World: r3wp

Louis -- a couple of pointers about uploading files to a server using 
a slow FTP connection:

(I do it myself with REBOL.org -- most of the development takes place 
on my machine and is uploaded to RO via a 56K modem, so this is based 
on real experience.)

-- If you are uploading a large live file, that file will be available 
and/or "broken" during the course of the upload. Best to upload with 
a temporary file name, and then rename when uploaded.

-- That won't work with CGI scripts under Apache/UNIX as the rename 
won't leave them with the right file permissions to execute. But 
it will work for all other files, including scripts that are DOne 
by your CGIs.

-- We have a checksums file that the uploader uses.  Before uploading 
a file, it checks the file's upload checksum. That way, we only ever 
upload new or changed files.

Thanks, Graham, for the script. And thanks Henrik, Anton, and Sunanda 
for the pointers. I'm hoping to be able to start working on this 
within the next few days.

No problem. Hope it goes well.

This is very good CSS tutorial, which someone may find useful - http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/box_lesson/boxes.html

And this is another good place from which I found the link above 
- http://www.mandarindesign.com/

Some good resources about  design/css/ia/etc. on last ALA: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/alaprimer2

My favorite CSS examples http://www.csszengarden.comNot so much 
about "how" to do it but "what" can be accomplished. I find it pretty 
amazing.

I had faced with problem for file uploads:

I had file upload script (upload.r posted somwhere in rebol lists/worlds) 
on my web servers, that works well on KF web server.

But on MS IIS script hangs and I am getting timeout error from server.
If it is needed I can post upload.r here!

Actualy problem is in function read-post data - script hangs on read-io.
Why it is problem for MS IIS and how to solve them? 

read-post-data: func [
    {Reads the HTTP entity body}
    /safe "Disables evaluation of content-length header."
    /local len data tmp
] [

    len: load any [ all [safe "65536"] system/options/cgi/content-length 
    "0" ]

    data: make string! len
    tmp: make string! len
    while [ 0 < read-io system/ports/input tmp len ] [
        insert tail data tmp
        clear tmp
    ]

    data
]

is there any solution available for Rebol, which would handle sessions?

My understanding is, that sessions=cookies (or hidden form field, 
url, or combination of those ones) plus storage/invocation mechanism

there is cookies manager from Oldes somewhere, have a look around 
AltME for URL (he still ignores rebol.org, such a bad bad bad boy 
;).

cookies manager? will try to look for one :-)

yes, it's patched HTTP scheme. Does all session management automaticaly 
IIRC.

hmm, it might not be ideal for CGI, to do 20KB script with each invocation 
...

I found it via google ...

well, working with cookies is not all that difficult, is it? My friend 
just asked me - why rebol does not handle sessions, if any other 
language does. I told him to write it himself, but he probably does 
not know how. Isn't session just about getting a cookie, looking 
into your storage space for the cookie identifier (session identifier), 
loading the session data, using them, and storing them once again?

Pekr: his Cookies Daemon is client-side, not server-side, I probably 
understood you bad.

ah, yes, I wanted server-side one ...

Yes, session handling is not hard. REBOL does not have it built in 
because it was not designed to be mainly a CGI language; so you need 
to add that yourself.

how should I design my function, if I would like to have e.g. session: 
copy [] block, and later would like to append whatever rebol value 
into it? e.g. variable names using in script, objects, etc? when 
I do append session var, it stores its value .... what would be the 
best aproach?

the simplest way, which however needs write permissions to the filesystem, 
is to have a unique session id assigned to users; this id could be 
basically a file name (and you need to check for its sanity then); 
then you read from the file at the beginning, and save to it at the 
end.

eg. you could have session: load session-file at the beginning; then 
your script does whatever with session; then you save session-file 
session at the end.

temple.cgi does basically this.

yes, I know, as for files. My strategy is very simple - use cookies 
(I wonder if there is script being able to handle multiple cookies 
btw), then "start a session" = generate unique ID, store it in \sessions\ 
dir ....

I just thought about how to store and later load some rebol values, 
add new values to them .....

temple.cgi uses cookies. there is no problem in handling multiple 
cookies on the server side, and the bug with multiple cookies on 
the client side has long been fixed.

maybe a pair of word name (literal) plus value ... and then some 
little accessor function

i just let the session variable be whatever the user wants. it could 
be an object!, or a block!, or whatever.

in some cases you may just need a logic! value, in others a block 
with words and values may be best...

multiple cookies? how are they separated in http header? there are 
various scripts around, not sure all of them handle multiple cookies 
... I will investigate ...

ok, so you know you want to save variables: name last-name user-object 
some-block-here .... how do you save them, and later invoke them?

you just need to parse system/options/cgi/other-headers iirc. see 
temple.cgi, it shouldn't have problems with that. (but if you have 
session handling you only need one cookie in the end).

allowing session handling to directly set variables is a bad design, 
see the plagues that php had for this.

just have those values inside session. that could be session/last-name 
for eg

hmm, so construct an object, righ?

or a block [last-name "Santilli"]

depending on your needs :)

I was really tired by Bobik, who leaving rebol just slanders it, 
without proper deep knowledge of what session actually is. He reported 
to various other friends, that Rebol is terrible, because it is the 
only language not actually supporting sessions. Yesterday I looked 
into what "sesssions" mean in php terms, and I have to laugh - for 
me it is matter of few hours coding at max, to get it working ...

but that is overally problem of Rebol - while with other languages, 
e.g. python, he is willing to import particular library, with rebol 
he just states, that such a thing should be inside ...

while he is negative, the positive thing for me is, that his opinion 
means, he likes compact design of Rebol in fact, and regards it being 
a platform in itself :-)

As you mentioned Temple - it sleeps for last two or so years, or 
not? Is there any newer version available?

no new version. i don't think i'll have time for it.

working on R3, right? :-)

your friend Bobik didn't really have a good understanding of Rebol.

and we know that some people never get it sufficiently to be proficient 
enough

Vanilla has session support ...

rebol.org may as well.

I'm sure I read articles before on how one might do sessions server 
side.

Cheynne also has sessions ...

graham, yes many people try to use a new language like they've always 
done before... in any C derivative that works... cause basically 
you aren't doing anything differerently just writting it differently 
(java, perl, python)  but in others, you have to adapt and well... 
it doesn work!