As a generic client, any modern browser available can be used. Using one of the later versions of the Netscape Navigator is recommended but not required. Nevertheless, for the demonstration of web-pages with multimedia components the following plugins are required:
Download the package file orxwww.zip and unpack it in a directory
of your choice. The zip-file unpacks into a directory orxwww. Now move
the file orxwww.zip into directory orxwww.
Then add the following two lines at the top of the mapping rules
portion of the http-demon configuration file httpd.cnf or httpd.conf
in the Unix environments, respectively.
Exec /cgi-bin/orxwww/* d:\www\orxwww\cgi-rexx.cmd Pass /orxwww/* d:\www\orxwww\*with d:\www being the directory where the orxwww package was installed, for example in the OS/2 or Windows environment. For the Unix environments the mappings have to be specified correspondingly.
In shell environments not recognizing REXX command files automatically, the cgi-rexx.cmd file cannot be invoked directly since the REXX environment is not established yet. This can be achieved by invoking the simple shell script cgi.cmd that invokes rexx.exe taking cgi-rexx.cmd as parameter (see file cgi.cmd). In this case, the Exec statement in the http-server configuration file has to look instead as follows:
Exec /cgi-bin/orxwww/* d:\www\orxwww\cgi.cmd
Before you start the http-server make sure that Object REXX is available to
the process the server is running in. Check the respective specification of the path.
Now restart your http-server. As the http-server becomes ready you can
try the following URL with your favorite browser:
http://hostname/orxwww/main.htm
with hostname being the fully qualified name of your host system. This brings up the home page containing a menu of items each of which is associated with a sample cgi-program contained in directory orxwww being basically a rexx command file. These are:
The cgi-REXX Processor is a REXX program (file cgi-rexx.cmd) which is invoked by the http-server whenever a REXX script prefixed by /cgi-bin/orxwww/ is recognized in the URL as specified in the Exec statement of the http-server configuration mentioned earlier.
The http-server passes information on the IP-address of the requesting host,
the name of the cgi-script to be executed, and the parameter string to be passed to the
cgi-script by means of environment variables to the cgi-REXX processor, which in turn
invokes the respective cgi-script.
The cgi-script returns an Html-object being an instance of the
myHtml class.
This is resolved by the cgi-REXX processor
by passing its information as an html-document line by line to the
http-server (via standard output) which in turn returns it to the requester's address.
There it is rendered by the browser so becoming visible to the user now.
In case the cgi-script causes the Object REXX interpreter to raise an exception, the cgi-REXX processor generates an Html-document describing the cause of the problem.
Note: The cgi-REXX processor contains a shell script prefix
'#!/usr/local/orexx/bin/rexx' being used in the Linux system environment.
If you are executing on an AIX system platform this shell
script prefix has to be changed to '#!/usr/lpp/orexx/bin/rexx'.
Make sure that the cgi-rexx processor (file cgi-rexx.cmd) is executable
when being invoked directly.
The shell script prefix is simply ignored when executing on Windows system platforms
provided you have Object REXX for Windows V1.0.3.0 installed. If you are running an older
version you simply need to remove the first line of the script.
On OS/2 Warp3 and Warp4, the shell script prefix has to be removed
since the command interpreter requires a conventional comment starting in column 1 of the
first line to invoke the REXX interpreter.
Have fun with dynamic Html-programming using Object REXX on the Internet!