Item4662: Foswiki as a stand alone server

See TWiki:Codev/TWikiStandAlone

-- TWiki:Main/GilmarSantosJr - 18 Sep 2007

HTTP engine may send wrong Content-Type response header for static files ("text/plain" for css files, for example) unless there is a $HOME/.mime.types or $HOME/.media.types file with the following format:

text/css         css
text/html        html htm
# ...

Debian has a file like that: /etc/mime.types. Copy it to home directory of user running http stand alone. Don't forget to rename to .mime.types (notice the initial dot)

-- TWiki:Main.GilmarSantosJr - 19 Sep 2007

HTTP engine could send wrong status line response header for non-HTTP/0.9 clients. Fixed: svn 14943.

-- TWiki:Main.GilmarSantosJr - 19 Sep 2007

• mime.types problem fixed: now $TWiki::cfg{MimeTypesFileName} is used.
• auto restart feature added to HTTP engine
• Fixed crash after the TWiki::generateHTTPHeaders and modifyHeaderHandler introduction

-- TWiki:Main.GilmarSantosJr - 15 Oct 2007

Added call to CGI::initialize_globals() just before call to CGI constructor.

This fix a great bug (and security hole): CGI caches information in global variables (so, it's possible to call constructor multiple times, even if data from STDIN was alredy read), and it was a serious problem to FastCGI engine, cause those variables were not reinitialized and data (mainly login information, since it is the first posted data most of times) persisted between calls, even if "logout" was used. It was not a problem to CGI engine: since it is executed for every request, it always have a "clean" memory.

CGI::initialize_globals() is not documented. Care must be taken, since it could be changed in future versions...

Tested with CGI, version 3.15 (distributed with perl 5.8.8)

-- TWiki:Main.GilmarSantosJr - 21 Oct 2007

Finally I'll start to merge this work with core code. In summary, changes are:

• Add the abstraction layer created
• Update code to use it
• Add engine infra-structure
• Add CGI and CLI engines
• Update test framework
• Update some unit tests
• Update documentation

Add the abstraction Layer

This work makes it possible to use TWiki under many execution mechanisms easily. To achieve this, an abstraction layer was created. This layer isolates most part of core code from the details of each mechanism. It's composed of three classes:

• TWiki::Request: responsible for encapsulate request data and provide it to core, independent of which mechanism is in use
• TWiki::Request::Upload: helper class to deal with uploads
• TWiki::Response: container to response data
• TWiki::LoginManager::Session: support for sessions independent from CGI environment
• Update lib/MANIFEST

Add engine infra-structure & default engines

This is the part in charge of dealing with details of execution mechanism. It complements the layer above. It's composed of:

• TWiki::Engine: abstract base class. Must be overridden by each engine.
• TWiki::EngineException: exception class, used by engines.
• TWiki::Engine::CGI: CGI engine.
• TWiki::Engine::CLI: CLI Engine
• bin/twiki_cgi.pl: new start point
• Update lib/MANIFEST

It's also needed to remove old scripts and make them links to twiki_cgi.pl.

Update REST Interface

There is a script, bin/rest, that is different from others: it implements it's action without a TWiki::UI::* class. To make it work in the new way, I modified it to be similar to the others. So the needed changes are:

• Add TWiki::UI::Rest
• Make bin/rest a link to bin/twiki_cgi.pl
• Update lib/MANIFEST

Core Updates

There are many changes that need to be performed within core code in order to get things working:

• Replace TWiki::UI with the new one
• Replace %ENV reads with TWiki::Request method calls
• Replace print=='s with ==TWiki::Response method calls
• Rename $twiki->{cgiQuery} to $twiki->{request}
  • Propagate this change
• Add new field: $twiki->{response}
• Update some default tag handler's
• Eliminate ==die=='s and ==exit=='s
• Add $TWiki::engine variable
• Make TWiki::UTF82SiteCharSet a method
• Update TWiki::writeCompletePage
• Update TWiki::redirect
• Replace CGI class by TWiki::Request when appropriated
• Update TWiki::Func::writeHeader
• Update TWiki::LoginManager

UnitTestContrib updates

There were updates to some unit tests of default plugins and to the UnitTestContrib itself. Main changes were:

• Replace new CGI by new Unit::Request
• Replace ->{cgiQuery} by ->{request} (or $this->{request} if test is derived from TWikiFnTestCase)
• Set charset after the session object is created

Sven stated that plugins must work and be testable in any release, and currently (at least the test) works only with trunk. We agreed to add an abstraction layer class (to use in place of CGI and TWiki::Request) that verify version in use and makes itself derived from the right class, so tests work on any version. As soon as I can I'll implement this.

Updates to default plugins

Only WysiwygPlugin needed to be updated. There was a discussion at twiki-dev mailing list and I implemented the proposed solution: pass TWiki::Response object to REST handlers. The handlers, then, test if there is such parameter and use it or print data directly if there isn't.

Write Unit Tests for the new code

I'll concentrate on this just after solving the compatibility issue of plugin's unit tests.

Documentation updates

Some documents need updates

• TWikiFuncDotPm
  • Add TWiki::Response documentation
• Install instructions
• Code comments/docs

-- TWiki:Main.GilmarSantosJr - 18 Jun 2008/21 Jul 2008/04 Oct 2008

excellent I enabled the unit tests on the trunk a few weeks ago in preparation for you - I think the sooner you merge, the sooner more people can help.

-- TWiki:Main.SvenDowideit - 19 Jun 2008

This work was completed and released some time ago. Closing.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 07 Mar 2013