libwww-ada95 WWW Protocol Library for Ada95

libwww-ada95 is a library of Ada95 packages that will eventually provide a simple and consistent programming interface to the World Wide Web. This library is being developed as a collaborative effort to assist the further development of useful WWW clients and tools.

libwww-ada95 is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, with the single exception listed below. libwww-ada95 is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

As a special exception, if other files instantiate generics from this library, or you link this library with other files to produce an executable, this library does not by itself cause the resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General Public License. This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the executable file might be covered by the GNU General Public License.

You can download the 1.00 release of libwww-ada95 or, if you are a developer with access to the CVS version control system, download the libwww-ada95 CVS repository. Note that this site is also accessible via FTP -- simply change the URL scheme to "ftp".

Library Components

Onions

The Onions Network Streams Library provides an operating system independent, thick binding to Unix socket, file, and directory resources in the form of layered data streams. Onions is independent of the rest of libwww-ada95 and can be used for projects unrelated to the Web. All of our system-dependent code is isolated here.

WWW

A client API for the World Wide Web. Unfortunately, this code has not been finished, and only parts of it have been tested. See WWW/DesignNotes for an idea of what the completed library is supposed to do.

Examples

Small application programs for testing the libraries and providing an example of how the API works.

Platforms

We have only tested libwww-ada95 on our own development platform, Solaris 2.5.

libwww-ada95 was developed using the GNAT 3.10p compilation system. We have made every effort to keep the Ada95 source code independent of the compiler, but the Makefiles generated by configure may be GNAT-dependent. We have no idea how to port it to other compilers, but please let us know if you do and what changes (if any) are needed. Note that the library has been designed to maximize portability even though we didn't have the resources to test it on other platforms.

Future Development

Project References

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)

IETF HTTP working group

HTTP Tutorial

Uniform Resource Locators (URL)

Roy's specification

IETF URI working group

Other WWW Protocol Libraries

Libwww - the W3C Sample Code Library for C and C++

libwww-perl - UCI's WWW Library for Perl

Guido van Rossum's Internet and WWW Services for Python

JDK 1.1 network package for Java

Ada95 Information Sources

Ada95 Language Reference Manual

Ada95 Lovelace Tutorial

Ada Home: the Home of the Brave Ada Programmers

SIGADA pointers

Ada95 Booch Components

libwww-ada95 History

The libwww-ada95 library has been developed by the Hyperware research group in Information and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine, in order to help support the creation of innovative network client implementations using the Ada95 language.

The views and conclusions contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Rome Laboratory or the U.S. Government.