= Rack, a modular Ruby webserver interface {<img src="https://secure.travis-ci.org/rack/rack.svg" alt="Build Status" />}[http://travis-ci.org/rack/rack] {<img src="https://gemnasium.com/rack/rack.svg" alt="Dependency Status" />}[https://gemnasium.com/rack/rack]

Rack provides a minimal, modular and adaptable interface for developing
web applications in Ruby.  By wrapping HTTP requests and responses in
the simplest way possible, it unifies and distills the API for web
servers, web frameworks, and software in between (the so-called
middleware) into a single method call.

The exact details of this are described in the Rack specification,
which all Rack applications should conform to.

== Supported web servers

The included *handlers* connect all kinds of web servers to Rack:
* Mongrel
* EventedMongrel
* SwiftipliedMongrel
* WEBrick
* FCGI
* CGI
* SCGI
* LiteSpeed
* Thin

These web servers include Rack handlers in their distributions:
* Ebb
* Fuzed
* Glassfish v3
* Phusion Passenger (which is mod_rack for Apache and for nginx)
* Puma
* Rainbows!
* Reel
* Unicorn
* unixrack
* uWSGI
* yahns
* Zbatery

Any valid Rack app will run the same on all these handlers, without
changing anything.

== Supported web frameworks

These frameworks include Rack adapters in their distributions:
* Camping
* Coset
* Espresso
* Halcyon
* Mack
* Maveric
* Merb
* Racktools::SimpleApplication
* Ramaze
* Ruby on Rails
* Rum
* Sinatra
* Sin
* Vintage
* Waves
* Wee
* ... and many others.

== Available middleware

Between the server and the framework, Rack can be customized to your
applications needs using middleware, for example:
* Rack::URLMap, to route to multiple applications inside the same process.
* Rack::CommonLogger, for creating Apache-style logfiles.
* Rack::ShowException, for catching unhandled exceptions and
  presenting them in a nice and helpful way with clickable backtrace.
* Rack::File, for serving static files.
* ...many others!

All these components use the same interface, which is described in
detail in the Rack specification.  These optional components can be
used in any way you wish.

== Convenience

If you want to develop outside of existing frameworks, implement your
own ones, or develop middleware, Rack provides many helpers to create
Rack applications quickly and without doing the same web stuff all
over:
* Rack::Request, which also provides query string parsing and
  multipart handling.
* Rack::Response, for convenient generation of HTTP replies and
  cookie handling.
* Rack::MockRequest and Rack::MockResponse for efficient and quick
  testing of Rack application without real HTTP round-trips.

== rack-contrib

The plethora of useful middleware created the need for a project that
collects fresh Rack middleware.  rack-contrib includes a variety of
add-on components for Rack and it is easy to contribute new modules.

* https://github.com/rack/rack-contrib

== rackup

rackup is a useful tool for running Rack applications, which uses the
Rack::Builder DSL to configure middleware and build up applications
easily.

rackup automatically figures out the environment it is run in, and
runs your application as FastCGI, CGI, or standalone with Mongrel or
WEBrick---all from the same configuration.

== Quick start

Try the lobster!

Either with the embedded WEBrick starter:

    ruby -Ilib lib/rack/lobster.rb

Or with rackup:

    bin/rackup -Ilib example/lobster.ru

By default, the lobster is found at http://localhost:9292.

== Installing with RubyGems

A Gem of Rack is available at rubygems.org.  You can install it with:

    gem install rack

I also provide a local mirror of the gems (and development snapshots)
at my site:

    gem install rack --source http://chneukirchen.org/releases/gems/

== Running the tests

Testing Rack requires the bacon testing framework:

    bundle install --without extra # to be able to run the fast tests

Or:

    bundle install # this assumes that you have installed native extensions!

There are two rake-based test tasks:

    rake test       tests all the fast tests (no Handlers or Adapters)
    rake fulltest   runs all the tests

The fast testsuite has no dependencies outside of the core Ruby
installation and bacon.

To run the test suite completely, you need:

  * fcgi
  * memcache-client
  * mongrel
  * thin

The full set of tests test FCGI access with lighttpd (on port
9203) so you will need lighttpd installed as well as the FCGI
libraries and the fcgi gem:

Download and install lighttpd:

    http://www.lighttpd.net/download

Installing the FCGI libraries:

    curl -O http://www.fastcgi.com/dist/fcgi-2.4.0.tar.gz
    tar xzvf fcgi-2.4.0.tar.gz
    cd fcgi-2.4.0
    ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
    make
    sudo make install
    cd ..

Installing the Ruby fcgi gem:

    gem install fcgi

Furthermore, to test Memcache sessions, you need memcached (will be
run on port 11211) and memcache-client installed.

== Configuration

Several parameters can be modified on Rack::Utils to configure Rack behaviour.

e.g:

    Rack::Utils.key_space_limit = 128

=== key_space_limit

The default number of bytes to allow a single parameter key to take up.
This helps prevent a rogue client from flooding a Request.

Default to 65536 characters (4 kiB in worst case).

=== multipart_part_limit

The maximum number of parts a request can contain.
Accepting too many part can lead to the server running out of file handles.

The default is 128, which means that a single request can't upload more than 128 files at once.

Set to 0 for no limit.

Can also be set via the RACK_MULTIPART_PART_LIMIT environment variable.

== History

See <https://github.com/rack/HISTORY.md>.

== Contact

Please post bugs, suggestions and patches to
the bug tracker at <https://github.com/rack/rack/issues>.

Please post security related bugs and suggestions to the core team at
<https://groups.google.com/group/rack-core> or rack-core@googlegroups.com. This
list is not public. Due to wide usage of the library, it is strongly preferred
that we manage timing in order to provide viable patches at the time of
disclosure. Your assistance in this matter is greatly appreciated.

Mailing list archives are available at
<https://groups.google.com/group/rack-devel>.

Git repository (send Git patches to the mailing list):
* https://github.com/rack/rack
* http://git.vuxu.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=rack-github.git

You are also welcome to join the #rack channel on irc.freenode.net.

== Thanks

The Rack Core Team, consisting of

* Christian Neukirchen (chneukirchen)
* James Tucker (raggi)
* Josh Peek (josh)
* José Valim (josevalim)
* Michael Fellinger (manveru)
* Aaron Patterson (tenderlove)
* Santiago Pastorino (spastorino)
* Konstantin Haase (rkh)

and the Rack Alumnis

* Ryan Tomayko (rtomayko)
* Scytrin dai Kinthra (scytrin)

would like to thank:

* Adrian Madrid, for the LiteSpeed handler.
* Christoffer Sawicki, for the first Rails adapter and Rack::Deflater.
* Tim Fletcher, for the HTTP authentication code.
* Luc Heinrich for the Cookie sessions, the static file handler and bugfixes.
* Armin Ronacher, for the logo and racktools.
* Alex Beregszaszi, Alexander Kahn, Anil Wadghule, Aredridel, Ben
  Alpert, Dan Kubb, Daniel Roethlisberger, Matt Todd, Tom Robinson,
  Phil Hagelberg, S. Brent Faulkner, Bosko Milekic, Daniel Rodríguez
  Troitiño, Genki Takiuchi, Geoffrey Grosenbach, Julien Sanchez, Kamal
  Fariz Mahyuddin, Masayoshi Takahashi, Patrick Aljordm, Mig, Kazuhiro
  Nishiyama, Jon Bardin, Konstantin Haase, Larry Siden, Matias
  Korhonen, Sam Ruby, Simon Chiang, Tim Connor, Timur Batyrshin, and
  Zach Brock for bug fixing and other improvements.
* Eric Wong, Hongli Lai, Jeremy Kemper for their continuous support
  and API improvements.
* Yehuda Katz and Carl Lerche for refactoring rackup.
* Brian Candler, for Rack::ContentType.
* Graham Batty, for improved handler loading.
* Stephen Bannasch, for bug reports and documentation.
* Gary Wright, for proposing a better Rack::Response interface.
* Jonathan Buch, for improvements regarding Rack::Response.
* Armin Röhrl, for tracking down bugs in the Cookie generator.
* Alexander Kellett for testing the Gem and reviewing the announcement.
* Marcus Rückert, for help with configuring and debugging lighttpd.
* The WSGI team for the well-done and documented work they've done and
  Rack builds up on.
* All bug reporters and patch contributors not mentioned above.

== Copyright

Copyright (C) 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Christian Neukirchen <http://purl.org/net/chneukirchen>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to
deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the
rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or
sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL
THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER
IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN
CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

== Links

Rack:: <http://rack.github.io/>
Official Rack repositories:: <https://github.com/rack>
Rack Bug Tracking:: <https://github.com/rack/rack/issues>
rack-devel mailing list:: <https://groups.google.com/group/rack-devel>
Rack's Rubyforge project:: <http://rubyforge.org/projects/rack>

Christian Neukirchen:: <http://chneukirchen.org/>