1.5.2 Define servers

A server (in Serveez) is a snippet of code that implements some protocol. There are many servers built into Serveez but you can implement your own, too. For example we provide a webserver implementing the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Each server has a different set of options you can change. You can have many instances of every server, each with a different set of options. For example: You can create a webserver on TCP port 42420 publishing the Serveez documentation and also have another webserver on a different port publishing something else. Every server has a unique name you assign to it. The name of the server is later used to bind it to a port.

The following example instantiates a server with the short name “foo”. Each server in Serveez has got a short name. See Existing servers, for the details. This example demonstrates everything which is possible in server configurations. You start a definition of a server with the procedure define-server!. The following argument specifies the name of the server instance (in this case foo-server) which starts with the short name. The second argument describes the server in detail. Each configuration item is setup with a (key . value) pair where key is the name of the configuration item and value is the value which depends on the type of the item. See Some words about server configuration, for a detailed description of each type of value.

(define-server! 'foo-server '(
    (bar . 100)                             ;; number
    (reply . "Booo")                        ;; character string
    (messages .                             ;; list of strings
      ("Welcome to the foo test server."
       "This one echos your lines."))
    (ports . (5 6 7 8 9))                   ;; list of numbers
    (port . foo-tcp-port)                   ;; a port configuration
    (assoc . (( "GNU" . "great" )           ;; associative list
              ( "Tree" . "tall" )))
    (truth . #f)                            ;; boolean value
  ))

Serveez provides a number of server types. Each of them has a short name. The name of the server instance has to begin with this short name followed by a dash (-). You can append any suffix then. In the example above “foo” is the short name and foo-server the name of the server instance.