Show HN: Tofu -- (Yet another) C web framework | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Tofu -- (Yet another) C web framework

github.com

49 pointsal3xbio16 comments

I've also had good success hacking a bare-bones routing infrastructure on top of mongoose, a single-file threaded HTTP/HTTPS server.

I've had to read or step through the code a few times. It wasn't too painful.

I like Mongoose. :)

http://code.google.com/p/mongoose/wiki/Features

Another +1 for mongoose, it's great for adding a quick web interface to a c/c++ program quickly (ie. status or quick admin interface)... but I wouldn't use it as a web-framework for serving multiple users or to the public on the web though.

I realize it's a bit nit-picky and off-topic, but it was interesting to see C written with spaces around the "->" (access structure field through pointer) operator.

What is almost always written as "a->b = c;" is written as "a -> b = c;" in the Tofu code.

I guess doing so makes sense if you also promote writing "a = b + c;" (which I do), but it was still novel-looking, to me. I guess you can treat -> as any other binary operator.

I actually find "->" with spaces cleaner and easier to read (just like with almost all the other operators). The "->" operatore without spaces around is very popular (also in Perl code AFAICS), and I sometimes wonder why people do put spaces around e.g. "+" and "=" but not "->".

I always figured it was due to it's similarity to the . operator, which never has spaces around it.

Not to criticize unnecessarily, but what would anyone want to code web apps in C? I'm not saying rails, etc. are the be-all-end-all, but why C? To seem extreme?

I've never really seen the benefit of using frameworks... are they as highly customizable as php, when it comes to html code? because if not, I can save myself a lot of work by writing the whole html by hand and then use ajax calls to retrieve all the dynamic content... unless of course page generation is absolutely crucial and I want as few http requests as possible...

could someone elaborate on this?

What you're describing sound more like the definition of a CMS than of a framework. With frameworks you no longer have to manage your own sockets/sessions/connections (some servers take care of this also). Instead of you calling on a socket to send data to clients, the framework calls your functions that simply return the data. More elaborate frameworks come with "helper" functions that, for example, cleans up input data for preparation of saving to the database, (preventing SQL injections), abstracts away the database models. i.e write only one set of models in python, so you don't have to rewrite your database tables when you switch from MSSQL to PGSQL. Each framework come with their own set of design patterns. While this might reduce the flexibility in terms of the architecture design, a framework has been tested and used many times, so the patterns a framework comes with are usually quite suited for what the framework is designed for. e.g. with Django web framework, you (must) use an MVC architecture. Although it is quite difficult to diverge from the MVC pattern, the MVC pattern is a suitable choice for web applications.

Frameworks abstracts away the bare metal of the HTTP protocol, the database, and allows you to concentrate only on the content and logic. A framework is basically a semi-built application; Look at your past websites, what are the common things between all of them? If you abstract all of that into a 'library', you might have some sort of framework there.

Of course with PHP, a lot of that is already taken care of. One thing I remember from PHP was that you write your code in a .php file, and the name of the file becomes part of the URL the user must type into the browser. Well, a framework can abstract away that too, so you can write your own urls and redirect to the appropriate function/file to handle the 'visit'.

I might have overstated what a framework can do here, I rarely go without it so perhaps maybe running with only a server can still provide some of the above described functionality, especially with regards to connections and sockets.

I've recently looked at extending Nginx for my own gains. This has several advantages over such frameworks. For example, you can serve both flat files and dynamic (C) content using the same server. I suspect, security is slightly better too, since Nginx manage process security etc.

On the other hand it would make your applications nginx-specific, right? (which is a problem only if don't like to get stuck with a single web server).

Yeah, I don't see that being a massive problem. I've just started to develop a RESTful interface for MongoDB, which, if done correctly, could utilise the same code for an Apache module and an Nginx module... Let's see how it goes.

Another possibility is to make your C program handle requests over ZeroMQ and stick it behind Mongrel2:

http://mongrel2.org/

I'll look at this in the future, however, there are a few issues on GitHub that I would like to see solved first, including the abolition of all warnings on compilation.

So, is it super fast?

not indicative of anything, i was able to compile check using "ab" a "hello world ap" with eventhttp;

- sinatra request per second 442 - tofu requests per second 5909

Note that it is not indicative of anything; just a simple quick test for curiosity on my vaio laptop with ubuntu 11.10.

Which other C web frameworks could you suggest? Which Sequel-like ORMs for MySQL could you suggest? I am especially curious on sinatra or rails-like frameworks with MVC or similar architectures.

I can't suggest any others - I've never tried any.

Thanks for doing the benchmarking, though - that's fast!

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