One simple way to embed tclhttpd into an tcl application is to just create a slave interpreter and load tclhttpd inside the slave. This is easy and works quite well and moves all problems with colliding names etc out of the way.
# example code
# StartEmbeddedHttpd
# path is the path to the tclhttpd bin/httpd.tcl file
# args are commandline args to pass to tclhttpd
proc StartEmbeddedHttpd {path args} {
set httpd [interp create]
# set tclhttpd command line options
$httpd eval "set argc [llength $args]"
set cmdargv "set argv [list $args ]"
$httpd eval $cmdargv
# now load the server and start it
set cmd [list source $path]
# the server does not return, it enters [vwait forever] , so we have to use the after 0 trick
# errors have to be handled by bgerror
after 0 $httpd eval $cmd
return $httpd
}
proc ShutdownEmbeddedHttpd {interp} {
$interp eval Httpd_Shutdown
}
proc DestroyEmbeddedHttpd {interp} {
$interp delete
}Usage example:
% StartEmbeddedHttpd /tclhttpd/bin/httpd.tcl -port 9001 interp1 # now we can even access our own server via http % package require http 2.4.2 % set tok [http::geturl http://localhost:9001/] ::http::1
It is even possible to start multiple servers if they use different ports.