LIS650 lecture 5 javascript, http and apache Thomas Krichel

today javascript http apache introduction

javascript This is a client-side scripting language. Your web page is read by the client. If it contains instructions written in javascript, the client executes the command, provided it knows about javascript. Different browser capabilities when it comes to executing javascript did bedevil javascript at the outset.

the is an element that calls a script. Interestingly enough, you can place in the head or the body. It requires a type= attribute that gives the type of the script language. e.g. type="text/javascript". It takes a defer= attribute. If set as defer="1" you tell the user agent that the script will generate no output. This helps the user agent in that case.

example document.write("hello, world"); This is an example of an automated script. The user has to do nothing to get the script to run. You can also trigger a script. To do that, we have to study some more HTML attributes. We will do that later.

external script takes the src= argument that gives a URI where the script can be found. Such a script is called an external script. You can also create an external file, say hello.js with the line document.write("hello, world"); Then you can call it up in the html file

default script language You should set the default scripting language used in the document using the element in the If you don't the validator does not complain, but I don't see other ways to specify the language.

Javascript history A programming language that was developed by Netscape for their browser in To counter, Mickeysoft developed Jscript. It has been standardized by the European Computer Manufacturers Association as ECMA 262.

principal features It contains instructions for a user agent to execute. Javascript is not run by the server. It resembles Java, but not the same language. It is an object-oriented language.

object In an object-oriented language, an object is the prime focus of attention. An object has properties and methods. Example from real life. Let a bus be an object. –color of the bus is a property –move to next station is a method

objects in javascript Properties are accessed by object_name.property_name Methods are accessed by object_name.method_name() where object_name is the name of an object, property_name is the name of a property and method_name() is the name of an object. Note the use of the dot and the parenthesis.

Example Syntax rules –Comments are started with // and go to the end of the line. –Instructions are terminated with semicolon Example // create a new object called bus new bus = Object(); // paint it white --- set a property bus.color = white; // move to next stop --- apply a method bus.movetonextstop();

event attributes Event attributes can be given to elements (like any attribute, really) The name of the attributes gives a certain event that could happen to the element. The value of the event attribute is the script to be executed when the event occurs on the element that has the event attribute. Example Cow shit is... as the user moves the mouse over the paragraph, the browser fires up an imaginary script called stink that makes it start to stink.

core event attributes I onclick= occurs when the pointing device button is clicked over an element. ondblclick= occurs when the pointing device button is double clicked over an element. onmousedown= occurs when the pointing device button is pressed over an element. onmouseup= occurs when the pointing device button is released over an element. onmouseover= occurs when the pointing device is moved onto an element.

core events attributes II onmousemove= occurs when the pointing device is moved while it is over an element. onmouseout= occurs when the pointing device is moved away from an element. onkeypress= occurs when a key is pressed and released over an element. onkeydown= occurs when a key is pressed down over an element. onkeyup= occurs when a key is released over an element.

special event attributes onfocus= occurs when an element receives focus either by the pointing device or by tabbing navigation. This attribute may only be used with the element, and some form elements that we have not covered. onblur= occurs when an element loses focus either by the pointing device or by tabbing navigation. It may be used with the same elements as onfocus.

more special event attributes onsubmit= occurs when a form is submitted. It only applies to the element. onreset= occurs when a form is reset. It only applies to the element. some more are only used with other form elements... Let us look at some examples

two stupid examples javascript test time <p onmouseover= "document.write('not funny')">joke

An even more silly example Bush in the bush prbu=new Image(); prbu.src="bush.jpg"; natb=new Image(); natb.src="natgeo.jpg"; Bush in the bush <img id="bush" src="bush.jpg" onmouseover="document.bush.src=natb.src" onmouseout="document.bush.src=prbu.src" alt="bush in the bush"/>

http Stands for the hypertext transfer protocol. This is the most important application layer protocol on the Internet today, because it provides the foundation for the world wide web. defined in Fielding, Roy T., James Gettys, Jeffrey C. Mogul, Paul J. Leach, Tim Berners- Lee ``Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1'' (1999), RFC 2616

history 1990: version 0.9 allows for transfer of raw data. 1996: rfc1945 defines version 1.0. by adding attribute:value headers. 1999: rfc 2616 –adds support for hierarchical proxies caching, virtual hosts and some Support for persistent connections –is more stringent.

rfc about http An application-level protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. … HTTP is also used as a generic protocol for communication between user agents and proxies/gateways to other Internet systems, including those supported by the SMTP, NNTP, FTP, Gopher, and WAIS protocols. In this way, HTTP allows basic hypermedia access to resources available from diverse applications.

http assumes transport http assumes that there is a reliable way to transport data from one host on the Internet to another one. All http requests and responses are separate TCP connections. The default is TCP port 80, but other ports can be used.

use of other standards http shares the same registry as the MIME multimedia extensions. It is based at the IANA, at assignments/media-types/media-types The default character set is ISO

http resource identification identification of resources is assumed through Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI). As far as http is concerned, URIs are string. http can use ``absolute'' and ``relative'' URIs. A URL is a special case of a URI.

Absolute http URL the absolute http URL is If abs_path is empty, it is /. The scheme name "http" and the host name are case-insensitive. optional components are in [ ]

special characters in URL Characters other than those in the reserved and unsafe character lists of RFC 2396 are equivalent to their %HEX HEX where HEX is a hex number, usually the characters number in ASCII. Example: to include a blank in a URI, you write %20, because 32 is the position of the blank in ASCII.

http messages There are two types of messages. –Requests are sent form the client to the server. –Responses are sent from the server to the client. The generic format is the same as for messages : –start line –message headers –empty line –body The request's start line is called the request line. The response start line is called the status line.

overall operation server side Server sends response, required items are –status line protocol version success or error code optional items are –server information –body

overall operation: client side Client sends request, required items are –method –request URI –protocol version optional items are –request modifiers –client information Let us now look at different methods

GET and HEAD method The GET method means retrieve whatever information (in the form of an entity) is identified by the Request-URI. If the Request-URI refers to a data-producing process, it is the produced data which shall be returned as the entity in the response and not the source text of the process. The HEAD method is identical to GET except that the server MUST NOT return a message-body in the response.

The POST method The POST method is used to request that the origin server accept the entity enclosed in the request as a new subordinate of the resource identified by the Request-URI in the Request- Line. POST is designed to allow a uniform method to cover the following functions: –Annotation of existing resources; –Posting a message to a bulletin board, newsgroup, mailing list, or similar group of articles; –Providing a block of data, such as the result of submitting a form, to a data-handling process; – Extending a database through an append operation.

PUT and DELETE methods The PUT method requests that the enclosed entity be stored under the supplied Request-URI. If the Request-URI refers to an already existing resource, the enclosed entity should be considered as a modified version of the one residing on the origin server. The DELETE method requests that the origin server delete the resource identified by the Request-URI.

The request headers Accept:Accept-Charset: Accept-Encoding:Accept-Language: Authorization:Expect: From:Host: If-Match:If-Modified-Since: If-None-Match:If-Range: If-Unmodified-Since:Max-Forwards: Proxy-Authorization: Range: Referer:TE: User-Agent:

Entity headers, common to response and request Allow: Content-Encoding: Content-Language: Content-Length: Content-Location: Content-MD5: Content-Range: Content-Type: Expires: Last-Modified

The status line The status line is a set of lines that are of the form HTTP-Version Status-Code Reason-Phrase The status code is a 3-digit number used by the computer. The reason line is a friendly note for a human to read.

Status code classes 1 Informational: Request received, continuing process 2 Success: The action was successfully received, understood, and accepted 3Redirection: Further action must be taken in order to complete the request 4 Client Error: The request contains bad syntax or cannot be understood 5Server error: The request is valid but can not be executed by the server

Error codes 100Continue 101Switching Protocols 200OK 201Created 202Accepted 203Non-Authoritative Information 204No Content 205Reset Content 206Partial Content

Error codes II 300Multiple Choices 301Moved Permanently 302Found 303See Other 304Not Modified 305Use Proxy 307Temporary Redirect

Error codes III 400Bad Request 401Unauthorized 402Payment Required 403Forbidden 404Not Found 405Method Not Allowed 406Not Acceptable 407Proxy Authentication Required 408Request Time-out

Error codes IV 409Conflict 410Gone 411Length Required 412Precondition Failed 413Request Entity Too Large 414Request-URI Too Large 415Unsupported Media Type 416Requested range not satisfiable 417Expectation failed

Error codes V 500Internal Server Error 501Not Implemented 502Bad Gateway 503Service Unavailable 504Gateway Time-out 505HTTP Version not supported

Response headers Accept-Ranges: Age: Etag: Location: Proxy-Authenticate: Retry-After: Server: Vary: WWW-Authenticate:

example response HTTP/ OK Date: Fri, 14 Oct :14:01 GMT Server: Apache/ (Debian GNU/Linux) Last-Modified: Fri, 07 Oct :40:30 GMT ETag: "11f711-9f1-b314bb80" Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 2545 Connection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" " Thomas Krichel's homepage

The body The entity-body (if any) sent with an HTTP request or response is in a format and encoding defined by the entity-header fields. When an entity-body is included with a message, the data type of that body is determined via the header fields Content-Type and Content- Encoding

example status: redirect If you use Apache, you can create a file.htaccess (note the dot!) with a line redirect 301 old_url new_url old_url must be a relative path from the top of your site new_url can be any URL, even outside your site This works on wotan by virtue of configuration set for apache for your home directory. Examples –redirect 301 /~krichel –redirect 301 Cantcook.jpg

Apache Is a free, open-source web server that is produced by the Apache Software Foundation, see It has over 50% of the market share. It runs best on UN*X systems but can run an a Mickeysoft OS as well. I will cover it here because it is freely available. Wotan runs version 2.

Apache in debian /etc/apache2/apache.conf is set main configuration file. /etc/init.d/apache2 action, where action is one of –start –stop –restart is used to fire the daemon up or down. The daemon runs user www-data

Virtual host On a single installation of Apache several web servers can be supported. That means the server can behave in a different way according to how it is being addressed. The easiest way to implement addressing a server in different was is through DNS host names.

directives in apache.conf This file contains directives that control the operation of the Apache server process as a whole. Some of them are –the server root, where it finds its configuration –the time out for requests –which port to listen another part of apache.conf has extensive settings to deal with content –different languages –different character sets –different MIME types

Modules To extend Apache, modules have written. The modules are kept in a directory modules-available Modules that are enabled are listed in the directory modules-enabled. Looking at this gives you vital information about what the server can do.

Server directives User –Gives the user name apache runs under Group –Gives the group name the server runs under ServerAdmin – of a human who runs the default server ServerName –The name of the default server DocumentRoot –The top level directory of the default server

Directory options Many options for a directory can be set with instructions Name is the name of a directory. Instructions can be a whole lot of stuff.

Directory instructions Options sets global options for the directory, it can be –None –All –Or any of Indexes (form directory indexes?) Includes (allow server side includes?) FollowSymlinks (allow to follow symbolic links) ExecCGI (allow cgi-scripts?) MultiViews (allow flexibility in URLs)

Access control Can be part of to set directory level access control Example –Allow from friendly.com –Deny from evil.com Sometimes you have to set the order, example –Order allow, deny

Authentication This is used to enable password access. In that case the authentication is handled by a file.htaccess in the directory. The AllowOverride instruction is used to state what the user can do within the.htaccess file. Depending on its values, you can password protect a web site. We will not discuss this further here.

UserDir This sets the directory that is created by the user in her home directory to be accessed by requests to ~user. On wotan, we have UserDir public_html That is the default, actually.

logs The web server logs every transaction. The are severeal types of logs that used to be kept separately, in early days [26/Jan/2003:09:19: ] "GET /~ramon/videos/ntsc175.html HTTP/1.1" Additional information may be kept in the referer and user agent log. The referer log may have some interesting information on who links to your pages.

virtual hosts Most apache directive can be wrapped in a grouping. This implies that the only hold for the virtual host. Example ServerAdmin DocumentRoot /home/connect/public_html ServerName connections2003.liu.edu ErrorLog /var/log/apache/connections2003-error.log CustomLog /var/log/apache/connectios2003-access.log common

Thank you for your attention!