As an example of both a unified URL creation framework and persistence framework, I've put together a little example of how we could create an "authentication plugin." For the purposes of our discussion here, we could ignore the persistence piece for now, though I would like to eventually discuss how we could make that better.

Yeah, I gotta finish the urlt stuff first before I think about something else ;)

I wrote a small blog post[1] describing the system. The code relevant for our discussion is broken into two files: WebPlug.hs[2] defines the interface and auth-example.hs[3] is the actual example.

In this version of WebPlug.hs, I've included WebPlug as a datatype instead of a typeclass. I don't actually *use* that datatype here, but I think it would be very useful for higher-level utilities like the quasi-quoter to be able to access the three related functions together.

Right. I already have a similar datatype in URLT.HandleT. My type also includes a 'defaultPage' type which can be used to specify what value "/" should be mapped to. Though, in mine, the dispatch / handleLink function is based on URLT, but that can probably be generalized. As a bonus you also get a Functor instance, and a runSite function that uses the type..

You should really check out URLT sometime :p

I am not going to have time to look at this again until Saturday or Sunday. There are a few minor details that have been swept under the rug that need to be addressed. For example, when exactly does should url encoding / decoding take place. It's not good if that happens twice or not at all.

- jeremy