In this section a method of overriding the "Stay Open" option is presented.
All of the CGI/ACGI scripts described so far, once launched, will never quit. This is not bad since each one of these scripts takes time to load, and once loaded they will execute faster. If the scripts you write are intended to be used often, then keeping them open is a good idea, provided you have the RAM to spare. In those cases where you don't have enough RAM to spare and/or the CGI/ACGI scripts you write are intended to be used infrequently, then you may want to consider including in your scripts a method for quitting.
The following script, hello-world-07.cgi works just most of the other "Hello, World!" scripts here. It simply displays the text "Hello, World!", but unlike the other scripts, this one will quit after 30 ticks (one tick = 1/60th of a second) of idle time. Not incidentally, this technique was first described by Jon Wiederspan in his essay "Extending MacHTTP"
-- set up automatic quitting
global theIdletime
global theDateStamp
set theIdletime to 30
set theDateStamp to current date
-- process the AppleEvent sent to this script by the server
on «event WWW*sdoc»
-- practice good error trapping
try
-- re-initialize the date stamp for .acgi purposes
set theDateStamp to current date
-- define the standard HTTP header
set LF to ASCII character (10)
set CR to return
set CRLF to CR & LF
set http_10_header to "HTTP/1.0 200 OK" & CRLF & ¬
"Server: MacHTTP" & CRLF & ¬
"MIME-Version: 1.0" & CRLF & ¬
"Content-type: text/html" & CRLF & CRLF
-- return the results as an HTML file
return http_10_header & ¬
"<html>" & ¬
"<head>" & ¬
"<title>Hello, World</title>" & ¬
"</head>" & ¬
"<body>Hello, World!</body" & ¬
"</html>"
on error msg
-- return the error as an HTML document
return http_10_header & ¬
"</html><head><title>Error</title></head>" & ¬
"<body><h1>Error</h1>" & ¬
"An error occured: " & msg & ¬
"</body></html>"
end try
end «event WWW*sdoc»
on idle
-- check to see if it is time to quit
if (current date) > (theDateStamp + theIdletime) then quit
-- wait a few more ticks
return 5
end idle
on quit
-- exit the program
continue quit
end quit
theDateStamp and theIdletime). These variables have to be global in nature because they will be used in other handlers of the script.
Next, the script assigns values to these variables. The variable, theDateStamp is self-evident. The second variable, theIdleTime defines how long the script should stay open and wait for more requests for processing. The value of theIdleTime must be long enough for your script to execute, but not so long that it hangs around in RAM too long.
Third, within the WWW*sdoc handler, theDateStamp is reinitialized since the program may have been called after it was initially launched. By reinitializing theDateStamp you can accommodate ACGI scripts.
Fourth, the program does its processing and returns the result back to the server.
Now, the script receives idle calls automatically. This is a feature of AppleScript and works just like the on idle calls in HyperCard's HyperTalk. It is in the on idle handler that theIdletime and the date stamp are compared to the current time. If the current time is greater than the sum of the date stamp and theIdletime, then the quit routine is called. Otherwise, a few more ticks are spent waiting.
Eric last edited this page on September 26, 1995. Please feel free to send comments.