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Well, enough about the tedious internals. Let’s make a web application!
The first program we have to write, of course, is “Hello, World!”. This means that we have to implement a web handler that does what we want.
Now we define a handler, a function of two arguments and two return values:
(define (handler request request-body) (values response response-body))
In this first example, we take advantage of a short-cut, returning an alist of headers instead of a proper response object. The response body is our payload:
(define (hello-world-handler request request-body)
(values '((content-type . (text/plain)))
"Hello World!"))
Now let’s test it, by running a server with this handler. Load up the web server module if you haven’t yet done so, and run a server with this handler:
(use-modules (web server)) (run-server hello-world-handler)
By default, the web server listens for requests on
localhost:8080. Visit that address in your web browser to
test. If you see the string, Hello World!, sweet!
The Hello World program above is a general greeter, responding to all URIs. To make a more exclusive greeter, we need to inspect the request object, and conditionally produce different results. So let’s load up the request, response, and URI modules, and do just that.
(use-modules (web server)) ; you probably did this already
(use-modules (web request)
(web response)
(web uri))
(define (request-path-components request)
(split-and-decode-uri-path (uri-path (request-uri request))))
(define (hello-hacker-handler request body)
(if (equal? (request-path-components request)
'("hacker"))
(values '((content-type . (text/plain)))
"Hello hacker!")
(not-found request)))
(run-server hello-hacker-handler)
Here we see that we have defined a helper to return the components of
the URI path as a list of strings, and used that to check for a request
to /hacker/. Then the success case is just as before – visit
http://localhost:8080/hacker/ in your browser to check.
You should always match against URI path components as decoded by
split-and-decode-uri-path. The above example will work for
/hacker/, //hacker///, and /h%61ck%65r.
But we forgot to define not-found! If you are pasting these
examples into a REPL, accessing any other URI in your web browser will
drop your Guile console into the debugger:
<unnamed port>:38:7: In procedure module-lookup: <unnamed port>:38:7: Unbound variable: not-found Entering a new prompt. Type `,bt' for a backtrace or `,q' to continue. scheme@(guile-user) [1]>
So let’s define the function, right there in the debugger. As you probably know, we’ll want to return a 404 response.
;; Paste this in your REPL
(define (not-found request)
(values (build-response #:code 404)
(string-append "Resource not found: "
(uri->string (request-uri request)))))
;; Now paste this to let the web server keep going:
,continue
Now if you access http://localhost/foo/, you get this error
message. (Note that some popular web browsers won’t show
server-generated 404 messages, showing their own instead, unless the 404
message body is long enough.)
The web handler interface is a common baseline that all kinds of Guile web applications can use. You will usually want to build something on top of it, however, especially when producing HTML. Here is a simple example that builds up HTML output using SXML (see SXML).
First, load up the modules:
(use-modules (web server)
(web request)
(web response)
(sxml simple))
Now we define a simple templating function that takes a list of HTML body elements, as SXML, and puts them in our super template:
(define (templatize title body)
`(html (head (title ,title))
(body ,@body)))
For example, the simplest Hello HTML can be produced like this:
(sxml->xml (templatize "Hello!" '((b "Hi!")))) -| <html><head><title>Hello!</title></head><body><b>Hi!</b></body></html>
Much better to work with Scheme data types than to work with HTML as strings. Now we define a little response helper:
(define* (respond #:optional body #:key
(status 200)
(title "Hello hello!")
(doctype "<!DOCTYPE html>\n")
(content-type-params '((charset . "utf-8")))
(content-type 'text/html)
(extra-headers '())
(sxml (and body (templatize title body))))
(values (build-response
#:code status
#:headers `((content-type
. (,content-type ,@content-type-params))
,@extra-headers))
(lambda (port)
(if sxml
(begin
(if doctype (display doctype port))
(sxml->xml sxml port))))))
Here we see the power of keyword arguments with default initializers. By
the time the arguments are fully parsed, the sxml local variable
will hold the templated SXML, ready for sending out to the client.
Also, instead of returning the body as a string, respond gives a
procedure, which will be called by the web server to write out the
response to the client.
Now, a simple example using this responder, which lays out the incoming headers in an HTML table.
(define (debug-page request body)
(respond
`((h1 "hello world!")
(table
(tr (th "header") (th "value"))
,@(map (lambda (pair)
`(tr (td (tt ,(with-output-to-string
(lambda () (display (car pair))))))
(td (tt ,(with-output-to-string
(lambda ()
(write (cdr pair))))))))
(request-headers request))))))
(run-server debug-page)
Now if you visit any local address in your web browser, we actually see some HTML, finally.
Well, this is about as far as Guile’s built-in web support goes, for now. There are many ways to make a web application, but hopefully by standardizing the most fundamental data types, users will be able to choose the approach that suits them best, while also being able to switch between implementations of the server. This is a relatively new part of Guile, so if you have feedback, let us know, and we can take it into account. Happy hacking on the web!
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