Dynamic Content

Motivation

Client-side and server-side

Common Gateway Interface (CGI)

Idea: When dynamic content is requested, the web server runs an external program that produces the web page

■ Program is often written in a scripting language ('CGI script')

■ Perl is among the most popular choices

Drawbacks of CGI

• Each invocation creates a new processs

Routes

• Suppose our web application has many different URLs
  • ■ Example: Login page, user home page, account page, settings page, …
• ■ How do we associate the corresponding code with the URLs?
  • ■ Idea: Sequence of ‘if’ statements, as shown above. Is this a good idea?

Servlet

Spark framework

Managing state

Session

Tracking