New and improved Factor web applications

I've been working on Factor's "Furnace" web framework lately, fixing bugs, adding missing features and writing docs. I've also put up some web applications to demonstrate the framework. There is one new web app:

• concatenative.org - the concatenative languages wiki. This wiki is the most elaborate Factor web application at this point in time, and it would not have been possible without some of the nice libraries that we've been working on lately. It showcases Doug Coleman's RDBMS library and his "Farkup" markup language, as well as the Furnace authentication code which supports login over SSL. Despite all of the functionality, the source code is pretty compact. I'm interested in using the wiki to collect information about concatenative languages in general, as well as making Factor's web presence more comprehensive. For example, there is now a public to do list.

I also worked on two web apps which we had before, but have been out of commission for a while; they're back and better than ever:

• docs.factorcode.org - this is a new web app for browsing the Factor documentation. We've had this feature before, but it was implemented differently; it would render the docs from the HTTP server's image. While this was a neat demo of Factor's reflection features, it required loading the help system on the server, and it would not reflect the latest documentation. With the new setup, I generate the docs offline from an image where everything is loaded, then upload the HTML files (150Mb worth!) to the web site. A small web app takes care of the search feature but most of the content is static. I'm going to hook this into the build farm so that one of the machines is tasked with uploading the very latest docs on a regular basis.
• gitweb.factorcode.org - this is a gitweb instance for browsing the Factor repository online. There's nothing new here, other than the fact that it's using the CGI support from the latest Factor web server.

Finally, two existing web apps which have been running for about a year now have been ported to the new web framework and have received minor facelifts as a result:

• paste.factorcode.org - the new pastebin. The pastebin is intended primarily for IRC users chatting and sharing code in #concatenative. Unlike the old version, which stored pastes in memory, pastes are now persisted in a database and we have backups going; there is also an admin interface I can use to delete spam. Otherwise, there is no change in functionality.
• planet.factorcode.org - the new blog aggregator. The main improvement is that there is an web-based admin interface, so I can add and remove blog feeds without having to log into the server, hack the source, and reload.

The main Factor web site is still running on Factor 0.91 from a year ago; I will be overhauling this and migrating it to the new server soon.

Factor's libraries for writing web applications have matured significantly over the last year, but there is still a lot of work that remains. Still, I'm pretty excited about the possibilities here. Few other languages have a "full stack" web framework like Factor does.