[Typo3-dev] Typo3 Application Server

[Michael Scharkow]

Kraft Bernhard wrote:
> Hallo List,
> 
> I lately had thoughts about an Typo3 Application Server.
> 
> Let me explain what I understand under this term.
> For me an Application Server (like Zope) is an application which always
> runs and waits for incoming requests. When a request comes in it does a
> specific task.

Why, isn't TYPO3 just doing that with apache? I mean you can't run TYPO3 
without a webserver which always runs.

> I tought of an php application which always runs. So a CGI/CLI application
> like the dmailer script or similar. It has to set set_timeout(0) to run
> forever so safe_mode restrictions don't have to be set for this kind of
> PHP environment.

First, I don't really think PHP is suited for such a task, at least not 
as much as Python or Java are. Can you name one single standalone app 
written in PHP? I can't.

> This application should have some possibility to get controlled from an
> webinterface (probably over IPC in linux and files/fifos in windows).
> It should the be able to load modules which do specific tasks. It should
> be able to support the developer with cross-plattform socket and IPC 
> functions.
> the modules to controll the single application modules can be implemented
> as BE modules.

I'm not sure I understand: You want to chat with the application server 
(whatever it's implemented in) through the TYPO3 backend? XMLRPC comes 
to my mind, which makes the implementation of the app server transparent 
to the GUI (TYPO3 in this case).

> i think it should be possible to implement this outside of the core as
> an extension.

> chat's, automatically updating "online-users" and whatever else needs an
> HTTP connections which stays "online" for updating the sent content (for
> example via javascript) could be implemented with such an application 
> server.

TYPO3 is basically a WEB framework, and so it works for publishing 
content which is not updated in realtime. And if you need such a 
function, you can use js or whatever to query the data source.

> what do you think about such a thing ?

I still don't get the point: You can run an application server today, 
you can interact with it today, given you write a TYPO3 extension which 
does this.

Greetings,
Michael