= Mongrel:  Simple Fast Mostly Ruby Web Server

Mongrel is a small library that provides a very fast HTTP 1.1 server for Ruby
web applications.  It is not particular to any framework, and is intended to
be just enough to get a web application running behind a more complete and robust
web server.

What makes Mongrel so fast is the careful use of a C extension to provide fast
HTTP 1.1 protocol parsing and fast URI lookup.  This combination makes the server
scream without too many portability issues.

== Status

The 0.2.1 release of Mongrel features an HTTP core server that is the fastest possible
thing I could get without using something other than Ruby.  It features a few bug fixes,
but mostly just a change to the Mongrel::HttpResponse class to make it more feature 
complete.  The remaining development will be spent getting Mongrel to work with 
other frameworks, adding additional needed features, and improving the concurrency
and speed.

The current release has samples from "why the lucky stiff" for his Camping
framework in the examples directory.  Camping is a small micro framework 
(http://rubyforge.org/projects/camping) which should work with Mongrel if
you use the subversion source for Camping.

This is also the first release onto the new Mongrel RubyForge project
page found at http://rubyforge.org/projects/mongrel/ thanks to Tom Copland.
I'll be looking to automate management of this, but feel free to use
rubyforge to post feature requests, bugs, and join the mailing list.


== Install

It doesn't explicitly require Camping, but if you want to run the examples/camping/
examples then you'll need to install Camping 1.2 at least (and redcloth I think).  
These are all available from RubyGems.

The library consists of a C extension so you'll need a C compiler or at least a friend
who can build it for you.

Finally, the source includes a setup.rb for those who hate RubyGems.


== Usage

The examples/simpletest.rb file has the following code as the simplest
example:

 require 'mongrel'

 class SimpleHandler < Mongrel::HttpHandler
    def process(request, response)
      response.start(200) do |head,out|
        head["Content-Type"] = "text/plain"
        out.write("hello!\n")
      end
    end
 end

 h = Mongrel::HttpServer.new("0.0.0.0", "3000")
 h.register("/test", SimpleHandler.new)
 h.run.join

If you run this and access port 3000 with a browser it will say
"hello!".  If you access it with any url other than "/test" it will
give a simple 404.  Check out the Mongrel::Error404Handler for a 
basic way to give a more complex 404 message.

== Speed

The 0.2.1 release probably consists of the most effort I've ever put into 
tuning a Ruby library for speed.  It consists of nearly everything I could think
of to make Mongrel the fastest Ruby HTTP library possible.  I've tried about 
seven different architectures and IO processing methods and none of them 
make it any faster.  In short:  Mongrel is amazingly fast considering Ruby's speed
limitations.

This release also brings in controllable threads that you can scale to meet your
needs to do your processing.  Simple pass in the HttpServer.new third optional
parameter:

 h = Mongrel::HttpServer.new("0.0.0.0", "3000", 40)

Which will make 40 thread processors.  Right now the optimal setting is up in
the air, but 20 seemed to be about the sweet spot on my systems.  The 
limited processors also means that you can use ActiveRecord as-is and it will
create a matching database connection for each processor thread.  More on 
this in future releases.

With this release I'm hoping that I've created a nice solid fast as hell core
upon which I can build the remaining features I want in Mongrel.

== The Future

With the core of Mongrel completed I'm now turning to the next set of features
to make Mongrel useful for hosting web applications in a heavily utilized
production environment.  Right now I'm looking at:

* Fast static file handling with directory listings.
* More testing on more platforms.
* An idea I've had for an insane caching handler which could speed up quite a
few deployments.
* General little things most web servers need.
* A nice management system or interface for controlling mongrel servers.

Overall though the goal of Mongrel is to be just enough HTTP to serve a Ruby
web application that sits behind a more complete web server.  Everything 
in the next will focus on actually hosting the major web frameworks for Ruby:

* Camping -- because it's already done (thanks Why).
* Ruby on Rails -- that's where my bread is buttered right now.
* Nitro -- George is a nice guy, and Nitro is thread safe.  Might be fun.
* ????? -- Others people might be interested in.

== Contact

E-mail zedshaw at zedshaw.com and I'll help.  Comments about the API are welcome.