6 ms·

How to write and deploy a Lisp Webapp

101 points by smanek 17y ago

smanek 17y ago
Hi guys, When I posted about why I chose Lisp for http://postabon.com http://postabon.com a few weeks back (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=972248 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=972248), I got a few people who were interested in a 'best practices' guide of how to write a Lisp Webapp. This is by no means complete, but I hope it's a good start.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  Thank you very much. I am willing to explore Lisp as a web development language, but my knowledge of Python and Django (and Plone) are a hindrance in this scenario: the low-risk road is to go with what I know and is good (at least better than, cough, Java and .NET, cough) enough.
- aerique 17y ago
  You should really refer to the language as Common Lisp to avoid confusion and annoy less people. disclaimer: I'm a CL zealot myself and not in the slightest annoyed.
pmjordan 17y ago
I see you're using nginx as the reverse proxy. There seem to be a lot of options for reverse HTTP proxying - nginx, apache (mod_proxy), lighttpd, squid, etc. Would you (and/or anyone else) mind talking about choosing the right one? I assume all of them support keeping connections to the backing servers alive to reduce the overhead from opening new TCP connections. Apache seems overkill if it's not also serving up some of the pages, but other than that I'm a bit lost. I'm mainly after multiplexing requests to different server processes (some in VMs) based on Host: header and/or path. Applying gzip/deflate compression where the backing server doesn't support it would be nice too.
- noss 17y ago
  There is no support in nginx to do keep-alive connections to backend servers. Placing nginx and the backend servers on the same LAN should make it less of an issue than high-latency frontend connections. The backend response will also be buffered in nginx until it has received it all before the front-end user is served the request.
wglb 17y ago
When installing sbcl on a fresh linux box, I don't get the distribution repo--in fact, I have heard that this is less likely to be supported in the future. What I do is to grab a binary of sbcl from http://www.sbcl.org/platform-table.html http://www.sbcl.org/platform-table.html, install it, then get the source and customize it for changes that I want as you have said. The build is fairly quick, except on my old PPC mac.
dou001 17y ago
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mark_l_watson 17y ago
Nice writeup, and useful. I just did a git clone and looked through the project. I used to do web app development in Lisp and I found having a skeleton project to start with with all ASDF installs local helped me get started - in the future I am likely to toss my old skeleton project and use this one.

101 points by smanek 17y ago

Hi guys, When I posted about why I chose Lisp for http://postabon.com http://postabon.com a few weeks back (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=972248 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=972248), I got a few people who were interested in a 'best practices' guide of how to write a Lisp Webapp. This is by no means complete, but I hope it's a good start.

rbanffy 17y ago
Thank you very much. I am willing to explore Lisp as a web development language, but my knowledge of Python and Django (and Plone) are a hindrance in this scenario: the low-risk road is to go with what I know and is good (at least better than, cough, Java and .NET, cough) enough.
aerique 17y ago
You should really refer to the language as Common Lisp to avoid confusion and annoy less people. disclaimer: I'm a CL zealot myself and not in the slightest annoyed.

pmjordan 17y ago

I see you're using nginx as the reverse proxy. There seem to be a lot of options for reverse HTTP proxying - nginx, apache (mod_proxy), lighttpd, squid, etc. Would you (and/or anyone else) mind talking about choosing the right one? I assume all of them support keeping connections to the backing servers alive to reduce the overhead from opening new TCP connections. Apache seems overkill if it's not also serving up some of the pages, but other than that I'm a bit lost. I'm mainly after multiplexing requests to different server processes (some in VMs) based on Host: header and/or path. Applying gzip/deflate compression where the backing server doesn't support it would be nice too.

noss 17y ago
There is no support in nginx to do keep-alive connections to backend servers. Placing nginx and the backend servers on the same LAN should make it less of an issue than high-latency frontend connections. The backend response will also be buffered in nginx until it has received it all before the front-end user is served the request.

wglb 17y ago

When installing sbcl on a fresh linux box, I don't get the distribution repo--in fact, I have heard that this is less likely to be supported in the future. What I do is to grab a binary of sbcl from http://www.sbcl.org/platform-table.html http://www.sbcl.org/platform-table.html, install it, then get the source and customize it for changes that I want as you have said. The build is fairly quick, except on my old PPC mac.

dou001 17y ago

welcome to visit: http://www.wowhotsale.com http://www.wowhotsale.com We are wholesaler of Nike Jordan and Other Shoes. We are a professional exporting company . We supply many kinds of Shoes, such as Nike Shoes, Jordan 1-23, Air Jordan, AF1, DUNK, Air max series etc. Most of them are in stock and can be supplied surely on time. All these shoes are packed with original-boxes and cards. ====> free shipping <==== ====>competitive price<==== ====>any size available<==== ====>accept Credit Card payment<==== HTTP://WWW.WOWHOTSALE.COM jordan air max oakland raiders $34--39; Ed Hardy AF JUICY POLO Bikini $25; Christan Audigier BIKINI JACKET $30; gstar coogi evisu true jeans $35-39; coach chanel gucci LV handbags $36; coogi DG edhardy gucci t-shirts $18; CA edhardy vests.paul smith shoes $32; jordan dunk af1 max gucci shoes $37; EDhardy gucci ny New Era cap $16; coach okely Adidas CHANEL DG Sunglass $18; HTTP://WWW.WOWHOTSALE.COM http://www.wowhotsale.com/productlist.asp?id=s81 http://www.wowhotsale.com/productlist.asp?id=s81 (Hoody) http://www.wowhotsale.com/productlist.asp?id=s17 http://www.wowhotsale.com/productlist.asp?id=s17 (Shox) http://www.wowhotsale.com/productlist.asp?id=n516 http://www.wowhotsale.com/productlist.asp?id=n516 (AF jacket) http://www.wowhotsale.com/productlist.asp?id=s32 http://www.wowhotsale.com/productlist.asp?id=s32 (women boot) http://www.wowhotsale.com/productlist.asp?id=s74 http://www.wowhotsale.com/productlist.asp?id=s74 (Tshirt) http://www.wowhotsale.com/productlist.asp?id=s79 http://www.wowhotsale.com/productlist.asp?id=s79 (Jean) http://www.wowhotsale.com/productlist.asp?id=s72 http://www.wowhotsale.com/productlist.asp?id=s72 (Handbag) http://www.wowhotsale.com/productlist.asp?id=s62 http://www.wowhotsale.com/productlist.asp?id=s62 (Tiffany_Ring)

mark_l_watson 17y ago

Nice writeup, and useful. I just did a git clone and looked through the project. I used to do web app development in Lisp and I found having a skeleton project to start with with all ASDF installs local helped me get started - in the future I am likely to toss my old skeleton project and use this one.