Snap Framework HTTP Server Library 0.1.1
This is the first developer prerelease of the Snap Framework HTTP Server
library. For more information about Snap, read the README.SNAP.md
or visit
the Snap project website at http://www.snapframework.com/.
The Snap HTTP server is a high performance, epoll-enabled, iteratee-based web
server library written in Haskell. Together with the snap-core
library upon
which it depends, it provides a clean and efficient Haskell programming
interface to the HTTP protocol. Higher-level facilities for building web
applications (like user/session management, component interfaces, data
modeling, etc.) are not yet implemented, so this release will mostly be of
interest for those who:
- need a fast and minimal HTTP API at roughly the same level of abstraction
as Java servlets,
or
- are interested in contributing to the Snap Framework project.
Building snap-server
Dependencies
To build the Snap HTTP server, you need to cabal install
the snap-core
library (which should have come with this package).
The snap-server library can optionally use the
libev for high-speed, O(1)
scalable socket event processing.
If you decide to use the libev backend, you will also need to download and
install the darcs head version of the
hlibev library:
$ darcs get --lazy http://code.haskell.org/hlibev/
$ cd hlibev
$ cabal install -O2 (or "cabal install -O2 -p" for profiling support)
It has some new patches that we rely upon.
Building snap-server
The snap-server library is built using Cabal
and Hackage. Just run
cabal install
for the "stock" version of Snap or
cabal install -flibev
for the libev-based backend.
Building the Haddock Documentation
The haddock documentation can be built using the supplied haddock.sh
shell
script:
./haddock.sh
The docs get put in dist/doc/html/
.
Building the testsuite
Snap is still in its very early stages, so most of the "action" (and a big
chunk of the code) right now is centred on the test suite. Snap aims for 100%
test coverage, and we're trying hard to stick to that.
To build the test suite, cd
into the test/
directory and run
$ cabal configure # for the stock backend
$ cabal configure -flibev # for the libev backend
$ cabal build
From here you can invoke the testsuite by running:
$ ./runTestsAndCoverage.sh
The testsuite generates an hpc
test coverage report in test/dist/hpc
.
The test cabal
project also builds an executable called "pongserver" which is
a test HTTP server, hardcoded to run on port 8000:
$ ./dist/build/pongserver/pongserver +RTS -A4M -N4 -qg0 -qb -g1
(Those are the RTS settings that give me the highest performance on my
quad-core Linux box running GHC 6.12.1, your mileage may vary.)
This server just outputs "PONG" but it is a complete example of an HTTP
application (FIXME: currently this isn't true, we need to make pongserver run
in the still-incomplete Snap monad):
$ curl -i http://localhost:8000
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Length: 4
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:17:45 GMT
Server: Snap/0.pre-1
PONG