Tclhttpd

Http-server implemented in TCL

This is a pure-Tcl implementation of an HTTP protocol server. It runs as a script on top of a vanilla Tcl interpreter using tcllib scripts and, optionally, two binary libraries crypt and limit.

The Tcl I/O system provides event-driven I/O facilities and a primitive that copies data from one I/O channel to another. The server does the HTTP protocol handling and then simply directs the I/O system to blast data from disk to a network socket. The server has suprisingly good performance because of Tcl’s sophisticated I/O system.

The HTTP protocol is perhaps the least interesting aspect of the server. The cool stuff is the framework for generating dynamic page content, and the support for embedding the server directly into legacy applications to “web-enable” them.

A Tcl-based web server is ideal for embedding because Tcl was designed to support embedding into other applications. The interpreted nature of Tcl allows dynamic reconfiguration of the server. Once the core interface between the web server and the hosting application is defined, it is possible to manage the web server, upload Safe-Tcl control scripts, download logging information, and otherwise debug the Tcl part of the application without restarting the hosting application.