Web services on guile

Web services on guile

[Romel R. Sandoval Palomo]

Hi,

I'm planning to write an application with a client server architecture.
I want to write the server on PHP and the client on Scheme (Guile).

The user of the client application will push some information to the
server every time she wants. Something similar to a commit or push on
version control systems.

About my selection of technologies:
* PHP: to take advantage of installed infrastructure and cheep hosting
* XML-RCP or SOAP: is the only thing I know it can be used under PHP
* Guile: because I like it :-)

So my problem is: How to consume web services (XML-RPC or SOAP) with
Guile?

I have found gSOAP http://www.cs.fsu.edu/~engelen/soap.html

I think I have four alternatives:

 1. Keep the web service consumption part of the client in C using gSOAP
 2. Write a binding of gSOAP library for Guile
 3. Write a web services library for Guile from cero
 4. Forget about PHP and use ONC RPC

What do you think is the best alternative?
Do you see other alternatives?

Re: Web services on guile

[Sascha Ziemann]

2010/5/22 Romel R. Sandoval Palomo <romel@lavabit.com>:
> I think I have four alternatives:
>
>  1. Keep the web service consumption part of the client in C using gSOAP
>  2. Write a binding of gSOAP library for Guile
>  3. Write a web services library for Guile from cero
>  4. Forget about PHP and use ONC RPC

I found it quite complicated to handle complex data values with PHPs
SOAP-Server features. It will be much easier to use a s-list paser for
PHP and send the data as a-list.

Re: Web services on guile

[Andy Wingo]

On Sun 23 May 2010 11:25, Sascha Ziemann <ceving@googlemail.com> writes:

> 2010/5/22 Romel R. Sandoval Palomo <romel@lavabit.com>:
>> I think I have four alternatives:
>>
>>  1. Keep the web service consumption part of the client in C using gSOAP
>>  2. Write a binding of gSOAP library for Guile
>>  3. Write a web services library for Guile from cero
>>  4. Forget about PHP and use ONC RPC
>
> I found it quite complicated to handle complex data values with PHPs
> SOAP-Server features. It will be much easier to use a s-list paser for
> PHP and send the data as a-list.

I would agree, FWIW. I wanted to implement XML-RPC at one point in
tekuti, but decided not to after looking at the spec. An s-expression
serializer/unserializer is fairly simply to write, you avoid
distribution problems that way, and you also avoid impedance mismatches.

Andy
-- 
http://wingolog.org/

Re: Web services on guile

[Linas Vepstas]

On 23 May 2010 16:16, Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com> wrote:
> On Sun 23 May 2010 11:25, Sascha Ziemann <ceving@googlemail.com> writes:.
>
> I would agree, FWIW. I wanted to implement XML-RPC at one point in
> tekuti, but decided not to after looking at the spec. An s-expression
> serializer/unserializer is fairly simply to write, you avoid
> distribution problems that way, and you also avoid impedance mismatches.

I've sometimes liked to say that whoever invented XML had
gotten an F in college when studying LISP, although perhaps
they never studied lisp at all.  I've never really figured out
whether I'm being a troll when I say that, or not.

FWIW, I've worked with a data exchange format that has
both an XML and a scheme/guile version. Running the scheme
version of the dataset through guile-1.8 (and passing it into the
C++ system that needs the data) is 3x faster than running
it through the libxerces C++ XML parser.  (I've got detailed
speeds & feeds numbers if anyone cares)  The website
for libxerces says its "high performance, modular, scalable",
which is either a bald lie hallucinated by the maintainers,
or it's true, and a testament to how slowwww XML
fundamentally is.

If you want to be vaguely standards-interoperable, JSON is
worth a look, its pretty simple & yet powerful too. Never used
it in any data-intense situation, though.

--linas

Re: Web services on guile

[Romel Sandoval]

I think, I will go for s-expression then.

El dom, 23-05-2010 a las 23:16 +0200, Andy Wingo escribió:
> On Sun 23 May 2010 11:25, Sascha Ziemann <ceving@googlemail.com> writes:
> 
> > 2010/5/22 Romel R. Sandoval Palomo <romel@lavabit.com>:
> >> I think I have four alternatives:
> >>
> >>  1. Keep the web service consumption part of the client in C using gSOAP
> >>  2. Write a binding of gSOAP library for Guile
> >>  3. Write a web services library for Guile from cero
> >>  4. Forget about PHP and use ONC RPC
> >
> > I found it quite complicated to handle complex data values with PHPs
> > SOAP-Server features. It will be much easier to use a s-list paser for
> > PHP and send the data as a-list.
> 
> I would agree, FWIW. I wanted to implement XML-RPC at one point in
> tekuti, but decided not to after looking at the spec. An s-expression
> serializer/unserializer is fairly simply to write, you avoid
> distribution problems that way, and you also avoid impedance mismatches.
> 
> Andy