<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"><title>Programming with AOLserver</title><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.64.1"><link rel="home" href="index.html" title="OpenACS Core Documentation"><link rel="up" href="dev-guide.html" title="Chapter�9.�Development Reference"><link rel="previous" href="object-identity.html" title="Object Identity"><link rel="next" href="form-builder.html" title="Using HTML Forms"><link rel="stylesheet" href="openacs.css" type="text/css"></head><body bgcolor="white" text="black" link="#0000FF" vlink="#840084" alink="#0000FF"><div class="navheader"><a href="http://openacs.org"><img src="/doc/images/alex.jpg" border="0" alt="Alex logo"></a><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header" border="0"><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="object-identity.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">Chapter�9.�Development Reference</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="form-builder.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr></div><div class="sect1" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="programming-with-aolserver"></a>Programming with AOLserver</h2></div></div><div></div></div><div class="authorblurb"><p>By Michael Yoon, Jon Salz and <a href="http://www.pinds.com/lars" target="_top">Lars Pind</a>.</p> OpenACS docs are written by the named authors, and may be edited by OpenACS documentation staff. </div><div class="sect2" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="programming-aolserver-global"></a>The <tt class="computeroutput">global</tt> command</h3></div></div><div></div></div><p> When using AOLserver, remember that there are effectively <span class="emphasis"><em>two</em></span> types of global namespace, not one: </p><div class="orderedlist"><ol type="1"><li><p><span class="emphasis"><em>Server</em></span>-global: As you'd expect, there is only one server-global namespace per server, and variables set within it can be accessed by any Tcl code running subsequently, in any of the server's threads. To set/get server-global variables, use AOLserver 3's <a href="http://www.aolserver.com/docs/nsv.adp" target="_top"><tt class="computeroutput">nsv</tt> API</a> (which supersedes <tt class="computeroutput">ns_share</tt> from the pre-3.0 API). </p></li><li><p><span class="emphasis"><em>Script</em></span>-global: Each Tcl script (ADP, Tcl page, registered proc, filter, etc.) executing within an AOLserver thread has its own global namespace. Any variable set in the top level of a script is, by definition, script-global, meaning that it is accessible only by subsequent code in the same script and only for the duration of the current script execution.</p></li></ol></div><p> The Tcl built-in command <a href="http://aolserver.com/docs/tcl/tcl8.3/TclCmd/global.htm" target="_top"><tt class="computeroutput">global</tt></a> accesses script-global, <span class="emphasis"><em>not</em></span> server-global, variables from within a procedure. This distinction is important to understand in order to use <tt class="computeroutput">global</tt> correctly when programming AOLserver. </p><p>Also, AOLserver purges all script-global variables in a thread (i.e., Tcl interpreter) between HTTP requests. If it didn't, that would affect (and complicate) our use of script-global variables dramatically, which would then be better described as <span class="emphasis"><em>thread</em></span>-global variables. Given AOLserver's behaviour, however, "script-global" is a more appropriate term.</p></div><div class="sect2" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="programming-aolserver-sched-procs"></a>Threads and Scheduled Procedures</h3></div></div><div></div></div><p> <tt class="computeroutput">ns_schedule_proc</tt> and <tt class="computeroutput">ad_schedule_proc</tt> each take a <tt class="computeroutput">-thread</tt> flag to cause a scheduled procedure to run asychronously, in its own thread. It almost always seems like a good idea to specify this switch, but there's a problem. </p><p>It turns out that whenever a task scheduled with <tt class="computeroutput">ns_schedule_proc -thread</tt> or <tt class="computeroutput">ad_schedule_proc -thread t</tt> is run, AOLserver creates a brand new thread and a brand new interpreter, and reinitializes the procedure table (essentially, loads all procedures that were created during server initialization into the new interpreter). This happens <span class="emphasis"><em>every time</em></span> the task is executed - and it is a very expensive process that should not be taken lightly!</p><p>The moral: if you have a lightweight scheduled procedure which runs frequently, don't use the <tt class="computeroutput">-thread</tt> switch.</p><div class="blockquote"><blockquote class="blockquote"><p><span class="emphasis"><em>Note also that thread is initialized with a copy of what was installed during server startup, so if the procedure table have changed since startup (e.g. using the <a href="apm-design.html" title="Package Manager Design">APM</a> watch facility), that will not be reflected in the scheduled thread.</em></span></p></blockquote></div></div><div class="sect2" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="programming-aolserver-return"></a>Using <tt class="computeroutput">return</tt></h3></div></div><div></div></div><p> The <tt class="computeroutput">return</tt> command in Tcl returns control to the caller procedure. This definition allows nested procedures to work properly. However, this definition also means that nested procedures cannot use <tt class="computeroutput">return</tt> to end an entire thread. This situation is most common in exception conditions that can be triggered from inside a procedure e.g., a permission denied exception. At this point, the procedure that detects invalid permission wants to write an error message to the user, and completely abort execution of the caller thread. <tt class="computeroutput">return</tt> doesn't work, because the procedure may be nested several levels deep. We therefore use <a href="/api-doc/proc-view?proc=ad%5fscript%5fabort" target="_top"><tt class="computeroutput">ad_script_abort</tt></a> to abort the remainder of the thread. Note that using <tt class="computeroutput">return</tt> instead of <tt class="computeroutput">ad_script_abort</tt> may raise some security issues: an attacker could call a page that performed some DML statement, pass in some arguments, and get a permission denied error -- but the DML statement would still be executed because the thread was not stopped. Note that <tt class="computeroutput">return -code return</tt> can be used in circumstances where the procedure will only be called from two levels deep. </p></div><div class="sect2" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="programming-aolserver-more-values"></a>Returning More Than One Value From a Function</h3></div></div><div></div></div><p> Many functions have a single return value. For instance, <a href="/api-doc/proc-view?proc=empty%5fstring%5fp" target="_top"><tt class="computeroutput">empty_string_p</tt></a> returns a number: 1 or 0. Other functions need to return a composite value. For instance, consider a function that looks up a user's name and email address, given an ID. One way to implement this is to return a three-element list and document that the first element contains the name, and the second contains the email address. The problem with this technique is that, because Tcl does not support constants, calling procedures that returns lists in this way necessitates the use of magic numbers, e.g.: </p><pre class="programlisting"> set user_info [ad_get_user_info $user_id] set first_name [lindex $user_info 0] set email [lindex $user_info 1] </pre><p>AOLserver/Tcl generally has three mechanisms that we like, for returning more than one value from a function. When to use which depends on the circumstances.</p><p>Using Arrays and Pass-By-Value</p><p> The one we generally prefer is returning an <a href="http://aolserver.com/docs/tcl/tcl8.3/TclCmd/array.htm#M8" target="_top"><tt class="computeroutput">array get</tt></a>-formatted list. It has all the nice properties of pass-by-value, and it uses Tcl arrays, which have good native support. </p><pre class="programlisting"> ad_proc ad_get_user_info { user_id } { db_1row user_info { select first_names, last_name, email from users where user_id = :user_id } return [list \ name "$first_names $last_name" \ email $email \ namelink "<a href=\"/shared/community-member?user_id=[ns_urlencode $user_id]\">$first_names $last_name</a>" \ emaillink "<a href=\"mailto:$email\">$email</a>"] } array set user_info [ad_get_user_info $user_id] doc_body_append "$user_info(namelink) ($user_info(emaillink))" </pre><p> You could also have done this by using an array internally and using <tt class="computeroutput">array get</tt>: </p><pre class="programlisting"> ad_proc ad_get_user_info { user_id } { db_1row user_info { select first_names, last_name, email from users where user_id = :user_id } set user_info(name) "$first_names $last_name" set user_info(email) $email set user_info(namelink) "<a href=\"/shared/community-member?user_id=[ns_urlencode $user_id]\">$first_names $last_name</a>" set user_info(emaillink) "<a href=\"mailto:$email\">$email</a>" return [array get user_info] } </pre><p>Using Arrays and Pass-By-Reference</p><p> Sometimes pass-by-value incurs too much overhead, and you'd rather pass-by-reference. Specifically, if you're writing a proc that uses arrays internally to build up some value, there are many entries in the array, and you're planning on iterating over the proc many times. In this case, pass-by-value is expensive, and you'd use pass-by-reference. </p><div class="blockquote"><blockquote class="blockquote"><p><span class="emphasis"><em>The transformation of the array into a list and back to an array takes, in our test environment, approximately 10 microseconds per entry of 100 character's length. Thus you can process about 100 entries per milisecond. The time depends almost completely on the number of entries, and almost not at all on the size of the entries.</em></span></p></blockquote></div><p> You implement pass-by-reference in Tcl by taking the name of an array as an argument and <tt class="computeroutput">upvar</tt> it. </p><pre class="programlisting"> ad_proc ad_get_user_info { -array:required user_id } { upvar $array user_info db_1row user_info { select first_names, last_name, email from users where user_id = :user_id } set user_info(name) "$first_names $last_name" set user_info(email) $email set user_info(namelink) "<a href=\"/shared/community-member?user_id=[ns_urlencode $user_id]\">$first_names $last_name</a>" set user_info(emaillink) "<a href=\"mailto:$email\">$email</a>" } ad_get_user_info -array user_info $user_id doc_body_append "$user_info(namelink) ($user_info(emaillink))" </pre><p>We prefer pass-by-value over pass-by-reference. Pass-by-reference makes the code harder to read and debug, because changing a value in one place has side effects in other places. Especially if have a chain of <tt class="computeroutput">upvar</tt>s through several layers of the call stack, you'll have a hard time debugging.</p><p>Multisets: Using <tt class="computeroutput">ns_set</tt>s and Pass-By-Reference</p><p> An array is a type of <span class="emphasis"><em>set</em></span>, which means you can't have multiple entries with the same key. Data structures that can have multiple entries for the same key are known as a <span class="emphasis"><em>multiset</em></span> or <span class="emphasis"><em>bag</em></span>. </p><p>If your data can have multiple entries with the same key, you should use the AOLserver built-in <a href="http://www.aolserver.com/docs/tcldev/tapi-120.htm#197598" target="_top"><tt class="computeroutput"> ns_set</tt></a>. You can also do a case-insensitive lookup on an <tt class="computeroutput">ns_set</tt>, something you can't easily do on an array. This is especially useful for things like HTTP headers, which happen to have these exact properties.</p><p>You always use pass-by-reference with <tt class="computeroutput">ns_set</tt>s, since they don't have any built-in way of generating and reconstructing themselves from a string representation. Instead, you pass the handle to the set.</p><pre class="programlisting"> ad_proc ad_get_user_info { -set:required user_id } { db_1row user_info { select first_names, last_name, email from users where user_id = :user_id } ns_set put $set name "$first_names $last_name" ns_set put $set email $email ns_set put $set namelink "<a href=\"/shared/community-member?user_id=[ns_urlencode $user_id]\">$first_names $last_name</a>" ns_set put $set emaillink "<a href=\"mailto:$email\">$email</a>" } set user_info [ns_set create] ad_get_user_info -set $user_info $user_id doc_body_append "[ns_set get $user_info namelink] ([ns_set get $user_info emaillink])" </pre><p> We don't recommend <tt class="computeroutput">ns_set</tt> as a general mechanism for passing sets (as opposed to multisets) of data. Not only do they inherently use pass-by-reference, which we dis-like, they're also somewhat clumsy to use, since Tcl doesn't have built-in syntactic support for them. </p><p>Consider for example a loop over the entries in a <tt class="computeroutput">ns_set</tt> as compared to an array:</p><pre class="programlisting"> # ns_set variant set size [ns_set size $myset] for { set i 0 } { $i < $size } { incr i } { puts "[ns_set key $myset $i] = [ns_set value $myset $i]" } # array variant foreach name [array names myarray] { puts "$myarray($name) = $myarray($name)" } </pre><p> And this example of constructing a value: </p><pre class="programlisting"> # ns_set variant set myset [ns_set create] ns_set put $myset foo $foo ns_set put $myset baz $baz return $myset # array variant return [list foo $foo baz $baz ] </pre><p> <tt class="computeroutput">ns_set</tt>s are designed to be lightweight, so memory consumption should not be a problem. However, when using <tt class="computeroutput">ns_set get</tt> to perform lookup by name, they perform a linear lookup, whereas arrays use a hash table, so <tt class="computeroutput">ns_set</tt>s are slower than arrays when the number of entries is large. </p><div class="cvstag">($Id: programming-with-aolserver.html,v 1.26 2004/02/12 13:51:40 joela Exp $)</div></div></div><div class="navfooter"><hr><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="object-identity.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="form-builder.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left">Object Identity </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="dev-guide.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> Using HTML Forms</td></tr></table><hr><address><a href="mailto:docs@openacs.org">docs@openacs.org</a></address></div><a name="comments"></a><center><a href="http://openacs.org/doc/programming-with-aolserver.html#comments">View comments on this page at openacs.org</a></center></body></html>