OT: How to embed or call a shell script in an html file?

[joe at actionline.com]

Many thanks to Matt, Keith, George, Jon, Rusty, and Paul for the very
illuminating discussion of the various programming languages that you
each mentioned.

While much of this discussion has been way over-my-head, I have sincerely
appreciated gaining just a little better understanding of some of the
pros and cons of various programming languages that you all discussed
from your respective perspectives.

Because of my very limited abilities and disinclination to invest the
time to try to learn any of those programming languages, I am more than
ever thoroughly persuaded that it will be much better for me to pay
someone to help me build what I want/need.

Since I have some (very limited) abilities with html and shell scripts, I
naturally tend to try to find a way to accomplish whatever I need or want
by using (cloning and modifying) whatever I have that works ... and to
try to keep everything as simple and concise as possible.

In the past, I have tried PHP a bit, but I just got too confused to
continue.

html and shell scripts seem relatively simple, logical, mostly concise,
and fairly straightforward to me. More often than not, I can find very
simple working examples of what I need or want to do. I have never used
one of those website building programs because whenever I look at the
code generated by them, it always seems to me to be a convoluted mess of
needlessly excess code.


Very special thanks to Matt Graham for creating that PHP code example.
While I have not yet been able to get it to work, I have no doubt that it
will work once I understand how to implement it.


Paul last wrote, in part: ... re: bash cgi.

J: I don't know what "bash cgi" is, But I am interested in Paul's comment
that, "it's not inherently problematic especially if you already have
some working code."

Paul then wrote:
> Web servers only display static assets to clients (browsers), that means
> if you're using a LAMP set up a PHP vm running in mod-php actually runs
> the PHP code and then apache serves up the static content to the client.
> A more common architecture has become nginx -> app server -> database
> where the app server is frequently php-fpm for php or unicorn for ruby.

J: Wow! I have no idea what all that means.

> If you really want to use bash you can google 'bash cgi' and
> find plenty of examples then just use bash for your app server.

J: I did Google 'bash cgi' and started reading, but quickly got confused
again. However, I appreciated Paul's comment that, "This is not
necessarily less stable or secure than writing code in
php/ruby/perl/etc."

But then Paul wrote:
> That being said bash would not be a friendly language choice for
> writing a web app in and all the major players allow you to shell
> out to run commands, so you're likely better off letting a more
> established stack/framework handle some details and shelling out
> to any bash code you have written.

J: Again, I'm sorry that I am so lame, but I have no idea what "shell out
to run commands" and the rest of that sentence means.

While I do try to keep learning, just examining finished code that is
actually working and doing something that I want/need to do seems to be
the way I learn best; rather than trying to read and digest volumes of
details about coding techniques, rules, and how and why code is supposed
to work.

Please be patient with me, my good PLUG friends.