Version 8 of StarSite

Updated 2002-10-25 19:10:15

Name for the concept of placing the contents of a whole website into a single file and serving it directly from there. By Neil Madden.


He, Neil, already uses something near to this for his personal website, based on Metakit and tDOM. I.e. he stores XML and converts that to HTML. This is currently done offline. The moment this is changed to online generation the StarSite is complete.

AK: Related to this is a notion by BrowseX. This browser allows the retrieval of a website and its storage into a zip-archive. This is usually meant for easy transfer of a website, but also allow display of the archive via BrowseX, without unpacking it (IIRC - AK).


AK: Obvious extensions of the concept.

  • A local mode, i.e. running the Starkit containing the StarSite, or providing access to it [*], in a non-web environment pops up a Tk based display which allows browsing the site without web-browser.
  • An extension of such a local mode would be to enable the editing of pages in the site.
  • Allow the starkit to run not only as cgi-type application, but as its own web server.

Depending on the exact nature of how web pages are stored in the StarSite this can have significant overlap with the code base providing the Tcl'ers Wiki. Especially as some discussed extensions to it would allow the storage of not only Wiki markup, but other types of data as well, like images, HTML, or XML. The similarity should be clear by now.

AK: [*] I should explain. My first association was that the code providing access to the contents of the StarSite was part of the StarSite Metakit, in a VFS, making the StarSite a StarKit, or StarPack. As the Wiki codebase shows that doesn't have to be the case. The StarKit containing the code can be distinct form the Metakit database containing the StarSite.

Regarding editing: For HTML this might have to be a free-form editor. For XML we can use StarDOM. Also note that the AlphaTk editor already has a Wiki mode. Extending this to HTML and XML modes might be simple. This implies that the StarSite access StarKit does not need to have the editor embedded into it, although that is an option too. It just has to have way of invoking editors we can hook our prefered editor into.

NEM - Yes, I was thinking along these lines. Some other things I am considering are:

  • Storing data with a mime-type association (text/html, text/xml, image/gif etc). I don't believe that mk4vfs does this presently.
  • Allowing viewing the database as a metakit database, or a filesystem (both are useful at times).
  • Some sort of authentication/access-control built in. Wiki type applications with universal access are useful for some things, but often, you want more security. This needs to be designed in from the start, to be effective.
  • Versioning/Archiving (just like the wiki, but maybe more fine-grained?)
  • Ability to run as standalone HTTP or as CGI, with a consistent scripting API in both environments (ie a script shouldn't care).
  • Some mechanism for plugging in XML/XSLT transformations.
  • Ability to query database using XPath???
  • Ability to group items together (for instance, grouping identical pictures in different formats: a .gif/.jpg for web grouped with a bitmap for WAP).

Lots to think about. I think that getting the authentication/access-control stuff right will be the toughest bit. Looking at zope, everything seems to be an "object" (including users, scripts, static content), which can have access permissions granted to it. I know adding security features might seem like overkill, but it needs to be there from the start if anyone wants to use it (which I will). Adding it in later would be a bit hackish.


NEM - Excellent summary. This is exactly what I was planning. My main interest was in XML/XSLT generation of content, but really anything should be possible. The StarSite would sit on the server, and intercept requests using the PATH_TRANSLATED variable. So, for instance, in my website currently, the script xml.cgi can be invoked like http://www.tallniel.co.uk/cgi-bin/xml.cgi/home.xml which grabs the home.xml file and applies necessary stylesheets to it. Likewise, images could also be requested and returned from the database. The fact that MetaKit is the backend, allows for sophisticated searching and user interface options (session management, personalisation etc). Mirroring a site would be a case of copying one, highly-compressed MetaKit datafile. I find this concept quite exciting.


Note that the Wikit is a case of putting the _contents_ of a website into a file. I see above that Starsite would include a web server and, rather than using a markup style and conversion like the wikit does right now, would use xml as the markup and tdom or tclxml as the conversion software. Another difference appears to be that wikit is about content management, in a sense, in that visitors to the web site have the ability to update the pages. What other differences are envisioned?

Well - as far as I am aware, wikit only allows the inclusion of the textual content in one file. The StarSite concept takes this a bit further, by allowing images, media etc to be stored in the same file, as well as other information (e.g. a user database). The idea of a starsite, as I (NEM), envision it, is that it should be able to do whatever a normal website can do, but with the added advantage of having everything in one file. So, you could, theoretically, put a wikit inside a StarSite. That is how I see it developing. At the moment it is nothing but this collection of ideas. When things start to reach a more coherent state, I (and any others who wish to join me) will sit down and start making it. The ability to update a StarSite (or parts thereof) over the web, is a feature I would like to include. The XML references are just there as that is what I like to create my site in. However, I feel StarSite should be broader than that. It should be a means of encapsulating a whole web site, with various common functionality available to make things easier (collaborative editing, authentication, session management, data storage etc). In the simplest case, a person would fire it up at home and use the Tk GUI to add static content (HTML, pictures etc). When finished, they would simply ftp the file to the webspace they use (in a cgi directory), and it would just work (just like starkits - no hassle installation). Alternatively, it could run as its own webserver, for intranets and the like. StarKits solve installation problems for regular applications. StarSites would solve it for web applications.

AK:

  • Look at Ideas for Wikit enhancements and Christophe Muller to see the overlaps.
  • Using mime/type association for the content: Exactly as proposed for the wiki. Note that the wiki stores its pages directly in Metakit tables. It does not use the mk4VFS for its contents.
  • mime-types / mk4vfs: Interesting idea. Generalized: User-defined attributes for files. I am not sure, but I believe there are even native filesystems which might support this. Needs research.
  • Authentication/Security: Agree with building this in form the start.
  • Authentication/Security: Has to allow deactivation. Example: Wiki
  • Versioning/Archiving: The wiki codebase itself remembers the times of any change, and also saves out any change to a directory, if so configured. It only does not remember the exact changes/diffs in the internal database. The history of the Tcler's Wiki itself is a daily CVS import of the current state, making this more coarse-grained than the wiki codebase is able to support.
  • Regarding plugins: Ties to mime-types in my view. Based on the mime-type of a content page, and the chosen output medium we can choose which renderer to use, which editor to use, etc. The wiki already has several Wiki Markup renderers chosen automatically upon 'format' flag and medium (Tk vs. Web).

Category Internet