Bblog

I've spoken a number of times about the HTTP server we use in our OpenSkills applications and now it has a name: Hyper.

Hyper runs in a number of Smalltalk dialects thanks to Sport. So if you use VisualWorks, VisualAge, GemStone or Squeak, Hyper will work for you. As Sport is ported to more platforms, Hyper will be able to run there too.

You can find the latest version of Hyper in the Cincom public Store repository.

It is easy to start a simple Hyper server:

    HTTPServer
        new ip: 'localhost';
        port: 8080;
        setSingleThreading;
        responseBlock: [:anHttpRequest |
            1 halt: 'Create a response here, e.g. ...'.
            HTTPResponse notFound];
        start

All you need to do is create more interesting HTTPResponse instances, ones with HTML content for example :-)

Hyper is the HTTP server we've been using all along for our Smalltalk OpenSkills apps. It is a direct descendant of the HTTP server in Swazoo at version 0.9.76. The changes we made over the years have always been published, but have never made it into the "offical" swazoo release, even thought we hoped they would. Of late, we found that people were confused about what HTTP server we were using, often thinking that it was the one in the recently released Swazoo 1.0 - but it never was. By giving Hyper a name, we hope to make it easier for people to find and use the HTTP server that has worked so well for us.

Please say hello to Hyper!