[ruby-talk:14927] Re: Ruby and Web Applications

MJ Ray <[e-mail]> wrote:
: Different terminology definitely seems to be the case.  I've been
: working with a variety of servers for a few years now and understand
: "embedded scripting" to be the case where you put the script in-line in
: the page to be served, essentially.  I'm referring to embedding the
: script in the HTML page, rather than embedding the script processor
: into the web server daemon.  This is the sense used in the book
: "Programming Ruby", too.

Ah.  Then we are using different terms.  I use 'embedded' with regards to
server design, not page design, which I term 'templating'.
I have not read all of Programming Ruby yet; perhaps if I had we would not
have had this discussion.

: I am not familiar with the facilities for precompiling .rhtml files.
: Can you give me a pointer, please?

Again, I am just entering Rubyspace; I think I like it and am surveying
the tools.

: I, too, run an aolserver (specifically OpenACS) installation.  I would
: describe it as a web server with an embedded tcl engine.  Yes, maybe
: just semantics, but I think it's clearer that way: it's not just a
: web server which parses embedded Tcl scripting.

Differing terms.  If you peel nsd open, however, you see that the Tcl
engine is almost the core of the design.

: It is definitely part of the way to being an app server in some
: respects, but notice that common code is usually loaded into the
: server at startup.  What disappoints me is the relatively poor
: framework offered here.  Yes, it's probably possible to make it into a
: full-blown app server, but why not base that around a nicer language? ;-)

Agreed.  Tcl sucks, no way around that.
Frameworks?  Well, Tcl has no classes, so you can't get it
there.  OTOH, what is a framework except an OO API?

If you are against the loading of the /tcl directory on startup, note that
the API allows for rescanning (and deleting) files without restart.

: I guess the two things I'm looking for over and above simple .rhtml
: files are a good web object framework to build apps from and a way to

Frameworks are independent of location.  Anywhere you have a ruby
interpreter, you could run that same framework.

: separate data, logic and layout objects.  What's the ruby way here?

data -> RDBMS
logic -> stored procs and ruby
layout -> name-your-own-template

I am loathe to ignore proper webserver construction and devote all my time
to working with an app server.  Application servers hew to basically no
standard, locking me in.  It's also another process to tune and
bottleneck.  I would be most unhappy trying to work with a WebObjects
clone in my Ruby explorations.

What I *really* want is an nsd with embedded Ruby.  I've been playing with
the perl-aolserver code for a bit and I think I see how to do this.  I'll
keep you posted.