CL-HTTP is a

web server A web server is computer software and underlying hardware that accepts requests via HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, commonly a web browser or web crawler, initiate ...

, client and proxy written in

Common Lisp Common Lisp (CL) is a dialect of the Lisp programming language, published in ANSI standard document ''ANSI INCITS 226-1994 (S20018)'' (formerly ''X3.226-1994 (R1999)''). The Common Lisp HyperSpec, a hyperlinked HTML version, has been derived fro ...

. It is based on its own web application framework. It was written by John C. Mallery "in about 10 days" starting in 1994 on a

Symbolics Symbolics was a computer manufacturer Symbolics, Inc., and a privately held company that acquired the assets of the former company and continues to sell and maintain the Open Genera Lisp system and the Macsyma computer algebra system.

Lisp Machine. In the same year a port to Macintosh Common Lisp was done. In 1996 CL-HTTP became the first web server to support the

HTTP 1.1 The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, w ...

protocol. It runs on Unix, Linux, BSD variants, Mac OS X,

Solaris Solaris may refer to: Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film * ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem ** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg ** ''Solaris'' (1972 film), directed by ...

Symbolics Genera Genera is a Commercial software, commercial operating system and integrated development environment for Lisp machines created by Symbolics. It is essentially a Fork (software development), fork of an earlier operating system originating on the Mas ...

and

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

. CL-HTTP makes extensive use of the Common Lisp Object System and the macro capabilities of Lisp.

Usage

CL-HTTP has been used in several applications. ELM-ART is a tutoring system written in Common Lisp using CL-HTTP. It was later commercialized as NetCoach. InterBook is an early adaptive electronic textbook, also written on top of CL-HTTP. Cl-HTTP has been used very early as a tool to create web interfaces for applications. In 1994, CL-HTTP was used by the

W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...

and other members of the IETF HTTP working group to develop reference clients and servers for HTTP 1.1. Most prominently, CL-HTTP was used during the

presidency of Bill Clinton Bill Clinton's tenure as the 42nd president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1993, and ended on January 20, 2001. Clinton, a Democrat from Arkansas, took office following a decisive election victory over Re ...

as the web server for the White House Publications web site. It distributed the daily press releases and official publications of the Clinton Administration. CL-HTTP has been used as an example of a non-trivial Lisp application.

Features

* Object-oriented architecture using the Common Lisp Object System *

SSL SSL may refer to: Entertainment * RoboCup Small Size League, robotics football competition * ''Sesame Street Live'', a touring version of the children's television show * StarCraft II StarLeague, a Korean league in the video game Natural language ...

support * Server ** Handling of static files ** Computed content, Computed forms ** HTML generation with Lisp macros ** Virtual servers ** Web page access authentication ** Custom logging ** Server-side includes * Caching Proxy * Client

References

External links

CL-HTTP website

CL-HTTP Primer
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cl-Http Web server software Common Lisp (programming language) software