArment /|\ 			          |
|  ejd@efn.org				          |
|  Team Ada                                       |
+-------------------------------------------------+

Re: CGI in Ada?

[Jeff Glenn]

Eric James DeArment wrote:
> 
> Does anyone know if it's possible to do CGI programming in Ada?
> 
> +-------------------------------------------------+
> | "It is what sustained us through our            |
> |  days, the truth that was in our hearts         |
> |  and strength in our arms, and fulfillment      |
> |  in our tongues."-Oisin Mac Finn                |
> |                                                 |
> |  Eric DeArment /|\                              |
> |  ejd@efn.org                                    |
> |  Team Ada                                       |
> +-------------------------------------------------+

Sure it is! I wrote an Ada CGI program to display a calendar for either
the current or any month and it highlighted today in bold. My program
generated an HTML table. Your program can either read from the command
line (GET) or from Standard_Input (POST) and then write to
Standard_Output, just like any other CGI language. Of course, you aren't
going to use an interpreted Ada program, like Perl, but a lot of people
use C. Just compile and link your program and get your System
Administrator to put it in the appropriate cgi-bin directory. Voila!

Jeff Glenn

Jeff@IOP.com
http://www.iop.com/~jeff (Find my Ada link!)

Re: CGI in Ada?

[Dale Stanbrough]

"Does anyone know if it's possible to do CGI programming in Ada?"


It is _dead_ easy. Get the CGI package (available from David Wheeler,
or ada home page), and my HTML packages, and you'll be on your way.

Dale

CGI in Ada?

[Maciej Sobczak]

Hi,

Did anyone realistically practised CGI in Ada?

I know about AWS, but let's focus on "regular" web server (say, Apache) 
with CGI in Ada serving dynamic content.

If yes, are there any reasonable libraries for handling url 
encoding/decoding, html entity escaping, form data retrieval, cookies, etc.?

Technically everything is possible, but I'm curious whether Ada has been 
successfully used in this area.

-- 
Maciej Sobczak : http://www.msobczak.com/
Programming    : http://www.msobczak.com/prog/

Re: CGI in Ada?

[Georg Bauhaus]

On Wed, 2007-03-07 at 11:45 +0100, Maciej Sobczak wrote:

> If yes, are there any reasonable libraries for handling url 
> encoding/decoding, html entity escaping, form data retrieval, cookies, etc.?

David Wheeler's AdaCGI is a fairly complete solution.
I haven't created a larger site with it, though.
http://www.dwheeler.com/adacgi/

Re: CGI in Ada?

[Martin Krischik]

Georg Bauhaus schrieb:
> On Wed, 2007-03-07 at 11:45 +0100, Maciej Sobczak wrote:
> 
>> If yes, are there any reasonable libraries for handling url 
>> encoding/decoding, html entity escaping, form data retrieval, cookies, etc.?
> 
> David Wheeler's AdaCGI is a fairly complete solution.
> I haven't created a larger site with it, though.
> http://www.dwheeler.com/adacgi/

Which I have extended and incorporated into AdaCL. While I value David's 
initial work it is superseded now - the AdaCL version can do more - most 
notably it supports file upload.

Martin

Re: CGI in Ada?

[Georg Bauhaus]

On Wed, 2007-03-07 at 12:38 +0100, Martin Krischik wrote:
> Georg Bauhaus schrieb:
> > On Wed, 2007-03-07 at 11:45 +0100, Maciej Sobczak wrote:
> > 
> >> If yes, are there any reasonable libraries for handling url 
> >> encoding/decoding, html entity escaping, form data retrieval, cookies, etc.?
> > 
> > David Wheeler's AdaCGI is a fairly complete solution.
> > I haven't created a larger site with it, though.
> > http://www.dwheeler.com/adacgi/
> 
> Which I have extended and incorporated into AdaCL. While I value David's 
> initial work it is superseded now - the AdaCL version can do more - most 
> notably it supports file upload.

Excellent. I should perhaps be noted that some of the new packages
depend on the GNAT library and hence cannot be translated with
most Ada 95 compilers.

Re: CGI in Ada?

[Martin Krischik]

Maciej Sobczak schrieb:
> Hi,
> 
> Did anyone realistically practised CGI in Ada?

Yes

> I know about AWS, but let's focus on "regular" web server (say, Apache) 
> with CGI in Ada serving dynamic content.
> 
> If yes, are there any reasonable libraries for handling url 
> encoding/decoding, html entity escaping, form data retrieval, cookies, 
> etc.?
> 
> Technically everything is possible, but I'm curious whether Ada has been 
> successfully used in this area.

There are quite a few libraries for GCI in Ada them and GNAT even got an 
integrated version. AFAIK the best GCI library  is the one in AdaCL [1].

Martin

[1] http://adacl.sourceforge.net/pmwiki.php/Main/CommonGatewayInterface

Re: CGI in Ada?

[Maciej Sobczak]

Martin Krischik wrote:

> There are quite a few libraries for GCI in Ada them and GNAT even got an 
> integrated version. AFAIK the best GCI library  is the one in AdaCL [1].

Looks very interesting, thank you.

> [1] http://adacl.sourceforge.net/pmwiki.php/Main/CommonGatewayInterface

The paragraph "Advantages..." and "Prefer Ada" contains some 
not-so-correct information about the competition:
1. Java 1.5 and further has enums and generics.
2. JIT can do a lot for performance.
3. C++ has platform-independent threading libraries.
4. C++ can provide buffer-overflow protection with proper abstractions - 
you don't have to use raw arrays, even if some aged coders claim so.

In any case, this library is well presented, thanks again for the link.

-- 
Maciej Sobczak : http://www.msobczak.com/
Programming    : http://www.msobczak.com/prog/

Re: CGI in Ada?

[Georg Bauhaus]

On Wed, 2007-03-07 at 15:25 +0100, Maciej Sobczak wrote:
> Martin Krischik wrote:
> 
> > There are quite a few libraries for GCI in Ada them and GNAT even got an 
> > integrated version. AFAIK the best GCI library  is the one in AdaCL [1].
> 
> Looks very interesting, thank you.
> 
> > [1] http://adacl.sourceforge.net/pmwiki.php/Main/CommonGatewayInterface
> 
> The paragraph "Advantages..." and "Prefer Ada" contains some 
> not-so-correct information about the competition:
> 1. Java 1.5 and further has enums and generics.

Yes, though Java generics do not introduce new types
like the competition's generics and templates do. Still 
a good thing. The Java generics wording sounds familiar,
is this because Norman Cohen is in the Java generics team?

Re: CGI in Ada?

[Martin Krischik]

Maciej Sobczak schrieb:
> Martin Krischik wrote:

>> [1] http://adacl.sourceforge.net/pmwiki.php/Main/CommonGatewayInterface

> The paragraph "Advantages..." and "Prefer Ada" contains some 
> not-so-correct information about the competition:
> 1. Java 1.5 and further has enums and generics.
> 2. JIT can do a lot for performance.
> 3. C++ has platform-independent threading libraries.
> 4. C++ can provide buffer-overflow protection with proper abstractions - 
> you don't have to use raw arrays, even if some aged coders claim so.

Normally I would suggest to read the history (especially the "last 
changed date") and then use the edit (I mail you the password just in 
case you don't know or can't guess ;-) ) on the wiki but currently 
SourceForge has changed security again so the Wiki is not in working 
order :-(.

Martin

Re: CGI in Ada?

[Anders Wirzenius]

Maciej Sobczak <no.spam@no.spam.com> writes:

> Hi,
> 
> Did anyone realistically practised CGI in Ada?
> 
> I know about AWS, but let's focus on "regular" web server (say,
> Apache) with CGI in Ada serving dynamic content.
> 
> If yes, are there any reasonable libraries for handling url
> encoding/decoding, html entity escaping, form data retrieval, cookies,
> etc.?
> 
> Technically everything is possible, but I'm curious whether Ada has
> been successfully used in this area.
> 
> -- 
> Maciej Sobczak : http://www.msobczak.com/
> Programming    : http://www.msobczak.com/prog/

I have used Adacgi for simple cgi'ing: form data retrieval. The
pages are not available any more on internet :(

-- 
Anders

Re: CGI in Ada?

[Pascal Obry]

Maciej Sobczak a �crit :

> Did anyone realistically practised CGI in Ada?

I did long time ago. There is support for CGI in GNAT (see GNAT.CGI and
children).

> I know about AWS, but let's focus on "regular" web server (say, Apache)
> with CGI in Ada serving dynamic content.

Frankly I won't use CGI at this time. It is slow and stress a lot of the
server (each request is a new process). I think Fast-CGI solved that,
not sure I have never used it. The new Web architecture are servlet, AWS
supports this kind of architecture... and there is so much more support
for Web application I wondering why one would want to avoid it :)

> If yes, are there any reasonable libraries for handling url
> encoding/decoding, html entity escaping, form data retrieval, cookies,
> etc.?
> 
> Technically everything is possible, but I'm curious whether Ada has been
> successfully used in this area.

As I said, it definitely has.

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
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--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"
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Re: CGI in Ada?

[Jeffrey R. Carter]

Maciej Sobczak wrote:
> 
> Did anyone realistically practised CGI in Ada?
> 
> I know about AWS, but let's focus on "regular" web server (say, Apache) 
> with CGI in Ada serving dynamic content.
> 
> If yes, are there any reasonable libraries for handling url 
> encoding/decoding, html entity escaping, form data retrieval, cookies, 
> etc.?

I still have this URL:

http://www.seas.gwu.edu/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/adajobs/browse.cgi

This is the ACM SIGAda job site, now defunct. The "post" link is 
deliberately disabled because it was being used to post spam. Unlike the 
AdaIC job site (which the SIGAda home page now links to), no human was 
involved in posting a job opening.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"C's solution to this [variable-sized array parameters] has real
problems, and people who are complaining about safety definitely
have a point."
Dennis Ritchie
25