[plt-scheme] Sources for "real-world" web applications running on plt-web-server

From: Reginaldo J. S. Filho (xregis at gmail.com)
Date: Sun Mar 14 22:51:16 EDT 2010

Hi. I'm somewhat new to Scheme, but not a complete newbie. I've gone
through HtDP and read many parts of the Guide and Reference that come
with PLT Scheme. In practical terms, I'm reasonably comfortable with
writing small to mid-sized programs with PLT, like command-line
utilities, games and the like.

Currently, I'm in the process of developing a web app to run on the
PLT web server. The main benefit for me is the fine-grained control
supplied by the continuation-based framework, which allows me to think
as if I was doing "regular" programming (no inversion of control
because of HTTP).

I've seen (and implemented on my on) many of the examples I could
find, which means:

1) The blog app from the "Continue" tutorial;
2) ListIt, by Jens Axel Søgaard;
3) pltwitter.plt, by Jay McCarthy

They are all fine examples, but aren't enough to give me a feeling,
for instance, how I should structure code that will be deployed to
production.

For instance, the blog app and ListIt (as shown in MacCarthy's blog)
all produce html, using xexpr format, straight from the controller
code. In principle I have nothing against it, but I suspect that for
big applications it wouldn't work so well. Besides, one can't easily
output doctypes using the standard xexpr only, and the code is not
"pretty-print" in the browser. I was able to find a way around the
doctype issue using tips from the following posts:

http://www.topmost.se/personal/articles/web-programming-with-plt-scheme/serving-xhtml.htm
http://www.topmost.se/personal/articles/web-programming-with-plt-scheme/custom-dispatchers.htm

Anyways, for bigger application I'm sure it would be better to use
templates, but still have some questions.

* In practical terms, how do I use apache with the plt-web-server?
  Should I just proxy the requests or use apache to serve static files
  too? I suspect apache's performance is better for static files, but
  don't have means to know if the added complexity (in terms of
  configuration) pays off.

* Are there any bigger open source web apps written for PLT that you
  can point me to?

* Are there any practical guides on how to deploy an application to
  production? It seems the server can be configured in many different
  ways, and that's a good thing. On the other hand, as a beginner, I
  feel overwhelmed with so many options.

* Are there any connection-pool-style packages that let me connect to
  PostgreSQL with minimal hassle?

* How well do JQuery, prototype, and the like, fit together with Scheme
  code?

Thanks from Brazil,

Reginaldo
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