This one is for the more technically minded among you: the first public beta of acgi dispatcher for Mac OS X now available. acgi dispatcher is a program that enables you to use ACGI programs written in AppleScript or other AppleEvent aware languages to write CGI programs to be run with the Apache Web server that comes with Mac OS X.
“In Mac OS 9 and earlier, there was an apple event system to let you do this with the built in Web server, but Apache on Mac OS X does not support this,” James Sentman, author of acgi dispatcher, said. “Apple does include a solution to this problem with their Mac OS X Server product, but people not wanting to make the extra investment were out of luck.”
acgi dispatcher runs as a background process on Mac OS X so it doesn’t clutter your screen with windows and dock icons unless you wish to see them, he added. It also has the capability to run and serve pages while your system is logged out. Installation is drag and drop. There’s no manual editing of Unix config files.
In addition to supporting the traditional acgi AppleScript system acgi dispatcher adds some new information to the parameters to simplify and speed up your scripts, Sentman said. Instead of only sending the raw encoded form data, acgi dispatcher will URL decode and spilt form data into AppleScript lists for you.
“This removes the necessity to use either very slow, pure AppleScript code, or OSAXs that may not be carbon compatible yet,” Sentman said.
When the beta period is complete, acgi dispatcher will be released as shareware. You can download the utility — which was made with REALbasic.from Real Software — at the product Web site.
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