Website Development Tools

Here are the resources I have found useful. I'm working on organizing this better. Let me know what you find helpful or missing.

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Server-side Programs

• Apache, Inc. provided many of the early ISP entrants with a turn-key package of Digital servers and UNIX software written in the Perl language, as part of the "LAMP stack" of Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl/Python.

• Netscape derived much of its revenue from providing server software.

• Microsoft's Site Server 3.0 ".stm" files provide the site administration functions that Apache does. Examples include Office Depot's site. The Microsoft Commercial Internet System (MCIS) provides shopping cart (e-shop) services.
  > Programs which control programs running on Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) web and FTP server software are named Active Server Pages. Such programs have file extensions of "ASP." ASP's and IIS only runs on Microsoft's own NT 4 server operating system software.
  • Programs built using Microsoft's Visual Basic development system can be converted to Active Server Pages with VB & IIS
  • Stephen Genusa's ISAPI Developer's Site
  • 15 Seconds

• Peter Perchansky offers JavaScript Alternatives to Microsoft Front Page Web Bots).
• Sun Microsystems offers their Java Web Server"!

• Since 2005, the spotlight is moving to a battle between Microsoft .NET 2.0 Framework vs. the Java Open-Source Java "SASH" Stack
  • Apache Struts,
  • Apache Axis,
  • Spring Framework,
  • Hibernate.

• Saavy Search domain name registrations
• Electronic Commerce Transaction

Server-side functionality

• Browser capabilities adaptation
• Login/Logoff and Permission Checking
• Page counters
• Content Rotation
• Personalization of content
• Email
• E-commerce (credit check)
• Data validation

The Architecture of the ONE

http://oness.sourceforge.net/architecture.html

Common Gateway Interface (CGI)

From Solena Sol's Web Ware:


CGI Alternatives for Front Page Webbots

Take the Brainbench certification test on CGI Scripting

CGI is simple and scalable. Forms users fill out are identified as a CGI request and passed on to the Perl program. Perl is not the only programming language which uses CGI.

CGI Overview. Chris Doemel's ZDU Intro to Perl Programming class locker Earthlink's CGI Script on how to send mail from your webpage How to append form data to a file on Earthlink, which recommends reading the Forms Tutorial on Webcom, then browsing the Library of Forms CGI Scripts CGI Resources Online Testing Java examples. CMP.Net's Techweb has Java Tools & Tricks Webcom CGI-Perl.com How to avoid 404 Page Not Found Messages Quick Site setup Other Web Servers Jetty

IIS vs. CGI

Feature	Microsoft IIS	UNIX CGI
Default location of HTTP documents	x:\Inetpub\WWWRoot\	On the Apache Web server: /usr/local/http/htdocs/
File extensions of HTTP files	".htm" extensions and ".asp" file type for server-side scripts	".html" extensions and ".cgi" file type with "Context-type:" in headers.
Method to differentiate HTTP files and server-side scripts	".asp" file type	".cgi" file type with "Context-type:" in headers. A blank line between the end of the header and the beginning of the actual content is needed to avoid a "500 Server Misconfiguration error".
Default file name	"Index.htm" or "Index.asp", but configurable.	"default.html"
Default location of executables	c:\Programs\	/cgi-bin/
Default location of interpreter	c:\Programs\Perl32	#!/bin/sh for Bourne shell scripts. #!/usr/bin/perl for Perl scripts.
Method of passing data from Web server to CGI programs	Temporaray files (which slows performance)	Environment variable QUERY_STRING.
"403 Forbidden" message		Permissions for user "nobody"
Error Log Location Avoiding browser "404 Not Found" message		/var/log/httpd
Error Log location	With HTML: <A href="javascript:history.go(-1)"> <img src="http://merc.tv/img/flipprev.gif" border="0" alt=Back> </A> Custom Error messages on NT ISAPI	if ($ENV{'HTTP_REFERER'}) { $referrer = $ENV{'HTTP_REFERER'}; print “&LT;P>Go back to the referring page:&LT;BR>\n"; print “&LT;A href=\"$referrer\">$referrer&LT;/A>&LT;/P>\n"; } Perl Redirection of error messages
To retrieve variables (such as the Document Name/File/URI Path, LAST_MODIFIED, DATE_LOCAL, etc.)	Microsoft Active Server Pages VBScript ActiveX	Chilisoft offers ASP on for Netscape Enterprise on Sun Solaris, was released during the summer of 1998. ChilBeans automatically converts Java components to COM objects.
Login Security:	Both Netscape and Internet Explorer support Basic Authentication. Basic Authentication sends the login name and password as unencrypted clear text. To handle a wide scope of people on NT systems, Basic Authentication is used. Internet Explorer is the only browser that also supports NT Challenge/Response. When using NT Challenge/Response authentication, HTTP Keep-Alives needs to be Enabled.
Changing Security:	Start, Programs, NT Option Pack, Internet Administrator	In a listing output from the command ls-l, the first character of the 10-character string -rwxr-xr-- denotes the file type, which is - for files, d for directories, and l for Symbolic links (files that is a pointer to another file somewhere else). A permission string such as "rwxr-xr-x" use three characters for each of three groups: the user, the group that owns the file, and others. (r) is read permission, (w) for write permission, (x) for execute permission, and (-) for no permission. Command chgmod 755 file.ext
To retrieve data PUT from a FORM		PATH_INFO or PATH_TRANSLATED

SSI: Server Side Include Directives

• Files that contain SSI directives must be renamed to have an SSI file name extension of .stm, .shtm, or .shtml.
• SSI files reside in the same directory as html files.
• Input from SSI is interpreted as part of the HTML page

  The syntax:

  <!--#directive command parameter="argument"-->

  Examples:

  Last modified: <!--#flastmod file="somefile.htm"-->

  Notice from this example:

  • There are no spaces between elements
  • Commands are case sensitive.
  • Server Side Includes files have file extensions of ".shtml"
  • There are double quotes around the argument.

  
  <!--#config timefmt=%"r on %A, %B %e"-->
  <!--#echo var="LAST_MODIFIED"-->

  supplies the full document file path from the system root
  
  <!--#echo var="DOCUMENT_NAME"-->
  of the current document
  
  <!--#echo var="DATE_LOCAL"-->
  of the server
  
  <!--#echo var="DOCUMENT_URI"-->
  inserts the value of an environment variables referencing the current page last changed.

  <!--#config errmsg="Whoops, the file doesn't exist!"-->

  sets the error message if the file "generic.txt" does not exist.

  <!--#include file="copyright.htm"-->

  inserts the contents of file "copyright.htm" directly into a document. This can save a lot of repetitive coding and make changes easy to implement.

  <!--#config sizefmt="bytes"-->
  <!--#fsize file="somefile.htm"-->
  <!--#config sizefmt="abbrev"-->
  <!--#fsize file="somefile.htm"-->

  inserts the size, in bytes, of the "somefile.htm" file in two formats: in bytes and the abbreviated kilobytes.

  <pre>
  <!--#exec cmd="/usr/bin/ls -al"-->
  </pre>

  inserts (redirects) the output from external program "ls" with parameter "-al" into the page.

  <!--#exec cgi="/cgi-bin/guestbook.cgi"-->

  inserts (redirects) the output from cgi program "guestbook" into the page. This can create a significant security risk.

  The mod_include module that comes with versions 1.2 and higher of the Apache Web server processes these extended (XSSI) directives:

  <-- #printenv-->

  displays (for debugging) all the environment variables currently available in the web server's environment.

  <!--#set var="color" value="blue" -->

  assigns value "blue" to the variable named "color".

  <--#if
  #elif
  #else
  #endif

NCSA on Server Side Include (SSI) exec directive commands.

#config and #timefmt formatting tokens are the same as for the ANSI C strftime function.

PHP Programming

PHP.net

Java Servlets

JSP pages contain tag definitions at the beginnging of the jsp page:

<%@ taglib uri="/tags/temperature" prefix="temp" %>
<msg:echo message="Hi" /> In the example above, the prefix is "temp" and the tag name is fixed in the tag's TLD (Tag Library Descriptor) file.

The first time the JSP is invoked, it is compiled into a servlet and the servlet's service method is run. Subsequent calls use the same servlet by calling the servlet's service() method.

Take the Brainbench certification test on JSP 1.1 or JSP 1.2

The Java Platform
Java GUI Programming