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[server question] What can be done with server side scripting?

Omar Polo op at omarpolo.com

Sat Jun 5 08:12:00 BST 2021

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Andrew Singleton <singletona082 at gmail.com> writes:

I suppose I should come up with a use case I want and then ask if they can

be done we I really don't feel in my depth on technical aspects.

I just know serve scripts are possible, but I don't know what is

realistically doable and it of that what actually works within the

protocol's strengths.

You can do almost anything that involves a request-response cycle. Withsomething really hacker-ish you can also do things slightly interactivethat leverages the 10/11 responses (I read somewhere that someone wasbuilding a REPL over Gemini) and possibly client certificates to managethe session.

Realistically, it also depends on the clients. One cool thing that maybe done over Gemini, but I'm not sure about client support, is streamingtext/gemini pages. One could, for instance, build a "Feed" (or a"Notification" page) that keeps the connection open and sends theupdates to the client on the fly.

Anyway, without something more specific to discuss, scripts (that may beeither functions loaded *into* the server, or CGI/FastCGI scripts, orsomething else entirely) can do anything the protocol allows, that is,sending any type of content (not only text/gemini, but images, video,audio, ...), require input and manage the session with clientcertificates. There are some examples at awesome-gemini[0], but it'snot comprehensive (stuff like station isn't mentioned AFAICS).

Cheers,

[0]: https://github.com/kr1sp1n/awesome-gemini#services