[Openmcl-devel] Lisp for the 21 century: how to deal with URLs

[Ron Garret]

I like it!

(defun nsstr (s) (make-instance 'gui::ns-lisp-string :string s)) ;  
Really ought to be built-in to CCL

(defun load-url (url)
   (let ((data (make-instance ns:ns-data
                 :with-contents-of-url (#/URLWithString: ns:ns-url  
(nsstr url))))
         (filename (format nil "/tmp/~a" (gensym))))
     (#/writeToFile:atomically: data (nsstr filename) #$NO)
     (load filename)))

Implementing "save-url" is going to be trickier though :-)

rg


On Jun 7, 2009, at 11:00 PM, Alexander Repenning wrote:

> It would be nice if we could bring Lisp into the 21 century by adding
> some kind of native support for URLs. For instance, with more and more
> people posting Lisp files by attaching them to emails how about being
> able to just load them via (load URL)? Chances are you already keep
> your files in some web accessible repository, e.g., Google Code/ svn
>
> At a conceptual level there is a question of how to integrate (or
> perhaps replace) the existing notion of CL pathnames with URLs. This
> will cause some headaches but could replace the portable logical
> pathnames with a long overdue modern approach.
>
> At an implementation level, in CCL, one could start by hacking load.
> If the pathname is a string starting with "http://" then the chance is
> pretty good that we are dealing with a URL
>
> (load "http://xmlisp.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/XMLisp/sources/IDE/specific/Mac%20CCL/anticipat-symbol-complete.lisp
> ")
>
> The file could be downloaded via HTTP, perhaps as temp file, and then
> loaded the "old" way. Even here there are questions. Should one use
> CFNetwork?  URLDownload looks temptingly simple but depreciated,
> NSURLDownload hmmmm....   just use TCP streams and make you own HTTP
> GET, ... so many options.
>
> With a bit more work one could do some clever local caching similar to
> Google Gears.
>
> Any suggestions?
>
> Alex
>
>
> Prof. Alexander Repenning
>
> University of Colorado
> Computer Science Department
> Boulder, CO 80309-430
>
> vCard: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~ralex/AlexanderRepenning.vcf
>
>
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