Plato: A Compiler for Interactive Web Forms

Modern web forms interact with the user in real-time by detecting errors and filling-in implied values, which in terms of automated reasoning amounts to SAT solving and theorem proving. This paper presents PLATO, a compiler that automatically generates web forms that detect errors and fill-in implied values from declarative web form descriptions. Instead of writing HTML and JavaScript directly, web developers write an ontology in classical logic that describes the relationships between web form fields, and PLATO automatically generates HTML to display the form and browser scripts to implement the requisite SAT solving and theorem proving. We discuss PLATO’s design and implementation and evaluate PLATO’s performance both analytically and empirically.