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Top Forums Programming How is a new Web Development language written ? Post 302512062 by Corona688 on Friday 8th of April 2011 09:50:21 AM
Old 04-08-2011
I don't think there's much mysterious about it. Someone writes a language and people like it and its use begins to spread.

A web server can run programs from whatever programming language you desire through its CGI backend -- person retrieving webpage causes apache to execute the program /var/www/localhost/cgi-bin/my-fancy-program and send the program's stdout output to the person's web-browser raw. You can even write a web program as a plain Bourne shell script and it's a bit illuminating to do so -- you can see where all the data comes from, with server variables as environment variables and POST data fed into your program's standard input (if memory serves) and no commandline arguments whatsoever. Someone at the university was silly enough to write the school's web-based scheduling system in prolog of all things, and the server couldn't handle the strain...

The only thing that differentiates a Web Development language from any other language, I think, is built-in features which make communicating with the CGI (Common Gateway Interface) easier. You can insert PHP code inside HTML for one thing -- it still has to be processed on the server-side, of course, but having your webpage and your web code in the same document is something that's awkward or impossible in many other languages.

PHP also slurps up all the POST output and relevant server variables into its own special variables for your convenience and comes with many more features besides for communicating with web servers and web clients. You can print all the text needed to set up a cookie with a few library calls and so forth. They've also improved its performance by integrating it more tightly with the web server so it doesn't need to run a fresh copy of PHP every time. They didn't have to do that, it was just advantageous to do so.

And even though it's a Web Development language, PHP can still be used for other purposes, even on the commandline. Because of the way you can insert PHP inside other text documents inside <?php program_code(); ?> tags, I've occasionally found it useful for templates.

Last edited by Corona688; 04-08-2011 at 10:58 AM..
 

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XRX(1)							      General Commands Manual							    XRX(1)

NAME
XRX - helper program SYNOPSIS
xrx [-toolkitoption...] filename DESCRIPTION
The helper program may be used with any Web browser to interpret documents in the RX MIME type format and start remote applications. xrx reads in the RX document specified by its filename, from which it gets the list of services the application wants to use. Based on this information, xrx sets the various requested services, including creating authorization keys if your X server supports the SECURITY exten- sion. It then passes the relevant data, such as the X display name, to the application through an HTTP GET request of the associated CGI script. The Web server then executes the CGI script to start the application. The client runs on the web server host connected to your X server. INSTALLATION
You need to configure your web browser to use xrx for RX documents. Generally the following line in your $HOME/.mailcap is enough: application/x-rx; xrx %s However, you may need to refer to your web browser's documentation for exact instructions on configuring helper applications. Once correctly configured, your browser will activate the helper program whenever you retrieve any document of the MIME type application/x- rx. OPTIONS
The xrx helper program accepts all of the standard X Toolkit command line options such as: This option specifies a resource string to be used. There may be several instances of this option on the command line. RESOURCES
The application class name of the xrx program is Xrx and it understands the following application resource names and classes: Specifies whether an X server firewall proxy (see xfwp) is running and should be used. Default is ``False.'' The web servers for which the X server firewall proxy should not be used (only relevant when xrxHasFirewallProxy is ``True''). Its value is a comma separated list of mask/value pairs to be used to filter internal web servers, based on their address. The mask part specifies which segments of the address are to be considered and the value part specifies what the result should match. For instance the following list: 255.255.255.0/198.112.45.0, 255.255.255.0/198.112.46.0 matches the address sets: 198.112.45.* and 198.112.46.*. More precisely, the test is (address & mask) == value. The web servers for which LBX should not be used. The resource value is a list of address mask/value pairs, as previously described. The web servers from which remote applications should be run as trusted clients. The default is to run remote applications as untrusted clients. The resource value is a list of address mask/value pairs, as previously described. ENVIRONMENT
The xrx helper program uses the standard X environment variables such as ``DISPLAY'' to get the default X server host and display number. If the RX document requests X-UI-LBX service and the default X server does not advertise the LBX extension, xrx will look for the environ- ment variable ``XREALDISPLAY'' to get a second address for your X server and look for the LBX extension there. When running your browser through lbxproxy you will need to set XREALDISPLAY to the actual address of your server if you wish remote applications to be able to use LBX across the Internet. If the RX document requests XPRINT service, xrx looks for the variable ``XPRINTER'' to get the printer name and X Print server address to use. If the server address is not specified as part of XPRINTER, xrx uses the first one specified through the variable ``XPSERVERLIST'' when it is set. When it is not xrx then tries to use the video server as the print server. If the printer name is not specified via XPRINTER, xrx looks for it in the variables ``PDPRINTER'', then ``LPDEST'', and finally ``PRINTER'' If you are using a firewall proxy, xrx will look for ``PROXY_MANAGER'' to get the address of your proxy manager (see proxymngr). When not specified it will use ":6500" as the default. KNOWN BUG
When an authorization key is created for a remote application to use the X Print service, the helper program has to create the key with an infinite timeout since nobody knows when the application will actually connect to the X Print server. Therefore, in this case, the helper program stays around to revoke the key when the application goes away (that is when its video key expires). However, if the helper program dies unexpectedly the print authorization key will never get revoked. SEE ALSO
lbxproxy (1), The RX Document specification AUTHOR
Arnaud Le Hors, X Consortium XRX(1)
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