process per web page

I've got a program that uses standard in and standard
out and I'd like to give the program a web front end.
Inputs are just the single digits 1 to 4 and would
correspond to four buttons. Output is just one or two
lines of text that change based on which sequence of
buttons was pushed.

Is there a way to start an instance of the program
for each open web page?

Is there a way to tie stdin and stdout of the program
to a web front end?

thanks
Bob

Bob Smith wrote:

I've got a program that uses standard in and standard
out and I'd like to give the program a web front end.
Inputs are just the single digits 1 to 4 and would
correspond to four buttons. Output is just one or two
lines of text that change based on which sequence of
buttons was pushed.

Is there a way to start an instance of the program
for each open web page?

Is there a way to tie stdin and stdout of the program
to a web front end?

Well ... I suppose its possible. You'd need a server side process though,
not any of the technologies generally grouped under the DHTML buzzword.

You'd need to spawn a new instance of the application when the user came to
the first page - and track which instance was associated with which user.
You'd need some way of attached and detaching from that instance (since
each HTTP request would be tied to a different run of the program that
passes messages between the HTTP server and the software package). Then
you'd need some way of entering and reading back the data from the program
(Expect perhaps?)

--
David Dorward <http://blog.dorward.me.uk/> <http://dorward.me.uk/>
Home is where the ~/.bashrc is

Bob Smith wrote:
Is there a way to start an instance of the program
for each open web page?

Is there a way to tie stdin and stdout of the program
to a web front end?

David Dorward wrote:

Well ... I suppose its possible. You'd need a server side process though,
not any of the technologies generally grouped under the DHTML buzzword.

You'd need to spawn a new instance of the application when the user came to
the first page - and track which instance was associated with which user.
You'd need some way of attached and detaching from that instance (since
each HTTP request would be tied to a different run of the program that
passes messages between the HTTP server and the software package). Then
you'd need some way of entering and reading back the data from the program
(Expect perhaps?)

Thanks, David. Yeah, I was thinking of using PHP and a
call to session_start() to get a unique instance of the
program.

thanks
Bob Smith