Re: Library for off-system

[Yuri Takhteyev <yuri@...>]

> cgi ... well when i ask on kepler list about it, they said that lua
> pages runs under cgi...have u already take a look at server variables
> response?

I can't find the thread you are referring to, but I am guessing that
what they meant is that lua pages are usually used with "CGILua"
(though they don't have to be). CGILua is Kepler's older framework,
which actually has little to do with CGI today. (It did at some point
in the past, hence the name.) CGILua supports PHP-style web
development and used to be the main option for Kepler.

Since then, Kepler introduced a new API, which is WSAPI. CGILua has
been ported to WSAPI, so you can still use it, but some of us have
then found that it is actually easier to build applications directly
on WSAPI. This has lead to somewhat a decline in the popularity of
CGILua, it seems. Additionally, Fabio has been spending time on a
newer framework (Orbit), which is closer to MVC. However, one can
still use CGILua and one can also use the lua pages module directly.

Xavante itself does not use CGI and in fact is an _alternative_ to it.
A web app written using WSAPI can be run on CGI or FastCGI or Xavante.
To illustrate, here are just a few of the possible stacks:

Xavante - WSAPI - CGILua - an app using Lua Pages
CGI - WSAPI - Orbit - an app written using Orbit and Orbit pages
FastCGI - WSAPI - Sputnik - an app written by customizing Sputnik
CGI - WSAPI - an app using WSAPI directly
CGI - WSAPI - a wsapi filter - another wsapi filter - an app using
WSAPI directly

Note that if you add a new WSAPI implementation, then you can use all
existing WSAPI applications on top of it. Similarly, if you write a
WSAPI application, you can run it on any WSAPI implementation.

- yuri