[Haskell-cafe] web servers

[Daniel McAllansmith]

Following is a message I sent yesterday, sans attachment.  Looks like the code 
was too bloated to get through under the list size limit.

As I say in the original message , I'm keen for any feedback.  So let me know 
if anyone wants the actual code (20 KB, compressed) to have a look through.

Cheerio
Daniel


On Sunday 09 April 2006 06:24, Tim Newsham wrote:
> I found a copy of Simon Marlow's HWS on haskell.org's cvs 
> server.  I know there's a newer plugin version, but I cant find a working
> link to the actual code.

There's this link: http://www.mdstud.chalmers.se/~md9ms/hws-wp/
From memory I think there may have been a more recent version at 
scannedinavian.org (possibly only accessible with darcs?), but still a couple 
of years with no apparent activity.

> Besides HWS, what other web servers exist?  Does anyone actually use a
> haskell based web server in practice?  Which web server is considered the
> most mature?  stable?  fastest?
>
> I'm trying to decided if I should sink some time into HWS or if I should
> use another server.

Several months ago I had a bit of play-time available which I spent on writing 
a HTTP server in Haskell.
The goal was a HTTP 1.1 compliant server that could be embedded in a Haskell 
app, be reconfigured on the fly and have different request handlers 
added/removed.
I did have a quick look at HWS before I started but I seem to recall it was 
pretty basic (in terms of the amount of the HTTP spec. implemented).

In any event, I started from scratch.  It's certainly not finished, and it's 
the very first thing I wrote with Haskell so it's a bit of a dogs breakfast, 
but it might be of interest.
There's lots that needs doing but it should just be a case of writing a 
request handler to get it doing _something_ useful.


It's always been my intention to get back to it, clean it up a bit/lot and 
release it under a more liberal licence (currently 'all rights reserved'), 
but have had little time available.
Eventually I hope to actually use it in anger.

If anyone is interested in using it, contributing to it, or picking over it 
for use in an existing project, I'll try and find somewhere stable to host it 
and change the licence.
Feel free to ask questions on what it does/doesn't do.  You'll probably need 
to, given the documentation ;-)


Regardless of it's utility, any criticism or advice on the code would be 
appreciated.

Daniel