The request processor is a set of Tcl utilities that manage HTTP connections to an OpenACS website. It provides a variety of services:

• If an HTTP request attempts to access an object mounted to the site map (most frequently a package instance), the request processor checks that the user has the read privilege on the object before processing the request. If the request is to the admin subdirectory of the package, the user is required to have the admin privilege on the site node object.

• HTTP requests of the form http://yourdomain.com/site-map-path/* are mapped to the physical path [acs_package_root_dir]/site-map-path/www/*. This guarantees that files stored in the package's tcl, lib, and sql directories are not accessible through an HTTP request.

• HTTP requests of the form http://yourdomain.com/resources/package-key are not subjected to any processing whatsoever. This makes it possible to access package graphics (arrows, buttons, etc) without permissions checking or other overhead.

• The request processor sets up the ad_conn datastructure, which extends the ns_conn structure built for every HTTP request by AOLserver with information useful to OpenACS package implementations (see your AOLserver documentation for information on the ns_conn structure).