Rack: A Case Study in Design

Explores the nature of HTTP1 requests and how it relates the design and implementation of Rack in ruby. Concludes with a discussion on the future of, and successors to, rack.

1. rack A case study in design Michael Cordell
2. Why? Rack underpins the lion-share of successful ruby web frameworks Understanding the implementation and API is crucial to better framework utilization Excellent case study of design
3. Overview History and Web Requests Design Implementation and usage Future
4. Web request Overview ɂ Ȑ
5. ɂ Ȑ
6. ɂ Ȑ http://www.geocities.com
8. ɂ Ȑ http://www.geocities.com
9. Anatomy of a HTTP request Ȑ ɂ
10. Common Gateway Interface (CGI) Spec written in 1993 by National Center for Supercomputing Applications Allowed web servers to interact with executables and dynamically generate webpages Along with passed query params server also sets up a set of environmental variables
11. SERVER_SOFTWARE SERVER_NAME GATEWAY_INTERFACE SERVER_PROTOCOL SERVER_PORT REQUEST_METHOD PATH_INFO PATH_TRANSLATED SCRIPT_NAME QUERY_STRING REMOTE_HOST REMOTE_ADDR AUTH_TYPE SERVER_PORT REMOTE_USER REMOTE_IDENT CONTENT_TYPE CONTENT_LENGTH HTTP_ACCEPT HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE HTTP_USER_AGENT HTTP_COOKIE
12. ɂ Ȑ http://www.amazon.com?author=douglas%20adams
13. Anatomy of a Web Request ɂ Ȑ
14. The Server Ȑ
15. The Client ɂ curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json” \ -d '{ "name": "michael" }' \ http://localhost:9292/hello
16. Ȑ Request & Response ɂ
17. tcpdump tcpdump -qns 0 -A -i lo0 port 9292
19. Source
20. Destination
21. Hexadecimal view
22. ASCII view
25. E...V.@.@.............$L..[...>...1.........S...S... POST./hello. HTTP/1.1.. Host:.127.0.0.1:9292.. User-Agent:.curl/7.43.0.. Accept:.*/*.. Content-Type:.application/json.. Content-Length:.21.. ..{."name":."michael".} Request
28. E...1'@.@...........$L....>...\}..1.........S...S... HTTP/1.1.201.Created... Content-Type:.application/json.. Content-Length:.27.. Server:.WEBrick/1.3.1.(Ruby/2.2.2/2015-04-13).. Date:.Wed,.23.Sep.2015.23:32:19.GMT.. Connection:.Keep-Alive.... Response: Header Ȑ
31. E..O.1@.@...........$L....>...\}..1..C......S...S... {"hello":"Welcome.michael"} Response: Body Ȑ
34. ɂ Ȑ
35. ɂ Ȑ POST./hello. HTTP/1.1.. Host:.127.0.0.1:9292.. User-Agent:.curl/7.43.0.. Accept:.*/*.. Content-Type:.application/json.. Content-Length:.21.. ..{."name":."michael".}
36. ɂ Ȑ POST./hello. HTTP/1.1.. Host:.127.0.0.1:9292.. User-Agent:.curl/7.43.0.. Accept:.*/*.. Content-Type:.application/json.. Content-Length:.21.. ..{."name":."michael".} HTTP/1.1.201.Created... Content-Type:.application/json.. Content-Length:.27.. Server:.WEBrick/1.3.1.(Ruby/ 2.2.2/2015-04-13).. Date:.Wed,.23.Sep. 2015.23:32:19.GMT.. Connection:.Keep-Alive....
37. ɂ Ȑ POST./hello. HTTP/1.1.. Host:.127.0.0.1:9292.. User-Agent:.curl/7.43.0.. Accept:.*/*.. Content-Type:.application/json.. Content-Length:.21.. ..{."name":."michael".} HTTP/1.1.201.Created... Content-Type:.application/json.. Content-Length:.27.. Server:.WEBrick/1.3.1.(Ruby/ 2.2.2/2015-04-13).. Date:.Wed,.23.Sep. 2015.23:32:19.GMT.. Connection:.Keep-Alive.... {"hello":"Welcome.michael"}
38. rack
39. rack, finally.
40. rack history created in 2007 by Christian Neukirchen many frameworks, many web servers
41. ɂ Ȑ POST./hello. HTTP/1.1.. Host:.127.0.0.1:9292.. User-Agent:.curl/7.43.0.. Accept:.*/*.. Content-Type:.application/json.. Content-Length:.21.. ..{."name":."michael".} HTTP/1.1.201.Created... Content-Type:.application/json.. Content-Length:.27.. Server:.WEBrick/1.3.1.(Ruby/ 2.2.2/2015-04-13).. Date:.Wed,.23.Sep. 2015.23:32:19.GMT.. Connection:.Keep-Alive.... {"hello":"Welcome.michael"}
42. Ȑ HTTP/1.1.201.Created... Content-Type:.application/json.. Content-Length:.27.. Server:.WEBrick/1.3.1.(Ruby/ 2.2.2/2015-04-13).. Date:.Wed,.23.Sep.2015.23:32:19.GMT.. Connection:.Keep-Alive.... {"hello":"Welcome.michael"} POST./hello. HTTP/1.1.. Host:.127.0.0.1:9292.. User-Agent:.curl/7.43.0.. Accept:.*/*.. Content-Type:.application/json.. Content-Length:.21.. ..{."name":."michael".}
43. Ȑ receive request respond with: • status code • headers • body
46. rack rules A rack app: implements a call method that accepts a hash on CGI-like environment call returns an array containing: a status code a hash of response headers an object that represents the body that responds to .each and contains strings for the body
50. adapter pattern App Rack handler Rack handler Rack handler Rack handler
51. adapter pattern Without this we would have f * s implementations where f is the # of frameworks and s is the number of servers rails-puma rails-unicorn sinatra-puma sinatra-unicorn
52. adapter pattern Instead we have f + s number of implementations Each framework speaks rack and each sever speaks rack
53. pipeline pattern higher-level architecture pattern break a larger task in to discrete steps each step’s output is passed as the input to the next step also known as pipes and filters (step)
58. middleware
59. middleware “filters” in the pipeline that modify the request and/or response Can be composed into a stack
60. An example: warden warden is a “general rack authentication framework” used by devise (the rails auth gem) redirects the user to a failure app with a 401 status code when not authenticated app can trigger auth failure by throwing a warden error: throw(:warden)
61. warden Client app [200, {}, [“ok”]] [401, {}, [“Unauthenicated!”]] failure app
73. Ȑpuma Middleware A Middleware B HelloWorld Middleware B Middleware A Rack handler Rack handler
75. Rails Normal Rails API
79. criticism
80. ENV Despite the simple API, a lot of complexity hides behind that env/request hash The env hash is setup like a CGI environment but we are getting farther and farther away from CGI environment NoMethodError on an Object vs. nil from a hash
82. Ȑpuma Middleware A Middleware B HelloWorld Middleware B Middleware A Rack handler Rack handler
83. what’s next?
84. Rack 2? Unlikely that there will ever be a re-write of rack by the core team Decided on a “hold” the torch approach to maintenance in Aug. 2014
85. Rack 2? Unlikely that there will ever be a re-write of rack by the core team Decided on a “hold” the torch approach to maintenance in Aug. 2014
86. Websockets with Faye faye server and associated utilities established solution/gem sits alongside the rest of rack stack
87. Web sockets with Action Cable Will be released in Rails 5, announced at rails conf 2015, code open-sourced in early July Offers a JS and backend integration
88. “Action Cable seamlessly integrates websockets with the rest of your Rails application. It allows for real-time features to be written in Ruby in the same style and form as the rest of your Rails application, while still being performant and scalable.”
92. Javascript & NPM module Works with node and express
97. Thank you
98. twitter: @mike_cordell speaker_deck: Request and Response by tenderlove: https://www.youtube.com/1EeWXojdqvU José Valim: Why your web framework should not adopt Rack API: http://blog.plataformatec.com.br/2012/06/ why-your-web-framework-should-not-adopt- rack-api/