ADPs and Tcl Libraries

There are two ways to extend AOLserver using Tcl, and each is better-suited to different situations:

• AOLserver Dynamic Pages (ADPs): ADPs allow you to embed Tcl scripts directly into HTML pages. The script(s) are interpreted dynamically when the page is accessed. ADPs are ideal in situations where you want to generate all or part of a specific page dynamically. You can re-use code by storing Tcl scripts in Tcl libraries and invoking them from within multiple ADPs. You can also include files and parse other ADPs from within your ADPs.

  ADPs are described in Chapter 2.

• Tcl Libraries: The alternative to embedding Tcl scripts in HTML pages using ADPs, is to store Tcl scripts in Tcl libraries. You can define scripts that can be called from ADPs, schedule procedures to run at certain times, register scripts to handle specific URLs or URL hierarchies, register scripts to handle all URLs with a specific file extension, and register filters to be run in addition to a URL's registered procedure.

  The Tcl Libraries approach is described in Chapter 3.