App::Rakus

rakus — a static HTTP file server for the command line. Point it at a directory and it serves what is inside over HTTP/1.1, on nothing but IO::Socket::INET.

Status: v0.0.2 — implemented and tested on both engines. 37 assertions in t/, no dependencies.

rakus                      # serve . on http://127.0.0.1:8080/
rakus 9000                 # choose the port
rakus 9000 ~/site          # choose the port and the directory
rakus --quiet 9000 ~/site  # without the request log

What it does

• Correct Content-Type by extension — text and binary. Files are read and written as bytes, so images arrive intact and Content-Length is always the true byte count. An unknown extension is application/octet-stream rather than a guess.

• index.html when a directory has one, otherwise a generated directory listing with sizes and links. Dotfiles are left out of it.

• GET and HEAD; anything else gets 405.

• 301 to add a missing trailing slash on a directory, so relative links inside it resolve; 403 for a .. segment, which is refused rather than resolved; 404 for anything missing.

• One thread per connection, and a request log on stderr: 200 GET /style.css.

As a library

The routing — handle — is a pure function of (method, target, root): it returns the whole response and touches no socket, so what the server answers can be used, and tested, with no port and no network:

use App::Rakus;

my ($status, $type, $body, $extra) = handle('GET', '/index.html', '/var/www');

say mime-for('logo.svg');            # image/svg+xml

The rest of the module is the server around that function — these do open sockets, in stages, so a caller can choose where to take over:

my $listener = listen-on(8080);      # bind, and keep the socket
accept-loop($listener, '/var/www');  # serve on it until it closes

run(:port(8080), :root('/var/www')); # bind, announce, serve — the whole thing

Scope

In v0.0.2: the above, and nothing else. No configuration file, no TLS, no range requests, no compression, no caching headers, no keep-alive — every response says Connection: close. It is a development and local-network server, in the same spirit as python3 -m http.server, and it says so rather than implying otherwise.

Compatibility

It is released only once its tests pass under Rakudo and under Raku++.

v1.8.0 is the minimum Raku++ version.

Licence

Artistic-2.0.

Design notes — why it is shaped this way, and what running it on two engines turned up — are kept out of the distribution, in notes/App-Rakus.md.