research-article

Experience report: ocsigen, a web programming framework

Authors:

Jérôme Vouillon,

Boris YakobowskiAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 44, Issue 9

Pages 311 - 316

https://doi.org/10.1145/1631687.1596595

Published: 31 August 2009 Publication History

Abstract

The evolution of Web sites towards very dynamic applications makes it necessary to reconsider current Web programming technologies. We believe that Web development would benefit greatly from more abstract paradigms and that a more semantical approach would result in huge gains in expressiveness. In particular, functional programming provides a really elegant solution to some important Web interaction problems, but few frameworks take advantage of it.

The Ocsigen project is an attempt to provide global solutions to these needs. We present our experience in designing this general framework for Web programming, written in Objective Caml. It provides a fully featured Web server and a framework for programming Web applications, with the aim of improving expressiveness and safety. This is done by taking advantage of functional programming and static typing as much as possible.

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Cited By

CLERC X(2016)OCaml-Java: The Java Virtual Machine as the target of an OCaml compilerJournal of Functional Programming10.1017/S095679681600009526Online publication date: 17-May-2016
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956796816000095
Radanne GVouillon JBalat V(2016)Eliom: A Core ML Language for Tierless Web ProgrammingProgramming Languages and Systems10.1007/978-3-319-47958-3_20(377-397)Online publication date: 9-Oct-2016
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47958-3_20
Radanne GVouillon JChampin PGandon FMédini LLalmas MIpeirotis P(2018)Tierless Web Programming in the LargeCompanion Proceedings of the The Web Conference 201810.1145/3184558.3185953(681-689)Online publication date: 23-Apr-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3184558.3185953
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Experience report: ocsigen, a web programming framework
1. Information systems
  1. World Wide Web
    1. Web applications
    2. Web services
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language types
        Functional languages

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Reviews

Reviewer: Dorothy Bollman

The open-source Ocsigen project provides tools for developing and running Web applications. Its Web server is written in Objective Caml (OCaml). Eliom, an extension to the server, provides a high-level application programming interface (API) for programming dynamic Web sites with OCaml. Balat, Vouillon, and Yakobowski give an overview of the Ocsigen project and argue strongly in favor of using functional languages such as Caml for Web programming. They claim that the use of such languages "offers a solution to the statelessness of the HTTP protocol" and "results in huge gains in expressiveness." Many people in the general programming community shun the use of functional languages, regarding them as too abstract and therefore inappropriate for "real" programming. Perhaps for the same reason, functional programming has not yet gained acceptance in the Web development community, despite the advantages described by the authors. Online Computing Reviews Service

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 44, Issue 9

ICFP '09

September 2009

343 pages

ISSN:0362-1340

EISSN:1558-1160

DOI:10.1145/1631687

Issue’s Table of Contents

ICFP '09: Proceedings of the 14th ACM SIGPLAN international conference on Functional programming
August 2009
364 pages
ISBN:9781605583327
DOI:10.1145/1596550
General Chair:
Graham Hutton
University of Nottingham
,
Program Chair:
Andrew Tolmach
Portland State University

Copyright © 2009 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 31 August 2009

Published in SIGPLAN Volume 44, Issue 9

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Cited By

CLERC X(2016)OCaml-Java: The Java Virtual Machine as the target of an OCaml compilerJournal of Functional Programming10.1017/S095679681600009526Online publication date: 17-May-2016
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956796816000095
Radanne GVouillon JBalat V(2016)Eliom: A Core ML Language for Tierless Web ProgrammingProgramming Languages and Systems10.1007/978-3-319-47958-3_20(377-397)Online publication date: 9-Oct-2016
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47958-3_20
Radanne GVouillon JChampin PGandon FMédini LLalmas MIpeirotis P(2018)Tierless Web Programming in the LargeCompanion Proceedings of the The Web Conference 201810.1145/3184558.3185953(681-689)Online publication date: 23-Apr-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3184558.3185953
Radanne GPapavasileiou VVouillon JBalat VSchrijvers T(2016)EliomProceedings of the 28th Symposium on the Implementation and Application of Functional Programming Languages10.1145/3064899.3064901(1-12)Online publication date: 31-Aug-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3064899.3064901
Serrano MPrunet V(2016)A glimpse of HopjsACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/3022670.295191651:9(180-192)Online publication date: 4-Sep-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3022670.2951916
Chlipala A(2016)Ur/WebCommunications of the ACM10.1145/295873659:8(93-100)Online publication date: 22-Jul-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2958736
Serrano MPrunet VGarrigue JKeller GSumii E(2016)A glimpse of HopjsProceedings of the 21st ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming10.1145/2951913.2951916(180-192)Online publication date: 4-Sep-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2951913.2951916
Chlipala A(2015)An optimizing compiler for a purely functional web-application languageACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/2858949.278474150:9(10-21)Online publication date: 29-Aug-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2858949.2784741
Chlipala AFisher KReppy J(2015)An optimizing compiler for a purely functional web-application languageProceedings of the 20th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming10.1145/2784731.2784741(10-21)Online publication date: 29-Aug-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2784731.2784741
Chlipala A(2015)Ur/WebACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/2775051.267700450:1(153-165)Online publication date: 14-Jan-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2775051.2677004
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