Web application questions....

[jman19]

Hey all,

I'm using a software framework for designing language processing applications, and rather than having users have to install all of the necessary jar files (the API is all Java) and what not, I'd like to build a web interface that would allow users to remotely configure and run applications. The framework allows for building software modules, and I would like users to be able to use existing modules as well as upload their own. I've never really had to develop an app in this way before, and I was wondering where to start. TIA!

 

[kamper]

First off, could you explain a little more clearly? I don't really understand what you're trying to do. Maybe a specific use case would help.

If you really want to do this right (from what I'm understanding of it), you might want to look into two things. First, a strict security sand-box which applies to all uploaded code but not necessarily your own. You don't want to give uploaders the ability to open mad sockets or files or whatever else with whatever permissions your server has. Second, classloaders. Ideally, your users could upload code with any package name and as long as it doesn't conflict with your published apis, it will just work. In the situation where two seperate users pick the same package and class name, you don't want to have the wrong class executing in the wrong place. Actually, given that you will be importing code at run time (I assume you're not going to start a new virtual machine with a new classpath every time they upload some code), doing some sort of subclass of URLClassloader will probably be absolutely necessary.