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NAME

       ns_adp - ADP introduction and operation

DESCRIPTION

       Several commands, normally beginning with the ns_adp prefix, are used to support AOLserver
       Dynamic Pages, or ADP's.  ADP's are a  server-side  environment  for  embedding  Tcl  code
       within  static  text  blocks  (typically HTML or XML).  The Tcl code is normally delimited
       within <% and %> or <%= and %> tags and can be used to generate additional text or for any
       other  purpose, e.g., updating a database.  The <% ...script... %> is used for cases where
       the result of the Tcl script is ignored while the <%=  ...script  %>  syntax  is  used  to
       append  the  script  result to the output buffer.  In either case, the ns_adp_puts command
       can be used to add content to the output buffer.  A simple ADP file could contain:

              <html>
              <head><title>Hello from <%=[ns_info hostname]%></title></head>
              <body>
              Time is: <%=[clock format [clock seconds]]%>
              Four links:
              <%
              for {set i 0} {$i < 4} {incr i} {
                ns_adp_puts "<a href=/link/$i.htm>Link $i</a><br>"
              }
              %>
              </body></html>

       Accessing this page would generate output similar to:

              <html>
              <head><title>Hello from jgdavidson.local</title></head>
              <body>
              Time is: Mon Aug 01 22:15:18 EDT 2005
              Ten links:
              <a href=/link/0.htm>Link 0</a><br>
              <a href=/link/1.htm>Link 1</a><br>
              <a href=/link/2.htm>Link 2</a><br>
              <a href=/link/3.htm>Link 3</a><br>
              </body></html>

       ADP processing normally occurs in the context of an HTTP transaction when an  URL  request
       is  mapped  to  an  ADP  file in the server's page root.  (see ADP CONFIGURATION below for
       details on configuring this mapping).  The ADP request processing  code  allocates  a  Tcl
       interpreter and includes the cooresponding ADP file.  Output generated during execution of
       the ADP is sent as a normal HTTP response, using default status code of "200 OK"  and  the
       mime  type  which  corresponds  to  the  ADP  file extensions, normally .adp and text/html
       (commands such as ns_adp_mimetype can be used to control the eventual response type).

       An ADP can include additional ADP files with the ns_adp_include command  or  evaluate  ADP
       text/script  code  directly with ns_adp_eval.  This capability enables are large degree of
       reuse of presentation and code between applications.   Each  such  included  file  or  ADP
       string  evaluation  is  performed in it's own call frame similar to a Tcl procedure with a
       local variable namespace.  Arguments can be passed to new call frames  and  then  accessed
       with  commands such as ns_adp_argv.  When necessary, commands such as ns_adp_abort provide
       limited support to interrupt and/or return from within an  ADP,  unwinding  the  ADP  call
       stack to the underyling C-level request processing code.

CONFIGURATION

       AOLserver  can  be  configured  to  execute  ADP's placed with other static files within a
       virtual server's pages directory via the map parameter in the adp server  config  section,
       for example:

              ns_section ns/server/server1/adp
              ns_param map /*.adp
              ns_param map {/stories/*.adp 60}

       The  first  map  will  evaluate  all files which end in .adp and do not have more specific
       mappings (such as the second map).  The second config map will  execute  files  which  end
       with  .adp  located  under  the  /stories  directly  and also specifies a cache timeout in
       seconds. In this case, results will  be  retained  and  returned  to  subsequent  requests
       without  re-executing  the  ADP  for  up  to  60  seconds  (see the -cache paramter to the
       ns_adp_include command for more details).

       Alternatively,  arbitrary  URL's  may  be  mapped  to  individual  ADP  files  using   the
       ns_register_adp  command.   This  command  would  normally be included in a virtual-server
       initialization scripts within the modules/tcl/ server subdirectory.

ERROR HANDLING AND EXCEPTIONS

       By default, errors within an ADP script block are reported in the server log and interrupt
       execution  of  the  current  block  only; subsequent text and script blocks continue to be
       processed and and no error message is included in the output.   This  approach  is  highly
       defensive  and  has  the  benefit of generating a valid, if partial, responses after minor
       errors.  A negative aspect of this approach is that, without  careful  monitoring  of  the
       server log, such errors can easily be ignored.

       The default error handling behavior can be modified by settings one or more virtual-server
       configuration flags:

              ns_section ns/server/server1/adp
              ns_param stricterror false;  # Interrupt execution on any error.
              ns_param displayerror false; # Include error message in output.
              ns_param detailerror true;   # Include connection details messages.

       These flags, along with other options, can be queried or modified for  an  individual  ADP
       execution stream via the ns_adp_ctl.

SCRIPT BLOCK SCOPE

       By  default,  each Tcl block is independent of other blocks and must be a complete script.
       In particular, this means that conditional code cannot span blocks,  e.g.,  the  following
       does not work by default:

              <% foreach elem $list { %>
                Here is an <%=$elem%> element.
              <% } %>

       This  behavior  can  be  changed with the singlescript config option or via the ns_adp_ctl
       command which instructs the ADP parser to converts all text/code blocks within an ADP into
       a single Tcl script block:

              ns_section ns/server/server1/adp
              ns_param singlescript false;  # Combine code blocks into one scripts.

       Setting this option would covert the script above into the following equivalent:

              <% foreach elem $list {
                ns_adp_puts -nonewline "\n    Here is an "
                ns_adp_puts -nonewline $elem
                ns_adp_puts -nonewline " element.\n"
              } %>

       Note  that  this option combines scripts within a particular ADP file, it does not combine
       scripts which span multiple included ADP's.  In addition, error semantics described  above
       apply  to the combined script and any error within any block combined into a single script
       will stop execution of the entire included page.

BUFFER MANAGEMENT

       Output including accumulated text blocks and output generated  by  Tcl  script  blocks  is
       normally  buffered  internally  until  the end of the connection.  Once complete, a single
       response is generated which follows HTTP response headers indicating the resulting content
       length.  The content may optionally be gzip compressed first.

       Alternatively,  an  incremental response can be be generated either in response to calling
       the ns_adp_stream or ns_adp_flush commands or automatically due to  buffer  overflow.   In
       this  case,  an  HTTP  response  will  be  generated  on  the  first flush which specifies
       incremental content using HTTP/1.1 chunked-encoding.  Forcing a connection into  streaming
       mode  can  be useful for certain long running requests where it's reasonable to expect the
       browser can render incremental respnoses.

       The size of the internal buffer and gzip compression options can be set with corresponding
       server and ADP config options. Note both the virtual-server wide gzip and ADP gzip options
       must be enabled to support compression of ADP output.

              ns_section ns/server/server1
              ns_param gzip true; # Enable compression.
              ns_param gziplevel 4; # Compression level.
              ns_param gzipmin 4096; # Minimum size before gzip.

              ns_section ns/server/server1/adp
              ns_param gzip true; # Enable ADP output compression.
              ns_param bufsize 102400; # Buffer size, 1meg default.

CHARACTER ENCODING

       The ADP interface uses the server's mimetype  configuration  to  map  file  extensions  to
       charsets  and  cooresponding encoding.  This configuration is necessary to ensure the file
       text and script blocks are properly coverted to UTF-8 for use internally.   This  mimetype
       is also used to set the character output encoding although the ns_conn encoding option can
       be used to override the encoding if necessary.

SEE ALSO

       ns_adp_include(n), ns_adp_puts(n), ns_adp_ctl(n)

KEYWORDS

       ADP, dynamic pages