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An embedded domain-specific language for type-safe server-side web scripting

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Peter ThiemannAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Internet Technology (TOIT), Volume 5, Issue 1

Pages 1 - 46

https://doi.org/10.1145/1052934.1052935

Published: 01 February 2005 Publication History

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Abstract

WASH/CGI is an embedded domain-specific language for server-side Web scripting. Due to its reliance on the strongly typed, purely functional programming language Haskell as a host language, it is highly flexible and---at the same time---it provides extensive guarantees due to its pervasive use of type information.WASH/CGI can be structured into a number of sublanguages addressing different aspects of the application. The document sublanguage provides tools for the generation of parameterized XHTML documents and forms. Its typing guarantees that almost all generated documents are valid XHTML documents. The session sublanguage provides a session abstraction with a transparent notion of session state and allows the composition of documents and Web forms to entire interactive scripts. Both are integrated with the widget sublanguage which describes the communication (parameter passing) between client and server. It imposes a simple type discipline on the parameters that guarantees that forms posted by the client are always understood by the server. That is, the server never asks for data not submitted by the client and the data submitted by the client has the type requested by the server. In addition, parameters are received in their typed internal representation, not as strings. Finally, the persistence sublanguage deals with managing shared state on the server side as well as individual state on the client side. It presents shared state as an abstract data type, where the script can control whether it wants to observe mutations due to concurrently executing scripts. It guarantees that states from different interaction threads cannot be confused.

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An embedded domain-specific language for type-safe server-side web scripting

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Reviews

Reviewer: Olivier Louis Marie Lecarme

This is a long paper (46 pages), but I found it to be much more useful than those ten-page papers in conference proceedings, where writers and readers together are frustrated by the forced brevity. The paper describes Web authoring system Haskell/common gateway interface (WASH/CGI), a scripting language that works on the server side of a Web dialogue. The idea is to circumvent the major difficulty of hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) when it is used for managing a session between a user and the server; in fact, this protocol does not contain the idea of a session, and only lies on a very simple request-response model. When the client sends a new request after receiving a response, the preceding exchange has completely been forgotten. Many tricks and techniques are used for palliating this problem, but they generally lead to complicated programming, and many interdependent but separated scripts. Here, the proposed language and its inherent philosophy provide for a much more natural way of programming, namely, one program managing a complete session. Scripting languages are often designed in a completely ad hoc way. The result is a syntax that is often offensive, and a definition with many idiosyncrasies. Moreover, implementing the language requires major effort, thus it is difficult to improve it. Another solution is to use an existing, well-known language, extending it with what is needed. The difficulty is then to find a language that is really suited for this purpose. The author chose Haskell, which is not really well known. As a consequence, he is forced to devote several pages to giving readers a basic overview of this language. Moreover, the examples are not really easy to read, because of the surprising syntax. Haskell is supposed to be a purely functional language, but in order to make the language practically usable, it is necessary to use input-output operations, and have a way to express sequentiality. The originality of WASH/CGI is that the generated Extensible HTML (XHTML) pages are (almost) guaranteed to be valid. This important characteristic is obtained thanks to an intensive use of Haskell's strong typing system. This means that the examples in the paper are mainly type specifications, and thus are not really easy to read for a non-Haskell specialist. By comparison, the sections that describe the problem and the philosophy of the solution are much more accessible. A minor point to note: the font difference between plain text and programming examples is not enough to make some sentences very readable. Consider, for example, "A value of type HTMLField context a expects a sequence..." The meaning becomes clearer when you observe that the words "HTMLField context a" are printed in a different font. All in all, this paper is well structured and well written. Its contribution seems important, and thus I recommend reading it. Online Computing Reviews Service

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cover image ACM Transactions on Internet Technology

ACM Transactions on Internet Technology Volume 5, Issue 1

February 2005

297 pages

ISSN:1533-5399

EISSN:1557-6051

DOI:10.1145/1052934

Issue’s Table of Contents

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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Published: 01 February 2005

Published in TOIT Volume 5, Issue 1

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Prasad GChimalakonda SChoppella VReddy YVarma VCleland JBellur USengupta SSharma NLoganathan RSharma RSarkar S(2018)Towards a Domain-Specific Language for the Renarration of Web PagesProceedings of the 11th Innovations in Software Engineering Conference10.1145/3172871.3172873(1-10)Online publication date: 9-Feb-2018
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Talaga PChapin S(2012)Towards a Guaranteed (X)HTML Compliant Dynamic Web ApplicationWeb Information Systems and Technologies10.1007/978-3-642-28082-5_8(103-115)Online publication date: 2012
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Yu DChander AInamura HSerikov IHuai JChen RHon HLiu YMa WTomkins AZhang X(2008)Better abstractions for secure server-side scriptingProceedings of the 17th international conference on World Wide Web10.1145/1367497.1367566(507-516)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2008
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