revTalk - iRev - revWeb - PHP - iPhone and back again

[Jim Ault]

On Nov 9, 2009, at 6:24 AM, Thomas McGrath III wrote:

> Yeah that's great except where do I learn about Rev CGIs in runRev?  
> Examples? How to's? This is complex to me.

Not likely that CGI operation will ever be documented in runRev, nor  
PHP conversions to IREV.
This is partly due to the complexity and also the few Rev programmers  
that will want to learn all about the web server world.
On-Rev does allow the use of CGI and IREV and PHP in the same domain,  
the same web site, but not on the same web page (actually you can, but  
you need to know a trick or two get this to work.  I will post links  
to some working examples of this on my OnRev domain when I get them  
dressed up a bit.  They are ugly at the moment.)

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So far, my take on IREV is that it will evolve to become more  
powerful, but it is not there yet.
The use of CGI with both script files and stacks is very powerful, but  
has a few layers of complexity that most Rev programmers are not used  
to.

Jacque has a very good tutorial on her site that goes through the  
steps of installing and testing cgi scripting.
Andre has done a set of stacks called "Rev on Rockets" that let's you  
look inside web server logic and functions.

Be prepared to think like a web server, not just how a Rev stack works  
running on someone's computer.  In CGI there is no debugger, just  
error messages that will look cryptic or simply report that something  
did not work.

I believe that CGI installation and use will not be documented by  
runRev since web hosting companies vary widely.  Some hosting  
companies don't allow the installation of user programs, others allow  
it but don't support it (which means you can try it, but don't bug  
them if it does not work).  Your mileage and smileage may vary.

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If you are trying to duplicate PHP code, this can be highly complex  
depending on the functions used.  Many things that are done in PHP  
fall into 6 categories
-1- security
-2- PHP bug fixes
-3- web server limitations, such as the lack of persistence, managing  
cookies, various program languages (perl, etc)
-4- data encoding/decoding, control character escaping, html entities,  
etc.
-5- extensive use of multi-dimensional array variables
-6- interfacing with SQL databases

As a result, PHP keeps evolving, is incredibly well documented at  
php.net, but is not for the newbie.  Lots of comments are offered by  
top-notch programmers that have to deal with the many intricacies of  
web server management (again, daunting for the newbie).

The PHP script you posted to the list is a fairly simple one that  
manages a single file upload.

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I can install the Rev CGI on my Mac running Apache, and even inside  
the MAMP install on the same computer at the same time.  Don't worry  
about what this means, other than some operating systems can be  
flexible and successful, like OSX.

On-Rev does allow the use of CGI and IREV and PHP in the same domain,  
the same web site, but not on the same web page (actually you can, but  
you need to know a trick or two get this to work)


Jim Ault
Las Vegas