[plt-scheme] Re: url rewriting

--- Dave Gurnell <d.j.gurnell at gmail.com> wrote:

> > anyways, just curious to hear any thoughts you have on Unlib's
> > pipelines (where each stage/function in the pipeline is given the
> > continuation that it may or may not choose to call) versus this
> > dispatcher architecture.
> 
> Good to see Unlib getting some air! 

Havent' used it yet, just trying to be familiar with as much as
possible on planet, so i make reuse appropriate tools when possible.

Unlib seems to be overlapping with the type of development I want to do
on my current projects. I was initially drawn to it because of the
practical tools that you like to have without developing yourself -
debugging, logging. read the pipelines as an aside. considered whether
to use it on my current work, but went against it for now, overkill.
its great if you have 4 or more stages, and variations on what stages
get run. i just have authenticate , create overall page , perform
action.

the abstractions i have found useful so far:

-an accumulator for decoupling the act of outputting html or javascript
from the physical arrangement of that content in the final document.

-stub/skeleton macros for generating interfaces between scheme and
javascript functions

-lots of json, so you can pass around objects isntead of coding up
custom serializaton and deserializatoin code

> Pipelines only form one third of Untyped approach here... we also
> have controllers, which marry a pipelines to request processing
> functions, and a dispatcher, which creates a two-way mapping from
> URLs to controllers. 

thse both sound useful. i waver on this design. sometimes i like the
cetnralization of logic and maintainability, but sometimes i feel it
goes against the natural style of web requests - letting the browser
navigate to different applications and being able to tack on new
applications without having to modify a centralized controller. the
style originally came from trying to make web programming more like
"scripting" than large scale programming, but its caught on for other
reasons as well. rasmus lerdorf(?) had some interesting thoughts about
it in some online interview i heard. 

...
> -- Dave
>