Timothy:
Just a note to let you know that I've made some changes to the http stuff. I've defined a new interface org.apache.avalon.http.Handler (in the http/api package) and this basically declares the servlet style service operation. I've updated the holder class to include a Servlet adapter class which simply redirects HTTP service requests to the component.
This is great news, Steve. I did mess around with the http updates you did last weekend and earlier this week. Truly great stuff. It's on its way to be something really exciting. Servlet-as-Avalon-component promises to be really nice step in streamlining and stabilizing almost all of the real server applications I use Avalon technology for.
Next step is to resolve path to component mapping (currently hardwired to the component partition name). I'll be looking at this point point later this weekend - current thoughts are that we should:
(a) update the model listener to look for context components (b) get the context component to locate handler components (c) have path to component mapping declared under the context component configuration
The current model listener should be revamped as a configurable http context instance that handles the location of the component to handle an incoming request.
This is similar to a *responder management* block that I built for use with the old Jetty-Phoenix block (re-factored and re-branded as avalon-http in the merlin source). This is an important step in tying the web server to the routing of inbound HTTP requests to a servlet component for handling.
Some more things that I want to add on the plate to enhance the Jetty web server facility are:
(1) Support for deployment of web applications
(2) Support for the loading of custom user-specific Jetty listeners (such as the HTTPS listener I've built on top of a commercial SSL toolkit)
(3) Support for the dynamic starting/stopping of Jetty listeners (i.e. so that I can make my web server stop responding to HTTP requests without shutting down merlin)
(2) Exposure of more of Jetty's web server configuration, including but not limited to:
(a) security realms and basic authentication
(b) Jetty's server monitoring instrumentation and reporting hooks
(c) various configurable params like socket/response timeout, etc.
This is just for starters :)
Anyway, I've just uploaded the a binary snapshot of 3.3 to http://dpml.net/merlin/distributions/3.3/snapshots/20040206/ if you want to play with it this weekend.
To run the http test all you need to do is:
merlin block:avalon-http/test
Then look at the content via http://localhost:8080/test/primary
Good work so far, I look forward to peeking at these changes, and helping make the above action items a reality.
One further note about the notion of merlin kernel-side facilities, of which this web server is an example of. I don't know if this particular idea of mine makes sense to the larger merlin community, but I think merlin facilities are a legitimate place to allow kernel plug-ins for other server-esque functionality.
I've recently ported Paul Hammett's old Phoenix HSQL server component to not only run under merlin AND use the latest HSQL 1.7.x version, but I've built database connection pooling into the component itself, and exported a getConnection() service out of the block. To me, this represents the power of composite component blocks. Now, I've got some clean-up to do on this code before I release it to the general world for consumption, but the point is that IMO this is another candidate for a facility in merlin. How often does one find themselves needing an embedded database for their merlin-hosted applications? For me, almost always (same with web server).
Next step for facilities in my mind are things like JMS servers, FTP servers, and SMTP servers. All of these are high on my priority list, as I'm going to need all of these facilities to address requirements of current and future applications built on Avalon technology.
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