A transparent client-server platform for location dependent web based applications

This paper describes a platform designed to allow the development of web-based client-server applications where results should be dependent of the location of the client on a mobile (normally wireless) networking environment. It has been designed to work with the most popular technologies used nowadays which are available in every modern personal computer such as HTTP protocol client-server inter-networking, IEEE 802.11 wireless communications, Bluetooth devices or infrared ports. This system is divided into three user transparent subsystems: the first one obtains the location of the client computer from the hardware installed on it, the second one works as a proxy and embeds this obtained location into the HTTP request generated by the user web browser, and the last one, installed in the HTTP application server controller, extracts the location from the request and offers the programmer a complete object oriented API that allows to code a web pro-ram that will generate a client-location dependent HTTP response. That means the HTTP response to client request is dependent of the location of the client at the moment the request was generated.