[Haskell] Announce: Haskell Server Pages 0.2

[Niklas Broberg]

== Haskell Server Pages ==

Release early, release often. I know, I know, but better late than
never, so here it is:

Haskell Server Pages (HSP), a Haskell-based language for writing
dynamic web pages.
Webpage and darcs repo available at http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~d00nibro/hsp

Features:
* Embedded XML syntax
* A (low-to-mid-level) programming model for writing dynamic web pages
* A runtime system, in the guise of a server utility, with support for:
  - session (through cookies) and application (through the server) state
  - interfacing to the HTTP request-response model
  - on-request compilation of pages (using hs-plugins)
* A cgi-handler utility for use where the server can't be used (i.e.
if you have no control over the resident web server). Supports
everything the server does except application state and setting
outgoing headers (plus it is atm considerably slower to respond).

Things not working yet:
* The server /only/ handles .hsp-pages (i.e. no images or the like),
as it is intended to work as a plugin to general-purpose servers like
Apache or HWS that should handle any other file types. To properly
plug the HSP server in, I (or someone else so inclined) need to write
bindings to such servers, currently the server utility only works in
stand-alone mode.
* No support for POST data yet.
* Session handling needs improvement, currently session ids are
generated from 1 up (I thought the hashUnique function had a more
spread-out distribution...).
* Probably a lot more things that I cannot remember right now.

Things sorely missing:
* Libraries, libraries, libraries and more libraries.
* A "nice" model for continuations.

Comments, critique, patches or whathaveyou most welcome.

/Niklas