[Mod-guile-devel] Updates /Questions

[rm]

Ok, i'm allmost done with factoring out the code
into several files/modules. So far i have
(apache server)
(apache connection)
(apache request)
(apache tables)
(mod-guile utils)

I also moved all sources to a subdirectory, docs and
autoconf/automake support scripts have a directory as 
well.

I've pretty much autotoolized the whole thing, but
unfortunately i've not yet found a good solution that
allows me to use automake to build a .so target.

On the way i stumbled  accross several things:

- I needed to write a new snarfer macro 'SCM_DEFINE_PUBLIC'
  that adds the defined method to a modules public interface.

- 'read-form-data' should probably _not_ use the request records
  character string representation of content length. A more
  secure approach would be to read 'long req->remaining' _after_
  a call to ap_setup_client_block(). Aditionally, the method
  should check the req->method_number: reading from a GET 
  request is probably a bad idea ;-)

- parse-form-data: i'm not shure about the best semantic for
  this function. Currently the code returns #f if it can't parse
  the string parameter (for example if the string is empty).
  This probaly makes the code using this function rather elaborate.
  Instead of: 
   (for-each process-param (parse-form-data data))
  one has to explicitly test:

   (let ((dict (parse-form-data data)))
     (if (dict)
           (for-each  process-param dict)
           #f))
           
  I'd suggest returning an empty list instead ...

- In some places apache structures hold integers and your
  code dutifully returns these 
  
   (req-rec:header-only req)  

  Since these integers are nothing more than C's way of expressing
  booleans i'd suggest returning #t / #f instead.

A more 'cosmetic' sugestion: since request record etc. getters/setters
are now in their own module, maybe we can remove the name prefix.

 (request-rec:header-in r)  -> (headers-in r)

we can still get the 'old' names by importing with a renamer

 (use-modules (apache request) :renamer (symbol-prefix-proc 'request-rec:))

As soon as i find a solution for my automake problem i'll post the 
new code.

 Ralf

PS: on the "good news" side: the thing is getting impressively fast ;-)