3.6 The Swazoo web server

Swazoo (Smalltalk Web Application Zoo) is a free Smalltalk HTTP server supporting both static web serving and a fully-featured web request resolution framework.

The server can be started using

$ gst-load --start[=ARG] Swazoo

or loaded into a background GNU Smalltalk virtual machine with

$ gst-remote --start=Swazoo[:ARG]

Usually, the first time you start Swazoo ARG is swazoodemo (which starts a simple “Hello, World!” servlet) or a path to a configuration file like this one:

<Site name: 'hello'; port: 8080>
 <CompositeResource uriPattern: ''/''>
  <HelloWorldResource uriPattern: ''hello.html''>
 </CompositeResource>
</Site>

After this initial step, ARG can take the following meanings:

• if omitted altogether, all the sites registered on the server are started;
• if a number, all the sites registered on the server on that port are started;
• if a configuration file name, the server configuration is replaced with the one loaded from that file;
• if any other string, the site named ARG is started.

In addition, a background server can be stopped using

$ gst-remote --stop=Swazoo[:ARG]

where ARG can have the same meanings, except for being a configuration file.

In addition, package WebServer implements an older web server engine which is now superseded by Swazoo. It is based on the GPL’ed WikiWorks project. Apart from porting to GNU Smalltalk, a number of changes were made to the code, including refactoring of classes, better aesthetics, authentication support, virtual hosting, and HTTP 1.1 compliance.