From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2002-11-09T11:56:36+09:00
Subject: Random idea: Procedural CGI??

I've been musing about something today,
and I've decided that one thing making
CGI tedious is the fact that it's rather
non-procedural (and not in an OO way).

By that I mean you're sort of creating
a state machine by hand every time...
what if your CGI could "stay alive"
after being invoked and communicate
with the web server (by sockets or
something)?

That is, I'd like it if I could write
something like:

  # Display a form and get the data back
  results = myform.display()
  if results.name == ""
    results = myform.display("Name required")
  else
    # Process...
  end

Horribly crude example, but do you see
where I'm going?

I'd like CGI to be nearer the simplicity
of old-fashioned gets() and puts().


Thoughts??

Release the hounds!


Hal