Re: Crazy little web project

So, basically you want to write a web service.

I am wondering why you would re-invent the web server wheel, when the
provided web server is stable, not resource intensive, and easy to
use.  Security is handled, as is error handling and non-standard
request processing.

I can see having a socket program sit on a random port and do
non-standard communication.  But if you are going to use a standard
communication protocol, why write your own interface?   Use the web
server, and have your CGI program write the data back in whatever
format (XML?) you want.


On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0100, Larry <larry_ducie@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Esteemed list,
> 
> Recently I seem to have developed a fascination with the capabilities of the
> ILE in general, and the role of RPG in particular. The penny has finally
> dropped and I realise that once it was made possible for me to access C
> functions from my RPG IV code I could do pretty much whatever I want on the
> AS/400. I now feel much less of a consumer of the operating system. Before
> this I always found the API interfaces somehow sterile, like a safe
> interface (or sandbox) where the RPG programmer can do what they need to do
> to get the job done, but where they can't do any damage to the system. Now
> that I've got pass-by-value and pointers I can access all of the APIs that
> the C programmers have always had access to!!!
> 
> Anyway, I digress.
> 
> I was looking at Scott Klement's excellent tutorial on socket servers, and I
> have been wondering how I could utilise them in my work. Tonight I was
> looking at some Perl code in a HTTP manual that was for creating a trivial
> HTTP server to sit on a designated port. The similarity of the code was a
> little disturbing! Has RPG IV progressed that much?!?! I suddenly realised
> that I should be able to easily knock up a primitive HTTP server in RPG and
> have it sit on a designated port (my little perl). It would simply be a
> matter of creating a URL to that port on my AS/400 and I would be off and
> running: I could process simple GET requests from the browser and serve
> basic HTML pages that allow the user to enquire on certain business details.
> 
> Question: Is this possible? Am I being stupid?
> 
> My understanding of TCP/IP based communications is pretty sound. I would
> need the server to convert the received data from ASCII to EBCDIC, process
> the HTTP request, based on the header details. I would then need to generate
> some HTML, convert to ASCII, and send it back. Or simply retrieve a template
> HTML document from the IFS and modify it. As my requirement would need a
> stateless HTTP communication I wouldn't need to worry about cookies and such
> like.
> 
> Our company use HTTP servers to communicate with our customers (internet
> orders), but our AS/400s are used as database servers in that application
> model. Consequently, we don't have any HTTP servers active on the AS/400s. I
> would not imagine that our company would go to the expense of
> configuring/maintaining the servers so I can run my very specific
> browser-based application. So, I'm left with toying with the idea of
> creating my own RPG-based HTTP server.
> 
> So, what do you think? Is it possible? Is it desirable? Will it be
> practical? Could I set it to allow multiple simultaneous communications?
> 
> Is RPG up to the job???
> 
> Be as hard as you like, I can take it. ;-)
> 
> Larry
> 
> 
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-- 
Tom Jedrzejewicz
tomjedrz@xxxxxxxxx