To write a web application, Java developers can use the servlet API. The servlet technology, created around 1997, is a simple and powerful framework on top of which many web applications and higher web frameworks have been created. This article shows how to write the same kind of web application in Ada.

Ada Servlet Framework

The Ada Servlet framework is provided by Ada Server Faces. It is an adaptation and implementation of the JSR 315 (Java Servlet Specification) for the Ada 05 language. The Ada API is very close to the Java API as it provides the Servlet, Filter, Request, Response and Session types with quite the same methods. It should be quite easy for someone who is familiar with Java servlets to write an Ada servlet.

The Ada Servlet implementation uses the Ada Web Server as a web server. In the future other other web servers such as Apache or Lighthttpd could be used.

Servlet Declaration

The servlet API is represented by the Servlet tagged type which represents the root of all servlets. A servlet must extend this Servlet tagged type and it can override one of the Do_Get, Do_Post, Do_Head Do_Delete, Do_Put, Do_Options or Do_Trace procedure. Each Do_XXX procedure receives a request object and a response object.

with ASF.Servlets;
with ASF.Requests;
with ASF.Responses;

package Volume_Servlet is
   use ASF;
   type Servlet is new Servlets.Servlet with null record;

   --  Called by the servlet container when a GET request is received.
   procedure Do_Get (Server   : in Servlet;
                     Request  : in out Requests.Request'Class;
                     Response : in out Responses.Response'Class);
end Volume_Servlet;

Servlet Implementation

The Do_Get procedure receives the request and response as parameter. Both objects are in out parameters because the servlet implementation can modify them. Indeed, the Java servlet API allows the servlet developer to set specific attributes on the request object (This allows to associate any kind of data to the request for later use when rendering the response).

Similar to the Java API, the response is written by using the Print_Stream object that is returned by the Get_Output_Stream function.

with ASF.Streams;
package body Volume_Servlet is
   procedure Do_Get (Server   : in Servlet;
                     Request  : in out Requests.Request'Class;
                     Response : in out Responses.Response'Class) is
      Output : Streams.Print_Stream := Response.Get_Output_Stream;
   begin
      Output.Write ("...");
      Response.Set_Status (Responses.SC_OK);
   end Do_Get;
end Volume_Servlet;

Note: the complete content is omitted for the clarity of this post.

Servlet Registration

With Java servlet 2.5 specification, servlets are registered exclusively through the web.xml application descriptor file. Since Java servlet 3.0, one can register servlets programmatically. With our Ada servlet, this is was we will do with the use of the Add_Servlet method.

Since the Ada runtime is not able to create dynamically an instance of any class (such as the Java newInstance method of the Java Class class), we have to create ourselves the servlet instance object and register it. The servlet instance is associated with a name.

Once registered, we have to define a mapping that tells which URL path is mapped to the servlet. This is done by the call to Add_Mapping: every URL that ends in .html will be handled by the servlet.

The Ada Server Faces framework provides a Web container in which the application must be registered (similar to the Java Web container). The registration is done by the Register_Application call which also specifies the URL prefix for the web application (Every URL starting with /volume will be served by this application).

with ASF.Server.Web;
with ASF.Servlets;
with Volume_Servlet;

procedure Volume_Server is
   Compute : aliased Volume_Servlet.Servlet;
   App     : aliased ASF.Servlets.Servlet_Registry;
   WS      : ASF.Server.Web.AWS_Container;
begin
   --  Register the servlets and filters
   App.Add_Servlet (Name => "compute",
                    Server => Compute'Unchecked_Access);

   --  Define servlet mappings
   App.Add_Mapping (Name => "compute",
                    Pattern => "*.html");

   WS.Register_Application ("/volume",
                            App'Unchecked_Access);

   WS.Start;

   delay 600.0;

end Volume_Server;

Compilation and Execution

The compilation of the Ada servlet example is done using a GNAT project file.

$ gnatmake -Psamples

It produces the volume_server which is our web server.

$ bin/volume_server

After the server is started, point your browser to http://localhost:8080/volume/index.html to look at the result.

References

volume_servlet.ads
volume_servlet.adb
volume_server.adb
HttpServlet
HttpServletResponse
HttpServletRequest

My problem was to give some flexibility in a JSF page to customize some blocks so that a marketing team could easily change those blocks. Basically the marketing team needs to insert some promotion, advertising or specific presentation blocks. For this, they ask a designer to make those blocks. The designer will give us some piece of HTML (with Javascript) that must be inserted in the page.