ChaptersThis guide assumes a working knowledge of Rack protocol and Rack concepts such as middlewares, url maps and Rack::Builder.
1 Introduction to 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.
Explaining Rack is not really in the scope of this guide. In case you are not familiar with Rack’s basics, you should check out the following links:
2 Rails on Rack
2.1 Rails Application’s Rack Object
ActionController::Dispatcher.new is the primary Rack application object of a Rails application. Any Rack compliant web server should be using ActionController::Dispatcher.new object to serve a Rails application.
2.2 script/server
script/server does the basic job of creating a Rack::Builder object and starting the webserver. This is Rails’ equivalent of Rack’s rackup script.
Here’s how script/server creates an instance of Rack::Builder
app = Rack::Builder.new {
use Rails::Rack::LogTailer unless options[:detach]
use Rails::Rack::Debugger if options[:debugger]
map "/" do
use Rails::Rack::Static
run ActionController::Dispatcher.new
end
}.to_app
Middlewares used in the code above are primarily useful only in the development envrionment. The following table explains their usage:
| Middleware | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Rails::Rack::LogTailer | Appends log file output to console |
| Rails::Rack::Static | Serves static files inside RAILS_ROOT/public directory |
| Rails::Rack::Debugger | Starts Debugger |
2.3 rackup
To use rackup instead of Rails’ script/server, you can put the following inside config.ru of your Rails application’s root directory:
# RAILS_ROOT/config.ru
require "config/environment"
use Rails::Rack::LogTailer
use Rails::Rack::Static
run ActionController::Dispatcher.new
And start the server:
[lifo@null application]$ rackup
To find out more about different rackup options:
[lifo@null application]$ rackup --help
3 Action Controller Middleware Stack
Many of Action Controller’s internal components are implemented as Rack middlewares. ActionController::Dispatcher uses ActionController::MiddlewareStack to combine various internal and external middlewares to form a complete Rails Rack application.
ActionController::MiddlewareStack is Rails’ equivalent of Rack::Builder, but built for better flexibility and more features to meet Rails’ requirements.
3.1 Inspecting Middleware Stack
Rails has a handy rake task for inspecting the middleware stack in use:
$ rake middleware
For a freshly generated Rails application, this might produce something like:
use Rack::Lock
use ActionController::Failsafe
use ActionController::Session::CookieStore, , {:secret=>"<secret>", :session_key=>"_<app>_session"}
use Rails::Rack::Metal
use ActionController::RewindableInput
use ActionController::ParamsParser
use Rack::MethodOverride
use Rack::Head
use ActiveRecord::QueryCache
run ActionController::Dispatcher.new
Purpose of each of this middlewares is explained in Internal Middlewares section.
3.2 Configuring Middleware Stack
Rails provides a simple configuration interface config.middleware for adding, removing and modifying the middlewares in the middleware stack via environment.rb or the environment specific configuration file environments/<environment>.rb.
3.2.1 Adding a Middleware
You can add a new middleware to the middleware stack using any of the following methods:
- config.middleware.use(new_middleware, args) – Adds the new middleware at the bottom of the middleware stack.
- config.middleware.insert_before(existing_middleware, new_middleware, args) – Adds the new middleware before the specified existing middleware in the middleware stack.
- config.middleware.insert_after(existing_middleware, new_middleware, args) – Adds the new middleware after the specified existing middleware in the middleware stack.
Example:
# environment.rb
# Push Rack::BounceFavicon at the bottom
config.middleware.use Rack::BounceFavicon
# Add Lifo::Cache after ActiveRecord::QueryCache.
# Pass { :page_cache => false } argument to Lifo::Cache.
config.middleware.insert_after ActiveRecord::QueryCache, Lifo::Cache, :page_cache => false
3.2.2 Swapping a Middleware
You can swap an existing middleware in the middleware stack using config.middleware.swap.
Example:
# environment.rb
# Replace ActionController::Failsafe with Lifo::Failsafe
config.middleware.swap ActionController::Failsafe, Lifo::Failsafe
3.2.3 Middleware Stack is an Array
The middleware stack behaves just like a normal Array. You can use any Array methods to insert, reorder, or remove items from the stack. Methods described in the section above are just convenience methods.
For example, the following removes the middleware matching the supplied class name:
config.middleware.delete(middleware)
3.3 Internal Middleware Stack
Much of Action Controller’s functionality is implemented as Middlewares. The following table explains the purpose of each of them:
| Middleware | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Rack::Lock | Sets env["rack.multithread"] flag to true and wraps the application within a Mutex. |
| ActionController::Failsafe | Returns HTTP Status 500 to the client if an exception gets raised while dispatching. |
| ActiveRecord::QueryCache | Enable the Active Record query cache. |
| ActionController::Session::CookieStore | Uses the cookie based session store. |
| ActionController::Session::MemCacheStore | Uses the memcached based session store. |
| ActiveRecord::SessionStore | Uses the database based session store. |
| Rack::MethodOverride | Sets HTTP method based on _method parameter or env["HTTP_X_HTTP_METHOD_OVERRIDE"]. |
| Rack::Head | Discards the response body if the client sends a HEAD request. |
It’s possible to use any of the above middlewares in your custom Rack stack.
3.4 Customizing Internal Middleware Stack
It’s possible to replace the entire middleware stack with a custom stack using ActionController::Dispatcher.middleware=.
Example:
Put the following in an initializer:
# config/initializers/stack.rb
ActionController::Dispatcher.middleware = ActionController::MiddlewareStack.new do |m|
m.use ActionController::Failsafe
m.use ActiveRecord::QueryCache
m.use Rack::Head
end
And now inspecting the middleware stack:
$ rake middleware
(in /Users/lifo/Rails/blog)
use ActionController::Failsafe
use ActiveRecord::QueryCache
use Rack::Head
run ActionController::Dispatcher.new
3.5 Using Rack Builder
The following shows how to replace use Rack::Builder instead of the Rails supplied MiddlewareStack.
Clear the existing Rails middleware stack
# environment.rb
config.middleware.clear
Add a config.ru file to RAILS_ROOT
# config.ru
use MyOwnStackFromStratch
run ActionController::Dispatcher.new
4 Rails Metal Applications
Rails Metal applications are minimal Rack applications specially designed for integrating with a typical Rails application. As Rails Metal Applications skip all of the Action Controller stack, serving a request has no overhead from the Rails framework itself. This is especially useful for infrequent cases where the performance of the full stack Rails framework is an issue.
Ryan Bates’ railscast on the Rails Metal provides a nice walkthrough generating and using Rails Metal.
4.1 Generating a Metal Application
Rails provides a generator called metal for creating a new Metal application:
$ script/generate metal poller
This generates poller.rb in the app/metal directory:
# Allow the metal piece to run in isolation
require(File.dirname(__FILE__) + "/../../config/environment") unless defined?(Rails)
class Poller
def self.call(env)
if env["PATH_INFO"] =~ /^\/poller/
[200, {"Content-Type" => "text/html"}, ["Hello, World!"]]
else
[404, {"Content-Type" => "text/html"}, ["Not Found"]]
end
end
end
Metal applications within app/metal folders in plugins will also be discovered and added to the list
Metal applications are an optimization. You should make sure to understand the related performance implications before using it.
4.2 Execution Order
All Metal Applications are executed by Rails::Rack::Metal middleware, which is a part of the ActionController::MiddlewareStack chain.
Here’s the primary method responsible for running the Metal applications:
def call(env)
@metals.keys.each do |app|
result = app.call(env)
return result unless result[0].to_i == 404
end
@app.call(env)
end
In the code above, @metals is an ordered hash of metal applications. Due to the default alphabetical ordering, aaa.rb will come before bbb.rb in the metal chain.
It is, however, possible to override the default ordering in your environment. Simply add a line like the following to config/environment.rb
config.metals = ["Bbb", "Aaa"]
Each string in the array should be the name of your metal class. If you do this then be warned that any metal applications not listed will not be loaded.
Metal applications cannot return the HTTP Status 404 to a client, as it is used for continuing the Metal chain execution. Please use normal Rails controllers or a custom middleware if returning 404 is a requirement.