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I have been considering a documentation tool for building a backend for a web service to be used in multiple clients along with OAuth and possibility of multiple revisions. I already knew about apiary but doing a little research I found other considerably good solutions with lucrative promises.
RAML seems to be promising good code generation and api reusability. But it doesn't seem to be capable of creating a mock server. And I can't understand why apiblueprint can't be used to generate client side libs and server side skeletons for REST API.
The best use case for us will be upon documentation of the api, client iOS/Android/wp/js library for consuming the service can be auto generated along with an node express/restify app which provides skeleton to write code. Along with api tests and load tests.
Which solution out of RAML/Swagger/Apiary fits the best for this?
Please check out Swagger Codegen (free, open-source), which can generate both server stubs and API clients in different languages.
Many companies/projects are using it in production: https://github.com/swagger-api/swagger-codegen#companiesprojects-using-swagger-codegen
Supported langauges/frameworks:
API clients: ActionScript, Bash, C# (.net 2.0, 4.0 or later), C++ (cpprest, Qt5, Tizen), Clojure, Dart, Elixir, Go, Groovy, Haskell, Java (Jersey1.x, Jersey2.x, OkHttp, Retrofit1.x, Retrofit2.x, Feign), Node.js (ES5, ES6, AngularJS with Google Closure Compiler annotations) Objective-C, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Scala, Swift (2.x, 3.x), Typescript (Angular1.x, Angular2.x, Fetch, jQuery, Node)
Server stubs: C# (ASP.NET Core, NancyFx), Erlang, Go, Haskell, Java (MSF4J, Spring, Undertow, JAX-RS: CDI, CXF, Inflector, RestEasy), PHP (Lumen, Slim, Silex, Zend Expressive), Python (Flask), NodeJS, Ruby (Sinatra, Rails5), Scala (Finch, Scalatra)
API documentation generators: HTML, Confluence Wiki
Disclaimer: I'm one of the top contributors to the open-source project.
UPDATE: On May 2018, about 50 top contributors and template creators of Swagger Codegen decided to fork Swagger Codegen to maintain a community-driven version called OpenAPI Generator. Please refer to the Q&A for more information.
Disclaimer: I work for Apiary
I don't think it's a good idea.
Your need for mock server hints at the fact that you've accepted the path of description-before-implementation, which is good.
However, the idea is that once developing against mock server, you iterate on the API design (that is one of the reasons why it makes sense to do it in "text" tools instead of code)...and that is the hard part.
There are some emerging tools that support scaffolding, but the real problem is how to update the scaffolded app after the blueprint has been updated. I know some people are tackling this, but they are not released yet.
In my opinion, the best approach is to develop real prototype against the mocked API to test the UX of the resulting app. Once the design is reasonably stable, you start developing other clients as well as server, eventually extending the original design.
You test them with respective tools found in the respective languages as their are best for given use case. To test that implementation conforms to blueprint (aka written contract), you can use dredd.
Any tool that cooperates on top of that should take blueprint as an input instead of generating the library to extend manually that is impossible to maintain.
RAML does provide an integrated, free, hosted mocking service that you can deploy with a single button click in the API Designer. Once you've enabled mocking, try-it will be immediately enabled in the integrated API Console, and you can further exercise your mocked API using the baseURI inserted into your RAML file.
In addition, we will be open sourcing additional server frameworks (we already have Mule and JAX-RS frameworks) in the near future (including Node). Client generation is a bit further out, but also coming quite soon (javascript first, then others).
Disclosure: I am heavily involved with the RAML initiative, and work for MuleSoft as a Product Manager for many of the RAML tools we develop.
If the RAML console is not lightweight enough, you might find https://github.com/kevinrenskers/raml2html really useful and easy to start with.
It doesn't contain all the features that the RAML console does (like Try out, for testing the API from there), but is still a great documentation tool.
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I am working on a project where we are looking to build a REST API from scratch. So my initial thoughts were to utilise one of the relatively new aysnc non-blocking I/O frameworks.
I've been looking at the Typesafe framework (Scala, Akka, Play).
Is this a good solution for a RESTful API?
Are there any good (up to date) tutorials/examples that people could provide links to?
Also, I came across spray.io. From what I can gather this seems to be a good alternative to using Play if all I want to build is a REASTful API?
Is that true?
Any good tutorials for this?
I would really like to use Akka and its Actors model from the outset.
Separately I read that Typesafe acquired spray.io to integrate it into the Typesafe framework.
Has this been done yet? If I download the latest version of Typesafe do I get spray bundled in with it?
Finally, hosting. What would people suggest for hosting such an API with this type of framework? AWS, Google, Cloud Foundry, Heroku?
The service will ultimately need to be extremely scalable.
Does anyone know of any good links that cover a lot of the above? i.e. deploying a spray based API on Cloud Foundry for example?
Thanks for the help.
Your question is far too broad, prone to opinion-based answers. Anyway, my two cents:
I've been looking at the Typesafe framework (Scala, Akka, Play). Is
this a good solution for a RESTful API?
IMHO, the best current solution if you want to both grow your system and sleep in peace.
Are there any good (up to date) tutorials/examples that people could
provide links to?
Plenty of them, all around. Check the following, for example:
http://akka.io/docs/ (the official Akka documentation, which I find great)
https://typesafe.com/activator/templates (templates for almost anything you would want to learn/do, including Akka, Play, Spray, and many more)
https://www.playframework.com/documentation/2.3.x/Home (official Play documentation, in case you want to use it)
Also, I came across spray.io. From what I can gather this seems to be
a good alternative to using Play if all I want to build is a REASTful
API? Is that true? Any good tutorials for this?
If you are planning to do only a RESTful API, yes, seems like a good way to go. For tutorials, see the official site and the activator templates listed above.
Separately I read that Typesafe acquired spray.io to integrate it into
the Typesafe framework. Has this been done yet? If I download the
latest version of Typesafe do I get spray bundled in with it?
As far as I understand, Akka is implementing its very own http module, based on the work of spray.io team. See here for more details. Play will be eventually built upon the Akka streams and http modules. It's still marked as experimental and the process is still going. You can use spray in your project just adding the dependencies. There's no such thing as "latest version of Typesafe", unless you are speaking about the Typesafe Activator, which is the bundle of tools (including Play and Akka and some nice web interface) provided by Typesafe. Normally, what you need will be downloaded automatically. See the examples for more information.
Finally, hosting. What would people suggest for hosting such an API
with this type of framework? AWS, Google, Cloud Foundry, Heroku?
No idea. Until now I have been using AWS successfully, but since I have not tried other options, I can not give opinion on that.
Does anyone know of any good links that cover a lot of the above? i.e.
deploying a spray based API on Cloud Foundry for example?
For Cloud Foundry specifically, I don't know one.
Hope it helped!
P.S.: your question is too broad. Try in the future to present real concrete problems and your attempts to (unsuccessfully) solve it.
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I've just started learning Scala, and the first thing I'm going to implement is a tiny web application. I've been using Erlang for the last year to implement server-side software, but I've never wrote web applications before. It will be a great experience.
Are there web-frameworks for Scala except for Lift?
Don't get me wrong, Lift looks awesome. I just want to know how many frameworks there are so that I can then choose between them. It's always a good to have a choice, but I the only thing I found was Lift.
I'm very interested in Scala, but I have not used it yet, so with that caveat, the frameworks I am aware of that are not mentioned in HRJ's answer (Lift, Sweet, Slinky) are:
Scalatra, previously Step (on GitHub)
Play 2 (on GitHub)
Pinky
I wrote a blog post about this.
To summarise, some of the options are:
Lift
Sweet
Slinky
I finally found that none were suitable for me, and developed my own little "framework". (It is not open-source yet).
I like Lift ;-)
Play is my second choice for Scala-friendly web frameworks.
Wicket is my third choice.
Following is a dump of frameworks. It doesn't mean I actually used them:
Coeus. A traditional MVC web framework for Scala.
Unfiltered. A toolkit for servicing HTTP requests in Scala.
Uniscala Granite.
Gardel
Mondo
Amore. A Scala port of the Ruby web framework Sinatra
Scales XML. Flexible approach to XML handling and a simplified way of interacting with XML.
Belt. A Rack-like interface for web applications built on top of Scalaz-HTTP
Frank. Web application DSL built on top of Scalaz/Belt
MixedBits. A framework for the Scala progamming language to help build web sites
Circumflex. Unites several self-contained open source projects for application development using the Scala programming language.
Scala Webmachine. Port of Basho's webmachine in Scala, a REST-based system for building web applications
Bowler. A RESTful, multi-channel ready Scala web framework
Try Play Framework, which also support Scala.
One very interesting web framework with commercial deployment is Scalatra, inspired by Ruby's Sinatra. Here's an InfoQ article about it.
I find Unfiltered very interesting https://github.com/unfiltered/unfiltered.
It's mentioned in IttayD's list.
Here is a presentation about it http://unfiltered.lessis.me/#0
and the video http://code.technically.us/post/942531598/doug-tangren-presents-the-unfiltered-toolkit-for
Also here there is an article with more info http://code.technically.us/post/998251172/holding-the-parameter
It must be noted that there is also a considerable interest in Wicket and Scala. Wicket fits Scala suprisingly well. If you want to take advantage of the very mature Wicket project and its ecosystem (extensions) plus the concise syntax and productivity advantage of Scala, this one may be for you!
See also:
Some prosa
Presentation
Some experience with Wicket and Scala
Announcments with reference to the project for the glue code to bind Scala closures to models
Play is pretty sweet.
It is now production ready. It incorporates: a cool template framework,automatic reloading of source files upon safe, a composable action system, akka awesomeness, etc.
Its part of the Typesafe Stack.
Having used it for two projects, I can say that it works pretty smoothly and it should be something to consider next time you are looking to learn new web frameworks.
I tend to use JAX-RS using Jersey (you can write nice resource beans in Scala, Java or Groovy) to write RESTul web applications. Then I use Scalate for the rendering the views using one of the various template languages (JADE, Scaml, Ssp (Scala Server Pages), Mustache, etc.).
There's a new web framework, called Scala Web Pages. From the site:
Target Audience
The Scala Pages web framework is likely to appeal to web programmers who come from a Java background and want to program web applications in Scala. The emphasis is on OOP rather than functional programming.
Characteristics And Features
Adheres to model-view-controller paradigm
Text-based template engine
Simple syntax: $variable and <?scp-instruction?>
Encoding/content detection, able to handle international text encodings
Snippets instead of custom tags
URL Rewriting
Prikrutil, I think we're on the same boat. I also come to Scala from Erlang. I like Nitrogen a lot so I decided to created a Scala web framework inspired by it.
Take a look at Xitrum. Its doc is quite extensive. From README:
Xitrum is an async and clustered Scala web framework and web server on top of Netty and Hazelcast:
It fills the gap between Scalatra and Lift: more powerful than Scalatra and easier to use than Lift. You can easily create both RESTful APIs and postbacks. Xitrum is controller-first like Scalatra, not view-first like Lift.
Annotation is used for URL routes, in the spirit of JAX-RS. You don't have to declare all routes in a single place.
Typesafe, in the spirit of Scala.
Async, in the spirit of Netty.
Sessions can be stored in cookies or clustered Hazelcast.
jQuery Validation is integrated for browser side and server side validation.
i18n using GNU gettext, which means unlike most other solutions, both singular and plural forms are supported.
Conditional GET using ETag.
Hazelcast also gives:
In-process and clustered cache, you don't need separate cache servers.
In-process and clustered Comet, you can scale Comet to multiple web servers.
Follow the tutorial for a quick start.
There's also Pinky, which used to be on bitbucket but got transfered to github.
By the way, github is a great place to search for Scala projects, as there's a lot being put there.
I'd like to add my own efforts to this list. You can find out more information here:
brzy framework
It's in early development and I'm still working on it aggressively. It includes features like:
A focus on simplicity and extensibility.
Integrated build tool.
Modular design; some initial modules includes support for scalate, email, jms, jpa, squeryl, cassandra, cron services and more.
Simple RESTful controllers and actions.
Any and all feedback is much appreciated.
UPDATE: 2011-09-078, I just posted a major update to version 0.9.1. There's more info at http://brzy.org which includes a screencast.
Both Sweet and Slinky seem to be unmaintanted for about a year. Sweet Maven repo sweetsoftwaredesign.com is dead so there's even no way to download dependencies.
Note: Spiffy is outdated.
<plug>
Spiffy:
is written in Scala
uses the fantastic Akka library and actors to scale
uses servlet API 3.0 for asynchronous request handling
is modular (replacing components is straight forward)
uses DSLs to cut down on code where you don't want it
supports Scalate and Freemarker for templating
Spiffy is a web framework using Scala, Akka (a Scala actor implementation), and the Java Servlet 3.0 API. It makes use of the the async interface and aims to provide a massively parallel and scalable environment for web applications. Spiffy's various components are all based on the idea that they need to be independent minimalistic modules that do small amounts of work very quickly and hand off the request to the next component in the pipeline. After the last component is done processing the request it signals the servlet container by "completing" the request and sending it back to the client.
https://github.com/mardambey/spiffy
</plug>
You could also try Context. It was designed to be a Java-framework but I have successfully used it with Scala also without difficulties. It is a component based framework and has similar properties as Lift or Tapestry.
I have stumbled upon your question a few weeks back, but since then also learned about Circumflex. This is a nice, minimal framework that is therefore easy to learn, and it has pretty good documentation available as well.
Beside it's minimal-ness, it also claims to work well with other libraries and lets you use your own implementation of things when you need it.
I am looking into something lightweight, that, at a minimum should support the following features:
Support for easy definition of actions through metadata
Wrapper that extracts parameters from request into clojure map, or as function parameters
Support for multiple forms of authentication (basic, form, cookie)
basic authorization based of api method metadata
session object wrapped in clojure map
live coding from REPL (no need to restart server)
automatic serialization of return value to json and xml
have nice (pluggable) url parameter handling (eg /action/par1/par2 instead of /action?par1=val1&par2=val2)
I know it is relatively easy to roll my own micro-framework for each one of these options, but why reinvent the wheel if something like that already exists? Especially if it is:
Active project with rising number of contributors/users
Have at least basic documentation and tutorial online.
First of all, I think that you are unlikely to find a single shrinkwrapped solution to do all this in Clojure (except in the form of a Java library to be used through interop). What is becoming Clojure's standard Web stack comprises a number of libraries which people mix and match in all sorts of ways (since they happily tend to be perfectly compatible).1
Here's a list of some building blocks which you might find useful:
Ring -- Clojure's basic HTTP request handling library; all the other webby libraries (for writing routes &c.) that I know of are compatible with Ring. Ring is being actively developed, has a robust community, is very well-written and has a nice SPEC document detailing its design philosophy. This blog post provides a nice example of how it might be used (reacting to GitHub commits).
Sandbar -- currently an authentication library, more types of functionality planned; under development.
Compojure -- a mature and robust library which provides a nice DSL for writing routes to be used on top of Ring. This will give you the nice URL parameter handling.
Compojure-rest -- "a library for building RESTful applications on top of Compojure". Compojure-rest is, as far as I can tell, in its early stages of development; perhaps you might see this as an opportunity to influence its design. :-)
For dealing with XML, there's clojure.contrib.lazy-xml (and the helper library clojure.contrib.zip-filter.xml) and Enlive (the built-in clojure.xml namespace is currently not very usable); these would be used in tandem (though for your purposes the former might suffice).
For JSON, there a library in contrib and clojure-json (and I think there was at least one other lib I seem to be forgetting now...); pick the one you like best.
All of will be perfectly happy with a REPL-driven development style (see the accepted answer to this SO question for a Ring trick which is very much to the purpose here). I suppose the above collection of links does leave a few blind spots (in particular, the authentication story is still being ironed out, as far as I can tell), but hopefully it's a good start.
1The only single-package solution for building webapps in Clojure that I know of is Conjure, inspired by Rails; unfortunately I have to admit that I don't know much about it, so if you feel interested, follow the link and look around the sources, wiki &c.
While building my first Clojure rest service I found myself asking often the same question. The Clojure Toolbox helped me a lot: http://www.clojure-toolbox.com/
If you are looking for some sample, real-world, illustrative code to get you started, then you could study this clojure-news-feed on github project which demonstrates how to implement a non-trivial RESTful web service with compojure/ring that wraps both SQL (postgresql or mysql) and NoSQL (cassandra), search (solr), caching (redis), event logging (kafka), connection pooling (c3po), and real-time metrics via JMX.
This blog about Building a Scalable News Feed Web Service in Clojure provides a good introduction. I ran some load tests against this service on a humble AWS deployment and got about eighty transactions per second with less than a half second average latency per transaction.
Take a look at liberator library http://clojure-liberator.github.io/liberator/ It's noy a standalone solution, buy very good for rest service definition.
Just to provide an updated answer to this old question, currently (in 2018) I think Luminus provides an excellent starting point. It's using many of the libraries (ring, compojure, etc.) mentioned in previous answers, is modular and as close to "single package" as you can get with Clojure. Specifically for REST, take a look at compojure-api. Luminus recommends buddy for authentication, I've had good success using it both for traditional session-based auth as well as Oauth and stateless JWTs.
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I've just started learning Scala, and the first thing I'm going to implement is a tiny web application. I've been using Erlang for the last year to implement server-side software, but I've never wrote web applications before. It will be a great experience.
Are there web-frameworks for Scala except for Lift?
Don't get me wrong, Lift looks awesome. I just want to know how many frameworks there are so that I can then choose between them. It's always a good to have a choice, but I the only thing I found was Lift.
I'm very interested in Scala, but I have not used it yet, so with that caveat, the frameworks I am aware of that are not mentioned in HRJ's answer (Lift, Sweet, Slinky) are:
Scalatra, previously Step (on GitHub)
Play 2 (on GitHub)
Pinky
I wrote a blog post about this.
To summarise, some of the options are:
Lift
Sweet
Slinky
I finally found that none were suitable for me, and developed my own little "framework". (It is not open-source yet).
I like Lift ;-)
Play is my second choice for Scala-friendly web frameworks.
Wicket is my third choice.
Following is a dump of frameworks. It doesn't mean I actually used them:
Coeus. A traditional MVC web framework for Scala.
Unfiltered. A toolkit for servicing HTTP requests in Scala.
Uniscala Granite.
Gardel
Mondo
Amore. A Scala port of the Ruby web framework Sinatra
Scales XML. Flexible approach to XML handling and a simplified way of interacting with XML.
Belt. A Rack-like interface for web applications built on top of Scalaz-HTTP
Frank. Web application DSL built on top of Scalaz/Belt
MixedBits. A framework for the Scala progamming language to help build web sites
Circumflex. Unites several self-contained open source projects for application development using the Scala programming language.
Scala Webmachine. Port of Basho's webmachine in Scala, a REST-based system for building web applications
Bowler. A RESTful, multi-channel ready Scala web framework
Try Play Framework, which also support Scala.
One very interesting web framework with commercial deployment is Scalatra, inspired by Ruby's Sinatra. Here's an InfoQ article about it.
I find Unfiltered very interesting https://github.com/unfiltered/unfiltered.
It's mentioned in IttayD's list.
Here is a presentation about it http://unfiltered.lessis.me/#0
and the video http://code.technically.us/post/942531598/doug-tangren-presents-the-unfiltered-toolkit-for
Also here there is an article with more info http://code.technically.us/post/998251172/holding-the-parameter
It must be noted that there is also a considerable interest in Wicket and Scala. Wicket fits Scala suprisingly well. If you want to take advantage of the very mature Wicket project and its ecosystem (extensions) plus the concise syntax and productivity advantage of Scala, this one may be for you!
See also:
Some prosa
Presentation
Some experience with Wicket and Scala
Announcments with reference to the project for the glue code to bind Scala closures to models
Play is pretty sweet.
It is now production ready. It incorporates: a cool template framework,automatic reloading of source files upon safe, a composable action system, akka awesomeness, etc.
Its part of the Typesafe Stack.
Having used it for two projects, I can say that it works pretty smoothly and it should be something to consider next time you are looking to learn new web frameworks.
I tend to use JAX-RS using Jersey (you can write nice resource beans in Scala, Java or Groovy) to write RESTul web applications. Then I use Scalate for the rendering the views using one of the various template languages (JADE, Scaml, Ssp (Scala Server Pages), Mustache, etc.).
There's a new web framework, called Scala Web Pages. From the site:
Target Audience
The Scala Pages web framework is likely to appeal to web programmers who come from a Java background and want to program web applications in Scala. The emphasis is on OOP rather than functional programming.
Characteristics And Features
Adheres to model-view-controller paradigm
Text-based template engine
Simple syntax: $variable and <?scp-instruction?>
Encoding/content detection, able to handle international text encodings
Snippets instead of custom tags
URL Rewriting
Prikrutil, I think we're on the same boat. I also come to Scala from Erlang. I like Nitrogen a lot so I decided to created a Scala web framework inspired by it.
Take a look at Xitrum. Its doc is quite extensive. From README:
Xitrum is an async and clustered Scala web framework and web server on top of Netty and Hazelcast:
It fills the gap between Scalatra and Lift: more powerful than Scalatra and easier to use than Lift. You can easily create both RESTful APIs and postbacks. Xitrum is controller-first like Scalatra, not view-first like Lift.
Annotation is used for URL routes, in the spirit of JAX-RS. You don't have to declare all routes in a single place.
Typesafe, in the spirit of Scala.
Async, in the spirit of Netty.
Sessions can be stored in cookies or clustered Hazelcast.
jQuery Validation is integrated for browser side and server side validation.
i18n using GNU gettext, which means unlike most other solutions, both singular and plural forms are supported.
Conditional GET using ETag.
Hazelcast also gives:
In-process and clustered cache, you don't need separate cache servers.
In-process and clustered Comet, you can scale Comet to multiple web servers.
Follow the tutorial for a quick start.
There's also Pinky, which used to be on bitbucket but got transfered to github.
By the way, github is a great place to search for Scala projects, as there's a lot being put there.
I'd like to add my own efforts to this list. You can find out more information here:
brzy framework
It's in early development and I'm still working on it aggressively. It includes features like:
A focus on simplicity and extensibility.
Integrated build tool.
Modular design; some initial modules includes support for scalate, email, jms, jpa, squeryl, cassandra, cron services and more.
Simple RESTful controllers and actions.
Any and all feedback is much appreciated.
UPDATE: 2011-09-078, I just posted a major update to version 0.9.1. There's more info at http://brzy.org which includes a screencast.
Both Sweet and Slinky seem to be unmaintanted for about a year. Sweet Maven repo sweetsoftwaredesign.com is dead so there's even no way to download dependencies.
Note: Spiffy is outdated.
<plug>
Spiffy:
is written in Scala
uses the fantastic Akka library and actors to scale
uses servlet API 3.0 for asynchronous request handling
is modular (replacing components is straight forward)
uses DSLs to cut down on code where you don't want it
supports Scalate and Freemarker for templating
Spiffy is a web framework using Scala, Akka (a Scala actor implementation), and the Java Servlet 3.0 API. It makes use of the the async interface and aims to provide a massively parallel and scalable environment for web applications. Spiffy's various components are all based on the idea that they need to be independent minimalistic modules that do small amounts of work very quickly and hand off the request to the next component in the pipeline. After the last component is done processing the request it signals the servlet container by "completing" the request and sending it back to the client.
https://github.com/mardambey/spiffy
</plug>
You could also try Context. It was designed to be a Java-framework but I have successfully used it with Scala also without difficulties. It is a component based framework and has similar properties as Lift or Tapestry.
I have stumbled upon your question a few weeks back, but since then also learned about Circumflex. This is a nice, minimal framework that is therefore easy to learn, and it has pretty good documentation available as well.
Beside it's minimal-ness, it also claims to work well with other libraries and lets you use your own implementation of things when you need it.
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What are the popular (ok, popular is relative) web frameworks for the various flavours of LISP?
PLT Scheme features a built-in, continuation-based web server.
Update: PLT Scheme is now called Racket.
Hunchentoot is also quite widespread
What is Weblocks?
Weblocks is a continuations-based web framework written in Common Lisp.
http://common-lisp.net/project/cl-weblocks/
Most (perhaps all) of the well-known Common Lisp web frameworks have already been mentioned, so I'll just add some comments.
Hunchentoot is not a "web framework" in the sense that most people mean. It's an HTTP server (an extremely good one).
Drew Crampsie's "Lisp on Lines" looks extremely promising, but I'm not sure how far along it is. I've been waiting to hear an announcement.
Marco Baringer's UnCommon Web runs on many of the prominent CL implementions: Allegro CL, CMUCL, Clozure CL (formerly known as OpenMCL), GNU clisp, and SBCL. The only major one missing is LispWorks; I don't know if that means it hasn't been tested to work, or is known not to work, or what; but if it runs on all those other dialects, it's probably easy to make it run on any other.
For Clojure you can try Compojure.
Common Lisp
A lot of the usual suspects (Hunchentoot, UCW, LoL) have already been mentioned.
Franz makes available for Allegro Common Lisp (and ported to other Lisps):
at a lower level (handling HTTP requests yourself), AllegroServe.
at a higher level (more of a "framework"), WebActions.
Both are open source. I tend to use AllegroServe, factoring out utilities as I need them, but some people really like WebActions.
I used Araneida for quite some time, and I prefer its style to AllegroServe, but it hasn't been maintained since 2006.
I've searched quite extensively for a good web framework for Lisp, and I found them all to be somewhat inaccessible. The Architecture of UCW didn't seem very natural to me (I can't remember why; it's been a while since I looked into it), and KPAX isn't maintained anymore (I think).
Symbolic web looks very interesting, and I think Weblocks is the most interesting, but Weblocks isn't very well documented and can be pretty intimidating to the newcomer. SymbolicWeb was immature last time I looked, but it may have grow up some since then. The features page looks pretty good today.
There are different approaches you could take. If you want a purely lisp approach, then you could:
If you can read code proficiently and understand continuations, you might try Weblocks with a Hunchentoot backend (Weblocks has a dependency on Hunchentoot that hasn't been abstracted yet). There is supposed to be a real user manual out in a month or two, but as with any OSS project, such commitments are sketchy.
Similarly, you might try SymbolicWeb. [update: nevermind, the project is no more]
roll your own. Seriously - there's cl-who to help with HTML generation, there are javascript and json libraries available, usockets, elephant, cl-sql, hunchentoot, aserve, and lots of utility libraries that you could bake together.
If you are ok with a hybrid approach, this is something I'm experimenting with at the moment: I've written a Lisp JSON-RPC backend for Qooxdoo, so I can serve up pure javascript frontends through a superfast http server like Cherokee and let Cherokee farm out connections to as many backend json-rpc servers running in Lisp as I want. Very, very scalable. I'm far from figuring out the kinks and challenges, but it was pretty straight-forward to get working. the json library makes it stupid simple to get the backend working - Qooxdoo itself is actually harder, I think (but I'm not a JS developer, really).
I'm also going to be checking out WebActions from allegro, because there's a certain allure to the availability of paid support - not to mention that Allegro may be the best CL implementation available (His Kennyness uses it :-)).
UnCommonWeb (UCW) is often mentioned http://www.common-lisp.net/project/ucw/ -- it's not REST as is in en-vogue at the moment, more like Smalltalk's SeaSide (but then again, SeaSide is quite en-vogue).
LeftParen
Lisp-on-lines is a web application framework built on top of CLSQL and UCW and provides an application development model similar in many ways to Ruby on Rails. Right now it can be found at http://versions.tech.coop/lisp-on-lines/.
http://www.cliki.net/lisp-on-lines
http://kevin.casa.cavewallarts.com/LISP/LOL/lol.html
For Clojure you can try Webjure.
I just discovered a web framework called Clack for common lisp and found it quite easy to get started.
See http://clacklisp.org/
Quote from it's web site
"Clack is a web application environment for Common Lisp inspired by Python's WSGI and Ruby's Rack."
and caveman is a micro web framework based on Clack.
Another cool (yet far from "popular") thing to look at is SymbolicWeb -- http://groups.google.com/group/symbolicweb
Re: SymbolicWeb (and its exaggerated demise)
SymbolicWeb project page at Gitorious and SymbolicWeb article at Wikipedia. The Google Groups page is definitely dead (and unarchived?,) but the Gitorious tree shows checkins as recently as 29 April 2010. The project page also refers to "some running examples" being "occasionally available" at nostdal.org (which is unreachable as I write this, reinforcing the "occasionally" qualifier :-) .)
(Note: I'm not a SymbolicWeb user. I just tracked down the SymbolicWeb links while reading this thread.)
Restas is another web framework that has seen recent updates:
http://restas.lisper.ru/en/
Its overview
RESTAS is a Common Lisp web application framework. Its key features are:
RESTAS was developed to simplify development of web applications following the REST architectural style.
RESTAS is based on the Hunchentoot HTTP server. Web application development with RESTAS is in many ways simpler than with Hunchentoot, but some knowledge of Hunchentoot is required, at least about working with hunchentoot:*request* and hunchentoot:*reply*.
Request dispatch is based on a route system. The route system is the key concept of RESTAS and provides unique features not found in other web frameworks.
The other key RESTAS concept is its module system, which provides a simple and flexible mechanism for modularized code reuse.
Interactive development support. Any RESTAS code (such as the definition of a route, a module or a submodule) can be recompiled at any time when you work in SLIME and any changes you made can be immediately seen in the browser. No web server restart or other complicated actions are needed.
SLIME integration. The inner structure of a web application can be investigated with the standard "SLIME Inspector." For example, there is a "site map" and a simple code navigation with this map.
Easy to use, pure Lisp web application daemonization facility based on RESTAS and SBCL in Linux without the use of Screen or detachtty.
RESTAS is not an MVC framework, although it is not incompatible with the concept. From the MVC point of view, RESTAS provides the controller level. Nevertheless, RESTAS provides an effective and flexible way for separation of logic and representation, because it does not put any constraints on the structure of applications. Separation of model and controller can be effectively performed with Common Lisp facilities, and, hence, doesn't need any special support from the framework.
RESTAS does not come with a templating library. cl-closure-template and HTML-TEMPLATE are two good templating libraries that can be used with RESTAS.
This question is a bit old but I thought I'd share my recent discovery: the Hop language which is based on Scheme and is quite complete.
HOP is a multi-tier programming language for the Web 2.0 and the so-called diffuse Web. It is designed for programming interactive web applications in many fields such as multimedia (web galleries, music players, ...), ubiquitous and house automation (SmartPhones, personal appliance), mashups, office (web agendas, mail clients, ...), etc.
HOP features:
an extensive set of widgets for programming fancy and portable Web GUIs,
full compatibility with traditional Web technologies (JavaScript, HTML, CSS),
HTML5 support, a versatile Web server supporting HTTP/1.0 and HTTP/1.1,
a native multimedia support for enabling ubiquitous Web multimedia applications,
fast WebDAV level 1 support,
an optimizing native code compiler for server code,
an on-the-fly JavaScript compiler for client code,
an extensive set of libraries for the mail, calendars, databases, Telephony, ...