Call lc from php?

[Richard Gaskin]

Rick Harrison wrote:
 >> On Jan 21, 2021, at 6:13 AM, Neville Smythe wrote:
 >> A slightly less cursory investigation informs me that
 >> <?php echo exec("./cgi-bin/livecode--server.cgi sayHello.lc") ?>
 >
 > Why are you still using PHP when LC is better?


I agree of course that LC is a strong contender against any popular 
server-side language, as LC's chunk expressions and self-documenting 
style make clear.

But it isn't nearly as popular.

LC is where Ruby was before Rails: an interesting and useful language 
largely underappreciated for server work.

We don't even have a single generalized user management library for LC, 
let alone any of the CMSes, CRMs, LMSes, or hundreds of other categories 
where PHP is well established.

So one way LC can play a growing role in server development is through 
integration with existing services.

And odds are those existing services are written in PHP.

So Neville's question is one we might all ask ourselves:

How can we use LC to add new capabilities to the PHP-based systems that 
run most of the online world?


For my own part I've been exploring ways LC can be usefully integrated 
with the breadth of services provided with Nextcloud, which like most 
server systems is written in PHP.

I could theoretically reinvent everything in Nextcloud using LC, but 
given the countless thousands of hours that have gone into the vast 
suite of apps that community provides, why would I?

Right out of the box I get an API for user management, with access to 
arbitrary user-specific storage via WebDAV. One line of install code 
gives me a ready-to-go backend for a wide range of apps, letting me 
focus on the client side.

Lately I've begun taking that further, poking around the server side 
similar to whatever Neville's working on, looking for ways to integrate 
LC services with the services already built into Nextcloud.

Rewriting Nextcloud from scratch would be doable but prohibitively 
expensive.  But building on top of the Nextcloud platform lets me stand 
on the shoulders of giants, to see much further than I could on my own.

Integration is increasingly a core part of what my clients ask me to do 
as well.

The days of monolithic one-size-fits-all systems are passing, if they 
haven't passed already.

 From here forward, the biggest opportunities are in integration with 
well established services.

This not only lets us focus on the specific functionality we enjoy 
building, but also carries the additional benefit for all of us in the 
LC community in introducing our favorite language into the communities 
for those systems.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com