some stuff about languages and web dev. Re: OT: Silverlight -Comments?

[Andre Garzia]

Hello Mark,
yes, you're right. The stateless nature of the web been one of the most
annoying thing for all the web developers. While our running stacks know
"where they are", web applications usually are only alive during the web
request (the case of CGI).

Persistence can be achieved thru sessions, using cookies or url tags, this
is not a solution but a workaround the stateless nature of the web.


Good web application libraries should take that into account. For example,
since all web responses may pass thru the library, it can simply append
session id parameter to the urls in the response, this way you can keep some
kind of persistence.

I have a little library called EasySessions (
http://www.andregarzia.com/EasyCGI ) that has only two functions, one saves
an array and return a unique id for this saved information, the other picks
this unique id and returns the original array data. I use this library to
transfer state from a CGI to the other, for example in a e-commerce solution
where you have a payment information data entry page, then a confirmation
page, then a transaction page. The data is moved forward by the use of
EasySessions and unique id. For the CGI, my data array is always present and
actual, it's better than using cookies for the sensitive data does not touch
the network.

so in the end, although the web is stateless, this three web pages share
common data as if they were a single application. It's the best I can do so
far.

:-)

andre


On 7/19/07, Mark Wieder <mwieder at ahsoftware.net> wrote:
>
> Andre-
>
> > - The Web is your Friend -
> > Don't keep reinventing the wheel every time. The HTTP protocol is very
> > flexible and allows to easily transfer pieces of data and metadata with
> > ease. Even Second Life uses HTTP to transfer objects around. Use and
> > embrace
> > web standards as integral parts of your engine.
>
> Not to detract from the rest of this wonderful post, keep in mind that
> HTTP
> is stateless. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's useless for
> transferring data, just that it was designed to throw small data packets
> around without regard to persistence or reliability. If those are
> important
> to you then you have to design them into your package.
>
> --
> Mark Wieder
> mwieder at ahsoftware.net
>
>
>
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