Apache Rivet

The Rivet Team

The Apache Software Foundation

Table of Contents

Introduction to Apache Rivet
Apache Rivet Installation
Rivet Apache Directives
Rivet Tcl Commands and Variables
Examples and Usage
Rivet Tcl Packages
DIO - Database Interface Objects
DIODisplay - Database Interface Objects Display Class
Session Package
Introduction
Requirements
Preparing To Use It
Example Usage
Using Sessions From Your Code
Session Configuration Options
Session Methods
Getting Additional Randomness From The Entropy File
Resources - How to Get Help
Mailing Lists
Newsgroup
Web Sites
Bug Tracking System
IRC
Editing Rivet Template Files
Rivet Internals
Initialization
RivetChan
The global Command
Page Parsing, Execution and Caching
Debugging Rivet and Apache
Upgrading from mod_dtcl or NeoWebScript
mod_dtcl
NeoWebScript

This document is also available in the following languages: Italian, Russian

Document revision: $Revision: 1.52 $, last modified $Date: 2005/03/12 14:26:20 $ by $Author: davidw $.


Introduction to Apache Rivet

Apache Rivet is a system for creating dynamic web content via a programming language integrated with Apache Web Server. It is designed to be fast, powerful and extensible, consume few system resources, be easy to learn, and to provide the user with a platform that can also be used for other programming tasks outside the web (GUI's, system administration tasks, text processing, database manipulation, XML, and so on). In order to meet these goals, we have chosen the Tcl programming language to combine with the Apache Web Server.

In this manual, we aim to help get you started, and then writing productive code as quickly as possible, as well as giving you ideas on how to best take advantage of Rivet's architecture to create different styles of web site.

This documentation is a work in progress, and, like everything else about Apache Rivet, it is Free Software. If you see something that needs improving, and have ideas or suggestions, don't hesitate to let us know. If you want to contribute directly, better yet!


Apache Rivet Installation

  1. Check Dependencies

    To install Rivet, you will need Tcl 8.2 or greater and Apache 1.3.xx. It is known to run on Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Solaris and HPUX. Windows NT is also possible - please see the directions in the distribution.

  2. Get Rivet

    Download the sources at http://tcl.apache.org/rivet/download. Currently the only way to obtain Rivet. In the future, we hope to have a FreeBSD port, Debian package, RPM's, and windows binaries.

  3. Install Tcl

    If you don't have Tcl already, you need it! If you already have it, you should just be able to use your system Tcl as long as it is recent. You can tell Rivet where Tcl is via the -with-tclconfig option to configure.tcl (see below).

  4. Get and Install Apache Sources

    Rivet needs some Apache include (.h) files in order to build. The easiest way to get them is to download the source code of the Apache web server, although some systems (Debian GNU/Linux for example) make it possible to install only the headers and other development files. If you intend to build Rivet statically (compiled into the Apache web server instead of loaded dynamically), you definitely need the sources. We recommend that you build Rivet as a loadable shared library, for maximum flexibility, meaning that you also build Apache to be able to load modules. Other than that, the default Apache install is fine. We will tell Rivet where it is located via the -with-apxs option to configure.tcl (see below).

    The source code for the Apache web server may be found by following the links here: http://httpd.apache.org/.

  5. Uncompress Sources

    We will assume that you have Apache installed at this point. You must uncompress the Rivet sources in the directory where you wish to compile them.

    gunzip tcl-rivet-X.X.X.tar.gz
    tar -xvf tcl-rivet-X.X.X.tar.gz

  6. Building Rivet

    On Linux or Unix systems, Rivet uses the standard ./configure ; make ; make install technique.

    1. Run ./configure.tcl

      This is similar to the configure script included with many systems. It's written in Tcl though, for increased speed and clarity. It takes several arguments:

      -help
      Prints usage information.
      -enable-symbols
      Compiles Rivet with debugging symbols.
      -prefix directory
      Install Rivet Tcl packages to directory.
      -with-apxs file
      Use file as apxs binary to gather information about the local Apache installation.
      -with-tclconfig path/to/tcl/tclConfig.sh
      Specify file as the tclConfig.sh of the Tcl installation that you want to use with Rivet.
      cd src/
      ./configure.tcl
      Configuring
      .........done.
    2. Run make.tcl

      At this point, you are ready to run the build system:

      ./make.tcl option

      where option can be either shared or static.

    3. Install

      Now, you are ready to run the ./make.tcl install command to install the resulting files. This should copy the shared object (like mod_rivet.so, if one was successfully created, into Apache's libexec directory, as well as install some support scripts and various code.

  7. Apache Configuration Files

    Rivet is relatively easy to configure - we start off by adding the module itself:

    LoadModule rivet_module	/usr/lib/apache/1.3/mod_rivet.so

    This tells Apache to load the Rivet shared object, wherever it happens to reside on your file system. Now we have to tell Apache what kind of files are "Rivet" files and how to process them:

    AddType application/x-httpd-rivet .rvt
    AddType application/x-rivet-tcl .tcl

    These tell Apache to process files with the .rvt and .tcl extensions as Rivet files.

    For other directives that Rivet provides for Apache configuration, please see the section called “Rivet Apache Directives”.


Rivet Apache Directives

These directives are used within the Apache httpd server configuration files to modify Apache Rivet's behavior. Their precedence is as follows: RivetDirConf, RivetUserConf, RivetServerConf, meaning that DirConf will override UserConf, which will in turn override ServerConf.

RivetServerConf (CacheSize | GlobalInitScript | ChildInitScript | ChildExitScript | BeforeScript | AfterScript | ErrorScript | UploadDirectory | UploadMaxSize | UploadFilesToVar | SeperateVirtualInterps)
RivetServerConf specifies a global option that is valid for the whole server. If you have a virtual host, in some cases, the option specified in the virtualhost takes precedence over the 'global' version.
CacheSize ?size?
Sets the size of the internal page cache, where size is the number of byte-compiled pages to be cached for future use. Default is MaxRequestsPerChild / 5, or 50, if MaxRequestsPerChild is 0.
This option is completely global, even when using separate, per-virtual host interpreters.
GlobalInitScript ?script?
Tcl script that is run when each interpreter is initialized. script is an actual Tcl script, so to run a file, you would do:
RivetServerConf GlobalInitScript "source /var/www/foobar.tcl"
This option is ignored in virtual hosts.
ChildInitScript ?script?
Script to be evaluated when each Apache child process is initialized. This is the recommended place to load modules, create global variables, open connections to other facilities (such as databases) and so on.
In virtual hosts, this script is run in addition to any global childinitscript.
ChildExitScript ?script?
Script to be evaluated when each Apache child process exits. This is the logical place to clean up resources created in ChildInitScript, if necessary.
In virtual hosts, this script is run in addition to any global childexitscript.
BeforeScript ?script?
Script to be evaluated before each server parsed (.rvt) page. This can be used to create a standard header, for instance. It could also be used to load code that you need for every page, if you don't want to put it in a GlobalInitScript ChildInitScript when you are first developing a web site.
[Note]Note
This code is evaluated at the global level, not inside the request namespace where pages are evaluated.
In virtual hosts, this option takes precedence over the global setting.
AfterScript ?script?
Script to be called after each server parsed (.rvt) page.
In virtual hosts, this option takes precedence over the global setting.
ErrorScript ?script?
When Rivet encounters an error in a script, it constructs an HTML page with some information about the error, and the script that was being evaluated. If an ErrorScript is specified, it is possible to create custom error pages. This may be useful if you want to make sure that users never view your source code.
In virtual hosts, this option takes precedence over the global setting.
UploadDirectory ?directory?
Directory to place uploaded files.
In virtual hosts, this option takes precedence over the global setting.
UploadMaxSize ?size?
Maximum size for uploaded files.
In virtual hosts, this option takes precedence over the global setting.
UploadFilesToVar (yes | no)
This option controls whether it is possible to upload files to a Tcl variable. If you have a size limit, and don't have to deal with large files, this might be more convenient than sending the data to a file on disk.
SeperateVirtualInterps (yes | no)
If on, Rivet will create a separate Tcl interpreter for each Apache virtual host. This is useful in an ISP type situation where it is desirable to separate clients into separate interpreters, so that they don't accidentally interfere with one another.
This option is, by nature, only available at the global level.
RivetDirConf (BeforeScript | AfterScript | ErrorScript | UploadDirectory)
These options are the same as for RivetServerConf, except that they are only valid for the directory where they are specified, and its subdirectories. It may be specified in Directory sections.
RivetUserConf (BeforeScript | AfterScript | ErrorScript | UploadDirectory)
These options are the same as for RivetServerConf, except that they are only valid for the directory where they are specified, and its subdirectories.

Rivet Tcl Commands and Variables

var - get the value of a form variable.
upload - handle a file uploaded by a client.
load_response - load form variables into an array.
load_headers - get client request's headers.
load_cookies - get any cookie variables sent by the client.
load_env - get the request's environment variables.
env - Loads a single "environmental variable" into a Tcl variable.
include - includes a file into the output stream without modification.
parse - parses a Rivet template file.
headers - set and parse HTTP headers.
makeurl - construct url's based on hostname, port.
cookie - get and set cookies.
clock_to_rfc850_gmt - create a rfc850 time from [clock seconds].
html - construct html tagged text.
incr0 - increment a variable or set it to 1 if nonexistant.
parray - Tcl's parray with html formatting.
abort_page - Stops outputing data to web page, similar in purpose to PHP's die command.
no_body - Prevents Rivet from sending any content.
escape_string - convert a string into escaped characters.
escape_sgml_chars - escape special SGML characters in a string.
escape_shell_command - escape shell metacharacters in a string.
unescape_string - unescape escaped characters in a string.

Name

var, var_qs, var_post — get the value of a form variable.

Synopsis

var (get | list | exists | number | all)
var_qs (get | list | exists | number | all)
var_post (get | list | exists | number | all)

Description

The var command retrieves information about GET or POST variables sent to the script via client request. It treats both GET and POST variables the same, regardless of their origin. Note that there are two additional forms of var: var_qs and var_post. These two restrict the retrieval of information to parameters arriving via the querystring (?foo=bar&bee=bop) or POSTing, respectively.

var get ?varname? ??default??
Returns the value of variable varname as a string (even if there are multiple values). If the variable doesn't exist as a GET or POST variable, the ?default? value is returned, otherwise "" - an empty string - is returned.
var list ?varname?
Returns the value of variable varname as a list, if there are multiple values.
var exists ?varname?
Returns 1 if varname exists, 0 if it doesn't.
var number
Returns the number of variables.
var all
Return a list of variable names and values.

See Example 3, “Variable Access”.


Name

upload — handle a file uploaded by a client.

Synopsis

upload (channel | save | data | exists | size | type | filename)

Description

The upload command is for file upload manipulation. See the relevant Apache Directives to further configure the behavior of this Rivet feature.

upload channel ?uploadname?
When given the name of a file upload uploadname, returns a Tcl channel that can be used to access the uploaded file.
upload save ?uploadname? ?filename?
Saves the uploadname in the file filename.
upload data ?uploadname?
Returns data uploaded to the server. This is binary clean - in other words, it will work even with files like images, executables, compressed files, and so on.
upload size ?uploadname?
Returns the size of the file uploaded.
upload type
If the Content-type is set, it is returned, otherwise, an empty string.
upload filename ?uploadname?
Returns the filename on the remote host that uploaded the file.
upload names
Returns the variable names, as a list, of all the files uploaded.

See Example 4, “File Upload”.


Name

load_response — load form variables into an array.

Synopsis

load_response ?arrayName?

Description

Load any form variables passed to this page into an array.

Name

load_headers — get client request's headers.

Synopsis

load_headers ?array_name?

Description

Load the headers that come from a client request into the provided array name, or use headers if no name is provided.


Name

load_cookies — get any cookie variables sent by the client.

Synopsis

load_cookies ?array_name?

Description

Load the array of cookie variables into the specified array name. Uses array cookies by default.


Name

load_env — get the request's environment variables.

Synopsis

load_env ?array_name?

Description

Load the array of environment variables into the specified array name. Uses array ::request::env by default.

As Rivet pages are run in the ::request namespace, it isn't necessary to qualify the array name for most uses - it's ok to access it as env.


Name

env — Loads a single "environmental variable" into a Tcl variable.

Synopsis

env ?varName?

Description

If it is only necessary to load one environmental variable, this command may be used to avoid the overhead of loading and storing the entire array.


Name

include — includes a file into the output stream without modification.

Synopsis

include ?filename_name?

Description

Include a file without parsing it for processing tags <? and ?>. This is the best way to include an HTML file or any other static content.


Name

parse — parses a Rivet template file.

Synopsis

parse ?filename?

Description

Like the Tcl source command, but also parses for Rivet <? and ?> processing tags. Using this command, you can use one .rvt file from another.


Name

headers — set and parse HTTP headers.

Synopsis

headers (set | redirect | add | type | numeric)

Description

The headers command is for setting and parsing HTTP headers.

headers set ?headername? ?value?
Set arbitrary header names and values.
headers redirect ?uri?
Redirect from the current page to a new URI. Must be done in the first block of TCL code.
headers add ?headername? ?value?
Add text to header headername.
headers type ?content-type?
This command sets the Content-type header returned by the script, which is useful if you wish to send content other than HTML with Rivet - PNG or jpeg images, for example.
headers numeric ?response code?
Set a numeric response code, such as 200, 404 or 500.

Name

makeurl — construct url's based on hostname, port.

Synopsis

makeurl ?filename?

Description

Create a self referencing URL from a filename. For example:

makeurl /tclp.gif

returns http://[hostname]:[port]/tclp.gif. where hostname and port are the hostname and port of the server in question.


Name

cookie — get and set cookies.

Synopsis

cookie ?set? ?cookieName? ??cookiValue?? ?-days expireInDays? ?-hours expireInHours? ?-minutes expireInMinutes? ?-expires Wdy, DD-Mon-YYYY HH:MM:SS GMT? ?-path uriPathCookieAppliesTo? ?-secure 1/0?
cookie ?get? ?cookieName?

Description

cookie gets or sets a cookie. When you get a cookie, the command returns the value of the cookie, or an empty string if no cookie exists.


Name

clock_to_rfc850_gmt — create a rfc850 time from [clock seconds].

Synopsis

clock_to_rfc850_gmt ?seconds?

Description

Convert an integer-seconds-since-1970 click value to RFC850 format, with the additional requirement that it be GMT only.


Name

html — construct html tagged text.

Synopsis

html ?string? ?arg...?

Description

Print text with the added ability to pass HTML tags following the string. Example:

html "Test" b i

produces: <b><i>Test</i></b>


Name

incr0 — increment a variable or set it to 1 if nonexistant.

Synopsis

incr0 ?varname? ?num?

Description

Increment a variable varname by num. If the variable doesn't exist, create it instead of returning an error.


Name

parray — Tcl's parray with html formatting.

Synopsis

parray ?arrayName? ??pattern??

Description

An html version of the standard Tcl parray command. Displays the entire contents of an array in a sorted, nicely-formatted way. Mostly used for debugging purposes.


Name

abort_page — Stops outputing data to web page, similar in purpose to PHP's die command.

Synopsis

abort_page

Description

This command flushes the output buffer and stops the Tcl script from sending any more data to the client. A normal Tcl script might use the exit command, but that cannot be used in Rivet without actually exiting the apache child process!


Name

no_body — Prevents Rivet from sending any content.

Synopsis

no_body

Description

This command is useful for situations where it is necessary to only return HTTP headers and no actual content. For instance, when returning a 304 redirect.


Name

escape_string — convert a string into escaped characters.

Synopsis

escape_string ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for special characters, escaping them as needed, mapping special characters to a quoted hexadecimal equivalent, returning the result.

This is useful for quoting strings that are going to be part of a URL.


Name

escape_sgml_chars — escape special SGML characters in a string.

Synopsis

escape_sgml_chars ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for any special (with respect to SGML, and hence HTML) characters from the specified string, and returns the result. For example, the right angle bracket is escaped to the corrected ampersand gt symbol.


Name

escape_shell_command — escape shell metacharacters in a string.

Synopsis

escape_shell_command ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for any shell metacharacters, such as asterisk, less than and greater than, parens, square brackets, curly brackets, angle brackets, dollar signs, backslashes, semicolons, ampersands, vertical bars, etc.

For each metacharacter found, it is quoted in the result by prepending it with a backslash, returning the result.


Name

unescape_string — unescape escaped characters in a string.

Synopsis

unescape_string ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for escaped character sequences (characters containing a percent sign and two hexadecimal characters, unescaping them back to their original character values, as needed, also mapping plus signs to spaces, and returning the result.

This is useful for unquoting strings that have been quoted to be part of a URL.


Examples and Usage

Some examples of Rivet usage follow. Some prior Tcl knowledge is assumed. If you don't know much Tcl, don't worry, it's easy, and there are some good resources available on the web that will get you up to speed quickly. Go to the web sites section and have a look.

Example 1. Hello World

As with any tool, it's always nice to see something work, so let's create a small "Hello World" page.

Assuming you have Apache configured correctly, create a file called hello.rvt where Apache can find it, with the following content:

<?
puts "Hello World"
?>

If you then access it with your browser, you should see a blank page with the text "Hello World" (without the quotes) on it.

Example 2. Generate a Table

In another simple example, we dynamically generate a table:

<? puts "<table>\n"
for {set i 1} { $i <= 8 } {incr i} {
    puts "<tr>\n"
    for {set j 1} {$j <= 8} {incr j} {
        set num [ expr $i * $j * 4 - 1]
        puts [ format "<td bgcolor=\"%02x%02x%02x\" > $num $num $num </td>\n" \
		   $num $num $num ]
    }
    puts "</tr>\n"
}
puts "</table>\n" ?>

If you read the code, you can see that this is pure Tcl. We could take the same code, run it outside of Rivet, and it would generate the same HTML!

The result should look something like this:

Example 3. Variable Access

Here, we demonstrate how to access variables set by GET or POST operations.

Given an HTML form like the following:

     <form action="vars.rvt">
      <table>
	<tbody>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Title:</b></td>
	    <td><input name="title"></td>
	  </tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Salary:</b></td>
	    <td><input name="salary"></td>
	  </tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Boss:</b></td>
	    <td><input name="boss"></td></tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Skills:</b></td>
	    <td>
	      <select name="skills" multiple="multiple">
		<option>c</option>
		<option>java</option>
		<option>Tcl</option>
		<option>Perl</option>
	      </select>
	    </td>
	  </tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><input type="submit"></td>
	  </tr>
	</tbody>
      </table>
    </form>

We can use this Rivet script to get the variable values:

<?
set errlist {}
if { [var exists title] } {
    set title [var get title]
} else {
    set errlist "You need to enter a title"
}

if { [var exists salary] } {
    set salary [var get salary]
    if { ! [string is digit $salary] } {
	lappend errlist "Salary must be a number"
    }
} else {
    lappend errlist "You need to enter a salary"
}

if { [var exists boss] } {
    set boss [var get boss]
} else {
    set boss "Mr. Burns"
}

if { [var exists skills] } {
    set skills [var list skills]
} else {
    lappend errlist "You need to enter some skills"
}

if { [llength $errlist] != 0 } {
    foreach err $errlist {
	puts "<b> $err </b>"
    }
} else {
    puts "Thanks for the information!"
    ?>
    <table>
      <tbody>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Title:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $title ?></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Boss:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $boss ?></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Salary:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $salary ?></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Skills:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $skills ?></td>
	</tr>
      </tbody>
    </table>
    <?
}
?>

The first statement checks to make sure that the boss variable has been passed to the script, and then does something with that information. If it's not present, an error is added to the list of errors.

In the second block of code, the variable salary is fetched, with one more error check - because it's a number, it needs to be composed of digits.

The boss variable isn't required to have been sent - we set it to "Mr. Burns" if it isn't among the information we received.

The last bit of variable handing code is a bit trickier. Because skills is a listbox, and can potentially have multiple values, we opt to receive them as a list, so that at some point, we could iterate over them.

The script then checks to make sure that errlist is empty and outputting a thankyou message. If errlist is not empty, the list of errors it contains is printed.

Example 4. File Upload

The following HTML in one file, say, upload.html

<form action="foo.rvt" enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post">
<input type="file" name="MyUpload"></input>
<input type="submit" value="Send File"></input>
</form>

Can be used with the following Tcl code, in a second file (upload.rvt for instance) in order to create a file upload form.

<?
upload save MyUpload /tmp/uploadfiles/file1
puts "Saved file [upload filename MyUpload] \
	([upload size MyUpload] bytes) to server"
?>

Rivet Tcl Packages

In addition to the core Apache module, Rivet provides a number of Tcl packages that include potentially useful code.

  • commserver is a package providing a server that can be used for IPC. Still experimental. Requires the comm package from tcllib.
  • dio is a database abstraction layer.
  • dtcl is a compatibility package for mod_dtcl applications.
  • form - for creating forms.
  • rivet - some additional, useful routines.
  • tclrivet

DIO - Database Interface Objects

DIO - Database Interface Objects
. If the variable doesn't exist, create it instead of returning an error.


Name

parray — Tcl's parray with html formatting.

Synopsis

parray ?arrayName? ??pattern??

Description

An html version of the standard Tcl parray command. Displays the entire contents of an array in a sorted, nicely-formatted way. Mostly used for debugging purposes.


Name

abort_page — Stops outputing data to web page, similar in purpose to PHP's die command.

Synopsis

abort_page

Description

This command flushes the output buffer and stops the Tcl script from sending any more data to the client. A normal Tcl script might use the exit command, but that cannot be used in Rivet without actually exiting the apache child process!


Name

no_body — Prevents Rivet from sending any content.

Synopsis

no_body

Description

This command is useful for situations where it is necessary to only return HTTP headers and no actual content. For instance, when returning a 304 redirect.


Name

escape_string — convert a string into escaped characters.

Synopsis

escape_string ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for special characters, escaping them as needed, mapping special characters to a quoted hexadecimal equivalent, returning the result.

This is useful for quoting strings that are going to be part of a URL.


Name

escape_sgml_chars — escape special SGML characters in a string.

Synopsis

escape_sgml_chars ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for any special (with respect to SGML, and hence HTML) characters from the specified string, and returns the result. For example, the right angle bracket is escaped to the corrected ampersand gt symbol.


Name

escape_shell_command — escape shell metacharacters in a string.

Synopsis

escape_shell_command ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for any shell metacharacters, such as asterisk, less than and greater than, parens, square brackets, curly brackets, angle brackets, dollar signs, backslashes, semicolons, ampersands, vertical bars, etc.

For each metacharacter found, it is quoted in the result by prepending it with a backslash, returning the result.


Name

unescape_string — unescape escaped characters in a string.

Synopsis

unescape_string ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for escaped character sequences (characters containing a percent sign and two hexadecimal characters, unescaping them back to their original character values, as needed, also mapping plus signs to spaces, and returning the result.

This is useful for unquoting strings that have been quoted to be part of a URL.


Examples and Usage

Some examples of Rivet usage follow. Some prior Tcl knowledge is assumed. If you don't know much Tcl, don't worry, it's easy, and there are some good resources available on the web that will get you up to speed quickly. Go to the web sites section and have a look.

Example 1. Hello World

As with any tool, it's always nice to see something work, so let's create a small "Hello World" page.

Assuming you have Apache configured correctly, create a file called hello.rvt where Apache can find it, with the following content:

<?
puts "Hello World"
?>

If you then access it with your browser, you should see a blank page with the text "Hello World" (without the quotes) on it.

Example 2. Generate a Table

In another simple example, we dynamically generate a table:

<? puts "<table>\n"
for {set i 1} { $i <= 8 } {incr i} {
    puts "<tr>\n"
    for {set j 1} {$j <= 8} {incr j} {
        set num [ expr $i * $j * 4 - 1]
        puts [ format "<td bgcolor=\"%02x%02x%02x\" > $num $num $num </td>\n" \
		   $num $num $num ]
    }
    puts "</tr>\n"
}
puts "</table>\n" ?>

If you read the code, you can see that this is pure Tcl. We could take the same code, run it outside of Rivet, and it would generate the same HTML!

The result should look something like this:

Example 3. Variable Access

Here, we demonstrate how to access variables set by GET or POST operations.

Given an HTML form like the following:

     <form action="vars.rvt">
      <table>
	<tbody>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Title:</b></td>
	    <td><input name="title"></td>
	  </tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Salary:</b></td>
	    <td><input name="salary"></td>
	  </tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Boss:</b></td>
	    <td><input name="boss"></td></tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Skills:</b></td>
	    <td>
	      <select name="skills" multiple="multiple">
		<option>c</option>
		<option>java</option>
		<option>Tcl</option>
		<option>Perl</option>
	      </select>
	    </td>
	  </tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><input type="submit"></td>
	  </tr>
	</tbody>
      </table>
    </form>

We can use this Rivet script to get the variable values:

<?
set errlist {}
if { [var exists title] } {
    set title [var get title]
} else {
    set errlist "You need to enter a title"
}

if { [var exists salary] } {
    set salary [var get salary]
    if { ! [string is digit $salary] } {
	lappend errlist "Salary must be a number"
    }
} else {
    lappend errlist "You need to enter a salary"
}

if { [var exists boss] } {
    set boss [var get boss]
} else {
    set boss "Mr. Burns"
}

if { [var exists skills] } {
    set skills [var list skills]
} else {
    lappend errlist "You need to enter some skills"
}

if { [llength $errlist] != 0 } {
    foreach err $errlist {
	puts "<b> $err </b>"
    }
} else {
    puts "Thanks for the information!"
    ?>
    <table>
      <tbody>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Title:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $title ?></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Boss:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $boss ?></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Salary:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $salary ?></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Skills:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $skills ?></td>
	</tr>
      </tbody>
    </table>
    <?
}
?>

The first statement checks to make sure that the boss variable has been passed to the script, and then does something with that information. If it's not present, an error is added to the list of errors.

In the second block of code, the variable salary is fetched, with one more error check - because it's a number, it needs to be composed of digits.

The boss variable isn't required to have been sent - we set it to "Mr. Burns" if it isn't among the information we received.

The last bit of variable handing code is a bit trickier. Because skills is a listbox, and can potentially have multiple values, we opt to receive them as a list, so that at some point, we could iterate over them.

The script then checks to make sure that errlist is empty and outputting a thankyou message. If errlist is not empty, the list of errors it contains is printed.

Example 4. File Upload

The following HTML in one file, say, upload.html

<form action="foo.rvt" enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post">
<input type="file" name="MyUpload"></input>
<input type="submit" value="Send File"></input>
</form>

Can be used with the following Tcl code, in a second file (upload.rvt for instance) in order to create a file upload form.

<?
upload save MyUpload /tmp/uploadfiles/file1
puts "Saved file [upload filename MyUpload] \
	([upload size MyUpload] bytes) to server"
?>

Rivet Tcl Packages

In addition to the core Apache module, Rivet provides a number of Tcl packages that include potentially useful code.


DIO - Database Interface Objects

DIO - Database Interface Objects
. If the variable doesn't exist, create it instead of returning an error.


Name

parray — Tcl's parray with html formatting.

Synopsis

parray ?arrayName? ??pattern??

Description

An html version of the standard Tcl parray command. Displays the entire contents of an array in a sorted, nicely-formatted way. Mostly used for debugging purposes.


Name

abort_page — Stops outputing data to web page, similar in purpose to PHP's die command.

Synopsis

abort_page

Description

This command flushes the output buffer and stops the Tcl script from sending any more data to the client. A normal Tcl script might use the exit command, but that cannot be used in Rivet without actually exiting the apache child process!


Name

no_body — Prevents Rivet from sending any content.

Synopsis

no_body

Description

This command is useful for situations where it is necessary to only return HTTP headers and no actual content. For instance, when returning a 304 redirect.


Name

escape_string — convert a string into escaped characters.

Synopsis

escape_string ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for special characters, escaping them as needed, mapping special characters to a quoted hexadecimal equivalent, returning the result.

This is useful for quoting strings that are going to be part of a URL.


Name

escape_sgml_chars — escape special SGML characters in a string.

Synopsis

escape_sgml_chars ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for any special (with respect to SGML, and hence HTML) characters from the specified string, and returns the result. For example, the right angle bracket is escaped to the corrected ampersand gt symbol.


Name

escape_shell_command — escape shell metacharacters in a string.

Synopsis

escape_shell_command ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for any shell metacharacters, such as asterisk, less than and greater than, parens, square brackets, curly brackets, angle brackets, dollar signs, backslashes, semicolons, ampersands, vertical bars, etc.

For each metacharacter found, it is quoted in the result by prepending it with a backslash, returning the result.


Name

unescape_string — unescape escaped characters in a string.

Synopsis

unescape_string ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for escaped character sequences (characters containing a percent sign and two hexadecimal characters, unescaping them back to their original character values, as needed, also mapping plus signs to spaces, and returning the result.

This is useful for unquoting strings that have been quoted to be part of a URL.


Examples and Usage

Some examples of Rivet usage follow. Some prior Tcl knowledge is assumed. If you don't know much Tcl, don't worry, it's easy, and there are some good resources available on the web that will get you up to speed quickly. Go to the web sites section and have a look.

Example 1. Hello World

As with any tool, it's always nice to see something work, so let's create a small "Hello World" page.

Assuming you have Apache configured correctly, create a file called hello.rvt where Apache can find it, with the following content:

<?
puts "Hello World"
?>

If you then access it with your browser, you should see a blank page with the text "Hello World" (without the quotes) on it.

Example 2. Generate a Table

In another simple example, we dynamically generate a table:

<? puts "<table>\n"
for {set i 1} { $i <= 8 } {incr i} {
    puts "<tr>\n"
    for {set j 1} {$j <= 8} {incr j} {
        set num [ expr $i * $j * 4 - 1]
        puts [ format "<td bgcolor=\"%02x%02x%02x\" > $num $num $num </td>\n" \
		   $num $num $num ]
    }
    puts "</tr>\n"
}
puts "</table>\n" ?>

If you read the code, you can see that this is pure Tcl. We could take the same code, run it outside of Rivet, and it would generate the same HTML!

The result should look something like this:

Example 3. Variable Access

Here, we demonstrate how to access variables set by GET or POST operations.

Given an HTML form like the following:

     <form action="vars.rvt">
      <table>
	<tbody>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Title:</b></td>
	    <td><input name="title"></td>
	  </tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Salary:</b></td>
	    <td><input name="salary"></td>
	  </tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Boss:</b></td>
	    <td><input name="boss"></td></tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Skills:</b></td>
	    <td>
	      <select name="skills" multiple="multiple">
		<option>c</option>
		<option>java</option>
		<option>Tcl</option>
		<option>Perl</option>
	      </select>
	    </td>
	  </tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><input type="submit"></td>
	  </tr>
	</tbody>
      </table>
    </form>

We can use this Rivet script to get the variable values:

<?
set errlist {}
if { [var exists title] } {
    set title [var get title]
} else {
    set errlist "You need to enter a title"
}

if { [var exists salary] } {
    set salary [var get salary]
    if { ! [string is digit $salary] } {
	lappend errlist "Salary must be a number"
    }
} else {
    lappend errlist "You need to enter a salary"
}

if { [var exists boss] } {
    set boss [var get boss]
} else {
    set boss "Mr. Burns"
}

if { [var exists skills] } {
    set skills [var list skills]
} else {
    lappend errlist "You need to enter some skills"
}

if { [llength $errlist] != 0 } {
    foreach err $errlist {
	puts "<b> $err </b>"
    }
} else {
    puts "Thanks for the information!"
    ?>
    <table>
      <tbody>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Title:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $title ?></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Boss:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $boss ?></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Salary:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $salary ?></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Skills:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $skills ?></td>
	</tr>
      </tbody>
    </table>
    <?
}
?>

The first statement checks to make sure that the boss variable has been passed to the script, and then does something with that information. If it's not present, an error is added to the list of errors.

In the second block of code, the variable salary is fetched, with one more error check - because it's a number, it needs to be composed of digits.

The boss variable isn't required to have been sent - we set it to "Mr. Burns" if it isn't among the information we received.

The last bit of variable handing code is a bit trickier. Because skills is a listbox, and can potentially have multiple values, we opt to receive them as a list, so that at some point, we could iterate over them.

The script then checks to make sure that errlist is empty and outputting a thankyou message. If errlist is not empty, the list of errors it contains is printed.

Example 4. File Upload

The following HTML in one file, say, upload.html

<form action="foo.rvt" enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post">
<input type="file" name="MyUpload"></input>
<input type="submit" value="Send File"></input>
</form>

Can be used with the following Tcl code, in a second file (upload.rvt for instance) in order to create a file upload form.

<?
upload save MyUpload /tmp/uploadfiles/file1
puts "Saved file [upload filename MyUpload] \
	([upload size MyUpload] bytes) to server"
?>

Rivet Tcl Packages

In addition to the core Apache module, Rivet provides a number of Tcl packages that include potentially useful code.


DIO - Database Interface Objects

DIO - Database Interface Objects
. If the variable doesn't exist, create it instead of returning an error.


Name

parray — Tcl's parray with html formatting.

Synopsis

parray ?arrayName? ??pattern??

Description

An html version of the standard Tcl parray command. Displays the entire contents of an array in a sorted, nicely-formatted way. Mostly used for debugging purposes.


Name

abort_page — Stops outputing data to web page, similar in purpose to PHP's die command.

Synopsis

abort_page

Description

This command flushes the output buffer and stops the Tcl script from sending any more data to the client. A normal Tcl script might use the exit command, but that cannot be used in Rivet without actually exiting the apache child process!


Name

no_body — Prevents Rivet from sending any content.

Synopsis

no_body

Description

This command is useful for situations where it is necessary to only return HTTP headers and no actual content. For instance, when returning a 304 redirect.


Name

escape_string — convert a string into escaped characters.

Synopsis

escape_string ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for special characters, escaping them as needed, mapping special characters to a quoted hexadecimal equivalent, returning the result.

This is useful for quoting strings that are going to be part of a URL.


Name

escape_sgml_chars — escape special SGML characters in a string.

Synopsis

escape_sgml_chars ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for any special (with respect to SGML, and hence HTML) characters from the specified string, and returns the result. For example, the right angle bracket is escaped to the corrected ampersand gt symbol.


Name

escape_shell_command — escape shell metacharacters in a string.

Synopsis

escape_shell_command ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for any shell metacharacters, such as asterisk, less than and greater than, parens, square brackets, curly brackets, angle brackets, dollar signs, backslashes, semicolons, ampersands, vertical bars, etc.

For each metacharacter found, it is quoted in the result by prepending it with a backslash, returning the result.


Name

unescape_string — unescape escaped characters in a string.

Synopsis

unescape_string ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for escaped character sequences (characters containing a percent sign and two hexadecimal characters, unescaping them back to their original character values, as needed, also mapping plus signs to spaces, and returning the result.

This is useful for unquoting strings that have been quoted to be part of a URL.


Examples and Usage

Some examples of Rivet usage follow. Some prior Tcl knowledge is assumed. If you don't know much Tcl, don't worry, it's easy, and there are some good resources available on the web that will get you up to speed quickly. Go to the web sites section and have a look.

Example 1. Hello World

As with any tool, it's always nice to see something work, so let's create a small "Hello World" page.

Assuming you have Apache configured correctly, create a file called hello.rvt where Apache can find it, with the following content:

<?
puts "Hello World"
?>

If you then access it with your browser, you should see a blank page with the text "Hello World" (without the quotes) on it.

Example 2. Generate a Table

In another simple example, we dynamically generate a table:

<? puts "<table>\n"
for {set i 1} { $i <= 8 } {incr i} {
    puts "<tr>\n"
    for {set j 1} {$j <= 8} {incr j} {
        set num [ expr $i * $j * 4 - 1]
        puts [ format "<td bgcolor=\"%02x%02x%02x\" > $num $num $num </td>\n" \
		   $num $num $num ]
    }
    puts "</tr>\n"
}
puts "</table>\n" ?>

If you read the code, you can see that this is pure Tcl. We could take the same code, run it outside of Rivet, and it would generate the same HTML!

The result should look something like this:

Example 3. Variable Access

Here, we demonstrate how to access variables set by GET or POST operations.

Given an HTML form like the following:

     <form action="vars.rvt">
      <table>
	<tbody>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Title:</b></td>
	    <td><input name="title"></td>
	  </tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Salary:</b></td>
	    <td><input name="salary"></td>
	  </tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Boss:</b></td>
	    <td><input name="boss"></td></tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Skills:</b></td>
	    <td>
	      <select name="skills" multiple="multiple">
		<option>c</option>
		<option>java</option>
		<option>Tcl</option>
		<option>Perl</option>
	      </select>
	    </td>
	  </tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><input type="submit"></td>
	  </tr>
	</tbody>
      </table>
    </form>

We can use this Rivet script to get the variable values:

<?
set errlist {}
if { [var exists title] } {
    set title [var get title]
} else {
    set errlist "You need to enter a title"
}

if { [var exists salary] } {
    set salary [var get salary]
    if { ! [string is digit $salary] } {
	lappend errlist "Salary must be a number"
    }
} else {
    lappend errlist "You need to enter a salary"
}

if { [var exists boss] } {
    set boss [var get boss]
} else {
    set boss "Mr. Burns"
}

if { [var exists skills] } {
    set skills [var list skills]
} else {
    lappend errlist "You need to enter some skills"
}

if { [llength $errlist] != 0 } {
    foreach err $errlist {
	puts "<b> $err </b>"
    }
} else {
    puts "Thanks for the information!"
    ?>
    <table>
      <tbody>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Title:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $title ?></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Boss:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $boss ?></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Salary:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $salary ?></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Skills:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $skills ?></td>
	</tr>
      </tbody>
    </table>
    <?
}
?>

The first statement checks to make sure that the boss variable has been passed to the script, and then does something with that information. If it's not present, an error is added to the list of errors.

In the second block of code, the variable salary is fetched, with one more error check - because it's a number, it needs to be composed of digits.

The boss variable isn't required to have been sent - we set it to "Mr. Burns" if it isn't among the information we received.

The last bit of variable handing code is a bit trickier. Because skills is a listbox, and can potentially have multiple values, we opt to receive them as a list, so that at some point, we could iterate over them.

The script then checks to make sure that errlist is empty and outputting a thankyou message. If errlist is not empty, the list of errors it contains is printed.

Example 4. File Upload

The following HTML in one file, say, upload.html

<form action="foo.rvt" enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post">
<input type="file" name="MyUpload"></input>
<input type="submit" value="Send File"></input>
</form>

Can be used with the following Tcl code, in a second file (upload.rvt for instance) in order to create a file upload form.

<?
upload save MyUpload /tmp/uploadfiles/file1
puts "Saved file [upload filename MyUpload] \
	([upload size MyUpload] bytes) to server"
?>

Rivet Tcl Packages

In addition to the core Apache module, Rivet provides a number of Tcl packages that include potentially useful code.


DIO - Database Interface Objects

DIO - Database Interface Objects
. If the variable doesn't exist, create it instead of returning an error.


Name

parray — Tcl's parray with html formatting.

Synopsis

parray ?arrayName? ??pattern??

Description

An html version of the standard Tcl parray command. Displays the entire contents of an array in a sorted, nicely-formatted way. Mostly used for debugging purposes.


Name

abort_page — Stops outputing data to web page, similar in purpose to PHP's die command.

Synopsis

abort_page

Description

This command flushes the output buffer and stops the Tcl script from sending any more data to the client. A normal Tcl script might use the exit command, but that cannot be used in Rivet without actually exiting the apache child process!


Name

no_body — Prevents Rivet from sending any content.

Synopsis

no_body

Description

This command is useful for situations where it is necessary to only return HTTP headers and no actual content. For instance, when returning a 304 redirect.


Name

escape_string — convert a string into escaped characters.

Synopsis

escape_string ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for special characters, escaping them as needed, mapping special characters to a quoted hexadecimal equivalent, returning the result.

This is useful for quoting strings that are going to be part of a URL.


Name

escape_sgml_chars — escape special SGML characters in a string.

Synopsis

escape_sgml_chars ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for any special (with respect to SGML, and hence HTML) characters from the specified string, and returns the result. For example, the right angle bracket is escaped to the corrected ampersand gt symbol.


Name

escape_shell_command — escape shell metacharacters in a string.

Synopsis

escape_shell_command ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for any shell metacharacters, such as asterisk, less than and greater than, parens, square brackets, curly brackets, angle brackets, dollar signs, backslashes, semicolons, ampersands, vertical bars, etc.

For each metacharacter found, it is quoted in the result by prepending it with a backslash, returning the result.


Name

unescape_string — unescape escaped characters in a string.

Synopsis

unescape_string ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for escaped character sequences (characters containing a percent sign and two hexadecimal characters, unescaping them back to their original character values, as needed, also mapping plus signs to spaces, and returning the result.

This is useful for unquoting strings that have been quoted to be part of a URL.


Examples and Usage

Some examples of Rivet usage follow. Some prior Tcl knowledge is assumed. If you don't know much Tcl, don't worry, it's easy, and there are some good resources available on the web that will get you up to speed quickly. Go to the web sites section and have a look.

Example 1. Hello World

As with any tool, it's always nice to see something work, so let's create a small "Hello World" page.

Assuming you have Apache configured correctly, create a file called hello.rvt where Apache can find it, with the following content:

<?
puts "Hello World"
?>

If you then access it with your browser, you should see a blank page with the text "Hello World" (without the quotes) on it.

Example 2. Generate a Table

In another simple example, we dynamically generate a table:

<? puts "<table>\n"
for {set i 1} { $i <= 8 } {incr i} {
    puts "<tr>\n"
    for {set j 1} {$j <= 8} {incr j} {
        set num [ expr $i * $j * 4 - 1]
        puts [ format "<td bgcolor=\"%02x%02x%02x\" > $num $num $num </td>\n" \
		   $num $num $num ]
    }
    puts "</tr>\n"
}
puts "</table>\n" ?>

If you read the code, you can see that this is pure Tcl. We could take the same code, run it outside of Rivet, and it would generate the same HTML!

The result should look something like this:

Example 3. Variable Access

Here, we demonstrate how to access variables set by GET or POST operations.

Given an HTML form like the following:

     <form action="vars.rvt">
      <table>
	<tbody>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Title:</b></td>
	    <td><input name="title"></td>
	  </tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Salary:</b></td>
	    <td><input name="salary"></td>
	  </tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Boss:</b></td>
	    <td><input name="boss"></td></tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Skills:</b></td>
	    <td>
	      <select name="skills" multiple="multiple">
		<option>c</option>
		<option>java</option>
		<option>Tcl</option>
		<option>Perl</option>
	      </select>
	    </td>
	  </tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><input type="submit"></td>
	  </tr>
	</tbody>
      </table>
    </form>

We can use this Rivet script to get the variable values:

<?
set errlist {}
if { [var exists title] } {
    set title [var get title]
} else {
    set errlist "You need to enter a title"
}

if { [var exists salary] } {
    set salary [var get salary]
    if { ! [string is digit $salary] } {
	lappend errlist "Salary must be a number"
    }
} else {
    lappend errlist "You need to enter a salary"
}

if { [var exists boss] } {
    set boss [var get boss]
} else {
    set boss "Mr. Burns"
}

if { [var exists skills] } {
    set skills [var list skills]
} else {
    lappend errlist "You need to enter some skills"
}

if { [llength $errlist] != 0 } {
    foreach err $errlist {
	puts "<b> $err </b>"
    }
} else {
    puts "Thanks for the information!"
    ?>
    <table>
      <tbody>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Title:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $title ?></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Boss:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $boss ?></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Salary:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $salary ?></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Skills:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $skills ?></td>
	</tr>
      </tbody>
    </table>
    <?
}
?>

The first statement checks to make sure that the boss variable has been passed to the script, and then does something with that information. If it's not present, an error is added to the list of errors.

In the second block of code, the variable salary is fetched, with one more error check - because it's a number, it needs to be composed of digits.

The boss variable isn't required to have been sent - we set it to "Mr. Burns" if it isn't among the information we received.

The last bit of variable handing code is a bit trickier. Because skills is a listbox, and can potentially have multiple values, we opt to receive them as a list, so that at some point, we could iterate over them.

The script then checks to make sure that errlist is empty and outputting a thankyou message. If errlist is not empty, the list of errors it contains is printed.

Example 4. File Upload

The following HTML in one file, say, upload.html

<form action="foo.rvt" enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post">
<input type="file" name="MyUpload"></input>
<input type="submit" value="Send File"></input>
</form>

Can be used with the following Tcl code, in a second file (upload.rvt for instance) in order to create a file upload form.

<?
upload save MyUpload /tmp/uploadfiles/file1
puts "Saved file [upload filename MyUpload] \
	([upload size MyUpload] bytes) to server"
?>

Rivet Tcl Packages

In addition to the core Apache module, Rivet provides a number of Tcl packages that include potentially useful code.


DIO - Database Interface Objects

DIO - Database Interface Objects
. If the variable doesn't exist, create it instead of returning an error.


Name

parray — Tcl's parray with html formatting.

Synopsis

parray ?arrayName? ??pattern??

Description

An html version of the standard Tcl parray command. Displays the entire contents of an array in a sorted, nicely-formatted way. Mostly used for debugging purposes.


Name

abort_page — Stops outputing data to web page, similar in purpose to PHP's die command.

Synopsis

abort_page

Description

This command flushes the output buffer and stops the Tcl script from sending any more data to the client. A normal Tcl script might use the exit command, but that cannot be used in Rivet without actually exiting the apache child process!


Name

no_body — Prevents Rivet from sending any content.

Synopsis

no_body

Description

This command is useful for situations where it is necessary to only return HTTP headers and no actual content. For instance, when returning a 304 redirect.


Name

escape_string — convert a string into escaped characters.

Synopsis

escape_string ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for special characters, escaping them as needed, mapping special characters to a quoted hexadecimal equivalent, returning the result.

This is useful for quoting strings that are going to be part of a URL.


Name

escape_sgml_chars — escape special SGML characters in a string.

Synopsis

escape_sgml_chars ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for any special (with respect to SGML, and hence HTML) characters from the specified string, and returns the result. For example, the right angle bracket is escaped to the corrected ampersand gt symbol.


Name

escape_shell_command — escape shell metacharacters in a string.

Synopsis

escape_shell_command ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for any shell metacharacters, such as asterisk, less than and greater than, parens, square brackets, curly brackets, angle brackets, dollar signs, backslashes, semicolons, ampersands, vertical bars, etc.

For each metacharacter found, it is quoted in the result by prepending it with a backslash, returning the result.


Name

unescape_string — unescape escaped characters in a string.

Synopsis

unescape_string ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for escaped character sequences (characters containing a percent sign and two hexadecimal characters, unescaping them back to their original character values, as needed, also mapping plus signs to spaces, and returning the result.

This is useful for unquoting strings that have been quoted to be part of a URL.


Examples and Usage

Some examples of Rivet usage follow. Some prior Tcl knowledge is assumed. If you don't know much Tcl, don't worry, it's easy, and there are some good resources available on the web that will get you up to speed quickly. Go to the web sites section and have a look.

Example 1. Hello World

As with any tool, it's always nice to see something work, so let's create a small "Hello World" page.

Assuming you have Apache configured correctly, create a file called hello.rvt where Apache can find it, with the following content:

<?
puts "Hello World"
?>

If you then access it with your browser, you should see a blank page with the text "Hello World" (without the quotes) on it.

Example 2. Generate a Table

In another simple example, we dynamically generate a table:

<? puts "<table>\n"
for {set i 1} { $i <= 8 } {incr i} {
    puts "<tr>\n"
    for {set j 1} {$j <= 8} {incr j} {
        set num [ expr $i * $j * 4 - 1]
        puts [ format "<td bgcolor=\"%02x%02x%02x\" > $num $num $num </td>\n" \
		   $num $num $num ]
    }
    puts "</tr>\n"
}
puts "</table>\n" ?>

If you read the code, you can see that this is pure Tcl. We could take the same code, run it outside of Rivet, and it would generate the same HTML!

The result should look something like this:

Example 3. Variable Access

Here, we demonstrate how to access variables set by GET or POST operations.

Given an HTML form like the following:

     <form action="vars.rvt">
      <table>
	<tbody>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Title:</b></td>
	    <td><input name="title"></td>
	  </tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Salary:</b></td>
	    <td><input name="salary"></td>
	  </tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Boss:</b></td>
	    <td><input name="boss"></td></tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Skills:</b></td>
	    <td>
	      <select name="skills" multiple="multiple">
		<option>c</option>
		<option>java</option>
		<option>Tcl</option>
		<option>Perl</option>
	      </select>
	    </td>
	  </tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><input type="submit"></td>
	  </tr>
	</tbody>
      </table>
    </form>

We can use this Rivet script to get the variable values:

<?
set errlist {}
if { [var exists title] } {
    set title [var get title]
} else {
    set errlist "You need to enter a title"
}

if { [var exists salary] } {
    set salary [var get salary]
    if { ! [string is digit $salary] } {
	lappend errlist "Salary must be a number"
    }
} else {
    lappend errlist "You need to enter a salary"
}

if { [var exists boss] } {
    set boss [var get boss]
} else {
    set boss "Mr. Burns"
}

if { [var exists skills] } {
    set skills [var list skills]
} else {
    lappend errlist "You need to enter some skills"
}

if { [llength $errlist] != 0 } {
    foreach err $errlist {
	puts "<b> $err </b>"
    }
} else {
    puts "Thanks for the information!"
    ?>
    <table>
      <tbody>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Title:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $title ?></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Boss:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $boss ?></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Salary:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $salary ?></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Skills:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $skills ?></td>
	</tr>
      </tbody>
    </table>
    <?
}
?>

The first statement checks to make sure that the boss variable has been passed to the script, and then does something with that information. If it's not present, an error is added to the list of errors.

In the second block of code, the variable salary is fetched, with one more error check - because it's a number, it needs to be composed of digits.

The boss variable isn't required to have been sent - we set it to "Mr. Burns" if it isn't among the information we received.

The last bit of variable handing code is a bit trickier. Because skills is a listbox, and can potentially have multiple values, we opt to receive them as a list, so that at some point, we could iterate over them.

The script then checks to make sure that errlist is empty and outputting a thankyou message. If errlist is not empty, the list of errors it contains is printed.

Example 4. File Upload

The following HTML in one file, say, upload.html

<form action="foo.rvt" enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post">
<input type="file" name="MyUpload"></input>
<input type="submit" value="Send File"></input>
</form>

Can be used with the following Tcl code, in a second file (upload.rvt for instance) in order to create a file upload form.

<?
upload save MyUpload /tmp/uploadfiles/file1
puts "Saved file [upload filename MyUpload] \
	([upload size MyUpload] bytes) to server"
?>

Rivet Tcl Packages

In addition to the core Apache module, Rivet provides a number of Tcl packages that include potentially useful code.


DIO - Database Interface Objects

DIO - Database Interface Objects
. If the variable doesn't exist, create it instead of returning an error.


Name

parray — Tcl's parray with html formatting.

Synopsis

parray ?arrayName? ??pattern??

Description

An html version of the standard Tcl parray command. Displays the entire contents of an array in a sorted, nicely-formatted way. Mostly used for debugging purposes.


Name

abort_page — Stops outputing data to web page, similar in purpose to PHP's die command.

Synopsis

abort_page

Description

This command flushes the output buffer and stops the Tcl script from sending any more data to the client. A normal Tcl script might use the exit command, but that cannot be used in Rivet without actually exiting the apache child process!


Name

no_body — Prevents Rivet from sending any content.

Synopsis

no_body

Description

This command is useful for situations where it is necessary to only return HTTP headers and no actual content. For instance, when returning a 304 redirect.


Name

escape_string — convert a string into escaped characters.

Synopsis

escape_string ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for special characters, escaping them as needed, mapping special characters to a quoted hexadecimal equivalent, returning the result.

This is useful for quoting strings that are going to be part of a URL.


Name

escape_sgml_chars — escape special SGML characters in a string.

Synopsis

escape_sgml_chars ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for any special (with respect to SGML, and hence HTML) characters from the specified string, and returns the result. For example, the right angle bracket is escaped to the corrected ampersand gt symbol.


Name

escape_shell_command — escape shell metacharacters in a string.

Synopsis

escape_shell_command ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for any shell metacharacters, such as asterisk, less than and greater than, parens, square brackets, curly brackets, angle brackets, dollar signs, backslashes, semicolons, ampersands, vertical bars, etc.

For each metacharacter found, it is quoted in the result by prepending it with a backslash, returning the result.


Name

unescape_string — unescape escaped characters in a string.

Synopsis

unescape_string ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for escaped character sequences (characters containing a percent sign and two hexadecimal characters, unescaping them back to their original character values, as needed, also mapping plus signs to spaces, and returning the result.

This is useful for unquoting strings that have been quoted to be part of a URL.


Examples and Usage

Some examples of Rivet usage follow. Some prior Tcl knowledge is assumed. If you don't know much Tcl, don't worry, it's easy, and there are some good resources available on the web that will get you up to speed quickly. Go to the web sites section and have a look.

Example 1. Hello World

As with any tool, it's always nice to see something work, so let's create a small "Hello World" page.

Assuming you have Apache configured correctly, create a file called hello.rvt where Apache can find it, with the following content:

<?
puts "Hello World"
?>

If you then access it with your browser, you should see a blank page with the text "Hello World" (without the quotes) on it.

Example 2. Generate a Table

In another simple example, we dynamically generate a table:

<? puts "<table>\n"
for {set i 1} { $i <= 8 } {incr i} {
    puts "<tr>\n"
    for {set j 1} {$j <= 8} {incr j} {
        set num [ expr $i * $j * 4 - 1]
        puts [ format "<td bgcolor=\"%02x%02x%02x\" > $num $num $num </td>\n" \
		   $num $num $num ]
    }
    puts "</tr>\n"
}
puts "</table>\n" ?>

If you read the code, you can see that this is pure Tcl. We could take the same code, run it outside of Rivet, and it would generate the same HTML!

The result should look something like this:

Example 3. Variable Access

Here, we demonstrate how to access variables set by GET or POST operations.

Given an HTML form like the following:

     <form action="vars.rvt">
      <table>
	<tbody>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Title:</b></td>
	    <td><input name="title"></td>
	  </tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Salary:</b></td>
	    <td><input name="salary"></td>
	  </tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Boss:</b></td>
	    <td><input name="boss"></td></tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Skills:</b></td>
	    <td>
	      <select name="skills" multiple="multiple">
		<option>c</option>
		<option>java</option>
		<option>Tcl</option>
		<option>Perl</option>
	      </select>
	    </td>
	  </tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><input type="submit"></td>
	  </tr>
	</tbody>
      </table>
    </form>

We can use this Rivet script to get the variable values:

<?
set errlist {}
if { [var exists title] } {
    set title [var get title]
} else {
    set errlist "You need to enter a title"
}

if { [var exists salary] } {
    set salary [var get salary]
    if { ! [string is digit $salary] } {
	lappend errlist "Salary must be a number"
    }
} else {
    lappend errlist "You need to enter a salary"
}

if { [var exists boss] } {
    set boss [var get boss]
} else {
    set boss "Mr. Burns"
}

if { [var exists skills] } {
    set skills [var list skills]
} else {
    lappend errlist "You need to enter some skills"
}

if { [llength $errlist] != 0 } {
    foreach err $errlist {
	puts "<b> $err </b>"
    }
} else {
    puts "Thanks for the information!"
    ?>
    <table>
      <tbody>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Title:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $title ?></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Boss:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $boss ?></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Salary:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $salary ?></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Skills:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $skills ?></td>
	</tr>
      </tbody>
    </table>
    <?
}
?>

The first statement checks to make sure that the boss variable has been passed to the script, and then does something with that information. If it's not present, an error is added to the list of errors.

In the second block of code, the variable salary is fetched, with one more error check - because it's a number, it needs to be composed of digits.

The boss variable isn't required to have been sent - we set it to "Mr. Burns" if it isn't among the information we received.

The last bit of variable handing code is a bit trickier. Because skills is a listbox, and can potentially have multiple values, we opt to receive them as a list, so that at some point, we could iterate over them.

The script then checks to make sure that errlist is empty and outputting a thankyou message. If errlist is not empty, the list of errors it contains is printed.

Example 4. File Upload

The following HTML in one file, say, upload.html

<form action="foo.rvt" enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post">
<input type="file" name="MyUpload"></input>
<input type="submit" value="Send File"></input>
</form>

Can be used with the following Tcl code, in a second file (upload.rvt for instance) in order to create a file upload form.

<?
upload save MyUpload /tmp/uploadfiles/file1
puts "Saved file [upload filename MyUpload] \
	([upload size MyUpload] bytes) to server"
?>

Rivet Tcl Packages

In addition to the core Apache module, Rivet provides a number of Tcl packages that include potentially useful code.


DIO - Database Interface Objects

DIO - Database Interface Objects
. If the variable doesn't exist, create it instead of returning an error.


Name

parray — Tcl's parray with html formatting.

Synopsis

parray ?arrayName? ??pattern??

Description

An html version of the standard Tcl parray command. Displays the entire contents of an array in a sorted, nicely-formatted way. Mostly used for debugging purposes.


Name

abort_page — Stops outputing data to web page, similar in purpose to PHP's die command.

Synopsis

abort_page

Description

This command flushes the output buffer and stops the Tcl script from sending any more data to the client. A normal Tcl script might use the exit command, but that cannot be used in Rivet without actually exiting the apache child process!


Name

no_body — Prevents Rivet from sending any content.

Synopsis

no_body

Description

This command is useful for situations where it is necessary to only return HTTP headers and no actual content. For instance, when returning a 304 redirect.


Name

escape_string — convert a string into escaped characters.

Synopsis

escape_string ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for special characters, escaping them as needed, mapping special characters to a quoted hexadecimal equivalent, returning the result.

This is useful for quoting strings that are going to be part of a URL.


Name

escape_sgml_chars — escape special SGML characters in a string.

Synopsis

escape_sgml_chars ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for any special (with respect to SGML, and hence HTML) characters from the specified string, and returns the result. For example, the right angle bracket is escaped to the corrected ampersand gt symbol.


Name

escape_shell_command — escape shell metacharacters in a string.

Synopsis

escape_shell_command ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for any shell metacharacters, such as asterisk, less than and greater than, parens, square brackets, curly brackets, angle brackets, dollar signs, backslashes, semicolons, ampersands, vertical bars, etc.

For each metacharacter found, it is quoted in the result by prepending it with a backslash, returning the result.


Name

unescape_string — unescape escaped characters in a string.

Synopsis

unescape_string ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for escaped character sequences (characters containing a percent sign and two hexadecimal characters, unescaping them back to their original character values, as needed, also mapping plus signs to spaces, and returning the result.

This is useful for unquoting strings that have been quoted to be part of a URL.


Examples and Usage

Some examples of Rivet usage follow. Some prior Tcl knowledge is assumed. If you don't know much Tcl, don't worry, it's easy, and there are some good resources available on the web that will get you up to speed quickly. Go to the web sites section and have a look.

Example 1. Hello World

As with any tool, it's always nice to see something work, so let's create a small "Hello World" page.

Assuming you have Apache configured correctly, create a file called hello.rvt where Apache can find it, with the following content:

<?
puts "Hello World"
?>

If you then access it with your browser, you should see a blank page with the text "Hello World" (without the quotes) on it.

Example 2. Generate a Table

In another simple example, we dynamically generate a table:

<? puts "<table>\n"
for {set i 1} { $i <= 8 } {incr i} {
    puts "<tr>\n"
    for {set j 1} {$j <= 8} {incr j} {
        set num [ expr $i * $j * 4 - 1]
        puts [ format "<td bgcolor=\"%02x%02x%02x\" > $num $num $num </td>\n" \
		   $num $num $num ]
    }
    puts "</tr>\n"
}
puts "</table>\n" ?>

If you read the code, you can see that this is pure Tcl. We could take the same code, run it outside of Rivet, and it would generate the same HTML!

The result should look something like this:

Example 3. Variable Access

Here, we demonstrate how to access variables set by GET or POST operations.

Given an HTML form like the following:

     <form action="vars.rvt">
      <table>
	<tbody>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Title:</b></td>
	    <td><input name="title"></td>
	  </tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Salary:</b></td>
	    <td><input name="salary"></td>
	  </tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Boss:</b></td>
	    <td><input name="boss"></td></tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><b>Skills:</b></td>
	    <td>
	      <select name="skills" multiple="multiple">
		<option>c</option>
		<option>java</option>
		<option>Tcl</option>
		<option>Perl</option>
	      </select>
	    </td>
	  </tr>
	  <tr>
	    <td><input type="submit"></td>
	  </tr>
	</tbody>
      </table>
    </form>

We can use this Rivet script to get the variable values:

<?
set errlist {}
if { [var exists title] } {
    set title [var get title]
} else {
    set errlist "You need to enter a title"
}

if { [var exists salary] } {
    set salary [var get salary]
    if { ! [string is digit $salary] } {
	lappend errlist "Salary must be a number"
    }
} else {
    lappend errlist "You need to enter a salary"
}

if { [var exists boss] } {
    set boss [var get boss]
} else {
    set boss "Mr. Burns"
}

if { [var exists skills] } {
    set skills [var list skills]
} else {
    lappend errlist "You need to enter some skills"
}

if { [llength $errlist] != 0 } {
    foreach err $errlist {
	puts "<b> $err </b>"
    }
} else {
    puts "Thanks for the information!"
    ?>
    <table>
      <tbody>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Title:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $title ?></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Boss:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $boss ?></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Salary:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $salary ?></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	  <td><b>Skills:</b></td>
	  <td><? puts $skills ?></td>
	</tr>
      </tbody>
    </table>
    <?
}
?>

The first statement checks to make sure that the boss variable has been passed to the script, and then does something with that information. If it's not present, an error is added to the list of errors.

In the second block of code, the variable salary is fetched, with one more error check - because it's a number, it needs to be composed of digits.

The boss variable isn't required to have been sent - we set it to "Mr. Burns" if it isn't among the information we received.

The last bit of variable handing code is a bit trickier. Because skills is a listbox, and can potentially have multiple values, we opt to receive them as a list, so that at some point, we could iterate over them.

The script then checks to make sure that errlist is empty and outputting a thankyou message. If errlist is not empty, the list of errors it contains is printed.

Example 4. File Upload

The following HTML in one file, say, upload.html

<form action="foo.rvt" enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post">
<input type="file" name="MyUpload"></input>
<input type="submit" value="Send File"></input>
</form>

Can be used with the following Tcl code, in a second file (upload.rvt for instance) in order to create a file upload form.

<?
upload save MyUpload /tmp/uploadfiles/file1
puts "Saved file [upload filename MyUpload] \
	([upload size MyUpload] bytes) to server"
?>

Rivet Tcl Packages

In addition to the core Apache module, Rivet provides a number of Tcl packages that include potentially useful code.


DIO - Database Interface Objects

DIO - Database Interface Objects
. If the variable doesn't exist, create it instead of returning an error.


Name

parray — Tcl's parray with html formatting.

Synopsis

parray ?arrayName? ??pattern??

Description

An html version of the standard Tcl parray command. Displays the entire contents of an array in a sorted, nicely-formatted way. Mostly used for debugging purposes.


Name

abort_page — Stops outputing data to web page, similar in purpose to PHP's die command.

Synopsis

abort_page

Description

This command flushes the output buffer and stops the Tcl script from sending any more data to the client. A normal Tcl script might use the exit command, but that cannot be used in Rivet without actually exiting the apache child process!


Name

no_body — Prevents Rivet from sending any content.

Synopsis

no_body

Description

This command is useful for situations where it is necessary to only return HTTP headers and no actual content. For instance, when returning a 304 redirect.


Name

escape_string — convert a string into escaped characters.

Synopsis

escape_string ?string?

Description

Scans through each character in the specified string looking for special characters, escaping them as needed, mapping special characters to a quoted hexadecimal equivalent, returning the result.

This is useful for quoting strings that are going to be part of a URL.


Name

escape_sgml_chars — escape special SGML characters in a string.

Synopsis

escape_sgml_chars ?string?

Descriptio