[Lazarus] New application type: HTTP standalone server

[Michael Schnell]

On 06/06/2011 10:13 AM, michael.vancanneyt at wisa.be wrote:
>
> I just don't see the point, I'm sorry. You have not produced a single use
> case which convinces me that we are ever likely to need this in a 
> webserver.
I already did state the use cases I have in mind. But this might be a 
long time ago and I don't actively work on these projects any more right 
now. They might come up again some time, though, and I will be happy to 
be able to built them on your work.

The projects are (rather huge) "headless" embedded programs, that are 
ported from Delphi. They heavily use timers and threads (e.g. 
communication threads that are dedicated to sockets or serial 
interfaces). They are supposed to run on systems that don't feature X11 
and/or Widget libraries. Usually they work without any active user 
interface, but for monitoring, debugging and configuration purposes they 
should be able to be accessed by an external PC via TCP/IP (nice: via a 
standard browser; less nice but more versatile: via a dedicated program 
running on the PC; also nice but requiring a lot more resources on the 
embedded site: via VNC).

Lately another use came up: a service in a newer version of Windows 
"Server" editions can't do GUI linking at all, while with older versions 
this was possible (our Delphi programs <purpose: see above>  do this).

> But I will not spend time on its design or implementation, it is 
> useless to
> ask this question of me (if other people want to spend time on it, 
> please...).
I see. If the main purpose of the program is CGI, you of course are 
right, If the programs' CGI accessibility is only used temporarily, 
TTimers and thread do make sense.
>
>> Any chance to do a remote GUI via e.g. ExtJS ?
>
> It depends what you mean. I have ExtJS apps running with this. And 
> they use
> timers, btw. But in the browser.
>
So it provides a decent "multiple event interface" to the programmer 
(even though these event only are fired by the remote browser). Great !

I do suppose that, I will be able to build on this once I will need to 
take on the task.

I suppose joining you Application ("Widget") Type and the fpGUI 
("Widget") Type should result in something useful on that behalf. 
(Technically e.g. adding a new "ExtJS" Platform to fpGUI).

-Michael