On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 6:15 PM, Neil Mitchell
Hi,
I am the author of Hoogle (http://haskell.org/hoogle/), a Haskell API search engine, that is usually used through a web interface. I'm not an expert on website programming in Haskell, and I'm not a server admin by any means. Currently the web side of Hoogle can run in two modes - as a CGI binary (as deployed on haskell.org) or with "hoogle server" which starts its own server. I wrote both the CGI interface (see http://code.haskell.org/hoogle/src/General/Web.hs) and the server (see http://code.haskell.org/hoogle/src/Web/Server.hs) myself. I imagine there is something in the web devel community that I should be using instead? If so, what is it, and how do I use it? I have a few requirements:
* I have to be able to integrate it with haskell.org (which probably runs Apache?).
* I also want to be able to run it as a server where the hoogle binary runs the server.
* If I could get log/email messages whenever serving a page caused an exception, or took longer than a certain threshold, that would be great - but isn't necessary.
* I'd like to log all queries run, and in particular how long they take, so I can investigate performance issues.
Thanks for any advice you may be able to give,
Hi Neil, I'm a big fan of your work, especially hlint and Hoogle. I'd be happy to help you out as much as possible. There are basically three ways you could interact with an Apache server from Haskell: * CGI * FastCGI * Reverse HTTP proxy Essentailly, in a reverse HTTP, you'll have a standalone server running on some port that never talks to the outside world, and Apache will proxy all HTTP connections for your application to that server. FastCGI is similar to CGI, except it allows for long-running processes, as opposed to spawning a new process for each request. There are at this point three main web frameworks in Haskell (that I'm aware of, someone correct me if I'm wrong): Yesod[1], Happstack[2] and Snap[3]. I'm the author of Yesod, so keep in mind that my opinions will be biased. Snap only supports running as a standalone HTTP server, so going with Snap will require reverse HTTP proxy. Happstack has a FastCGI backend, though I don't know how well maintained it is. In Yesod, all three options are considered first-class, though CGI will probably not be very performant. (Yesod also support SCGI, though I don't know how well Apache support SCGI.) All of your desired features are easily implemented in Yesod except the timeout one. I *think* that should be manageable using WAI middlewares, though it will probably be even easier in the upcoming Yesod 0.7 if/when we deploy general Yesod middlewares. (And no, I don't expect any of that to make much sense to someone not involved in these discussions.) If you are interested in trying a migration to Yesod, just send me an email (either privately or on web-devel). Michael [1] http://docs.yesodweb.com/ [2] http://happstack.com/index.html [3] http://snapframework.com/