Microframeworks for Squeak/Pharo web service

frameworks, pharo, smalltalk, squeak, web-services

Solution

I would like to share what I think is more up-to-date information (as of end of 2012).

Zinc Components

Currently in Pharo 1.4/2.0 the de-facto standard for HTTP client/server seems to be the Zinc HTTP Components. And the latest Seaside version (3.0) switched to Zinc as well.

You can of course use Zinc directly to implement web-services or serve web-pages.

Take a look particularly at classes `ZnServer` and search for classes like `Zn*Delegate` (like `ZnDefaultServerDelegate` or `ZnStaticFileServerDelegate`)

Seaside REST

Latest versions of Seaside include support for RESTful web-services. This can be used to implement web-services or serve web-pages. It's pretty straightforward.

For more information look at the "REST Services" chapter of the online Seaside book. This chapter centers about implementing web-services, but it works for web-pages as well.

Ratpack

I have also been told about Ratpack, a sinatra-like web-framework developed by Tim Felgentreff. There are two repositories. I think the github one is more recent. See here:

- http://ss3.gemstone.com/ss/RatPack.html

- https://github.com/timfel/ratpack

This information comes from a similar question I posted recently.

Problem

Lots of languages have microframeworks for writing very tiny websites or web services, such as Flask for Python, or Sinatra for Ruby. On Squeak, there doesn't seem to be any equivalent; Iliad, Seaside, and AIDA are all very heavy for just having a little service. What's the preferred way to accomplish this? Directly injecting a hanlder into Comanche or Swazoo?

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