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Serving WAP Pages?

Posted by Cliff on from the serving-content-for-small-devices dept.

kfs27 asks: "One of my professor with some of his Java students would like to get into handheld devices and WAP interfaces. They want to first start with building pages which can be viewed on a WAP enabled device. How does one go about serving these pages. Is there a specific WAP webserver or are there modules to Apache? What are the choices and any other suggestions you may have regarding WAP programming."

3 of 16 comments (clear)

  1. Try Cocoon by Roullian · · Score: 5, Informative

    Cocoon is a project from the Apache Software Foundation (xml.apache.org), which, amongst many other things, let you create WML pages.

  2. MIME Types and HTTP issues by Kelson · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you have a recent version of Apache, you might already have these in your mime.types file. If you intend to serve any static content, you'll need at least these mappings:

    application/vnd.wap.wmlc wmlc
    application/vnd.wap.wmlscriptc wmlsc
    image/vnd.wap.wbmp wbmp
    text/vnd.wap.wml wml
    text/vnd.wap.wmlscript wmls

    WAP sites are generally regular HTTP servers. The end-user's device contacts a gateway which then makes an HTTP request, compiles the data if it hasn't been already, and sends the compacted version on to the device.

    So it is actually possible to serve static WAP content using nothing more than the base Apache distribution and some added MIME types.

  3. The Perl Journal had an article... by friscolr · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Spring 2001 issue of the Perl Journal had an article about developing wireless applications-
    http://www.samag.com/documents/s=1131/sam05040004/
    which outlines useful perl modules, how to configure apache to play well with wml, and sample code for wireless appilcations.

    --

    -f
    www.blackant.net