jgfoster / WebGS

WebGS is a framework for building web applications in GemStone/S 64 Bit Smalltalk.

WebGS

WebGS is a framework for building the back-end for modern web applications in GemStone/S 64 Bit Smalltalk. It provides a basic server and can respond to HTTP requests with Smalltalk-generated strings. While these strings can be HTML, in today's environment it is more common that they will be JSON.

Install

Install WebGS with Topaz (see installWebGS.sh and .topazini for an example of how to do this).

Use

The typical use is to subclass WebApp and override appropriate methods. To see how this works, take a look at Sample.gs. This application will be run by the installWebGS.sh script as part of the initial install or you can run the application from a Topaz prompt or from an IDE (such as Jade) using Sample runHttp. If you have breakpoints or halts in your code, then the server will stop and you can debug the code (or just step through it to see how it works). To test the server, access it from a web browser (http://localhost:8888) or from a Linux or macOS shell:

curl http://localhost:8888/stone.gs
curl --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
   --request POST \
   --data '{"x":3,"y":5}' \
   http://localhost:8888/add.gs \
   && echo
curl http://localhost:8888/README.md

Of course, simple GET requests can be submitted from a browser and Postman is a great tool for working with web servers.

WebSockets

Sample.gs also has a demo of how to use WebSockets.

Please keep in mind that all your WebSocket connections on this host/port will be sharing the same gem and the connections will stay alive until they are dropped by the client. (While the current implementation will respond to a ping, it does not initiate a ping and disconnect clients who fail to respond.) This may affect performance (depending on how much activity each connection requires) and it may affect behavior (think very carefully about commits and aborts!).

Tests

WebGS includes a set of tests written in Dart. This also provides an example of how to interact with WebGS from a client application.