Netscape Server Application Programming Interface
The Netscape Server Application Programming Interface (NSAPI) is an
History
NSAPI was initially developed by
Because there is no formal standard, applications that use NSAPI are not necessarily portable across server software. As of 2007, varying degrees of support for NSAPI are found in
NSAPI plug-ins
Applications that use NSAPI are referred to as NSAPI plug-ins. Each plug-in implements one or more Server Application Functions (SAFs).
To use a SAF, an administrator must first configure the server to load the plug-in that implements that SAF. This is typically controlled by a configuration file named magnus.conf. Once the plug-in is loaded, the administrator can configure when the server should invoke the SAF and what parameters it should be passed. This is typically controlled by a configuration file named obj.conf.
NSAPI can be compared to an earlier protocol named
In contrast to CGI programs, NSAPI SAFs can be configured to run at different stages of request processing. For example, while processing a single HTTP request, different NSAPI SAFs can be used to authenticate and authorize the remote user, map the requested URI to a local file system path, generate the web page, and log the request.
After Netscape introduced NSAPI,
See also
- NPAPI (Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface)