root/tags/rel_1-0-1/README

= 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.

You can view http://mongrel.rubyforge.org for more information.

== Quick Start

After you've installed (either with gem install mongrel or via source) you should
have the mongrel_rails command available in your PATH.  Then you just do the following:

 > cd myrailsapp
 > mongrel_rails start

This will start it in the foreground so you can play with it.  It runs your application
in production mode.  To get help do:

 > mongrel_rails start -h 

Finally, you can then start in background mode (probably won't work in win32):

 > mongrel_rails start -d

And you can stop it whenever you like with:

 > mongrel_rails stop

All of which should be done from your application's directory.  It writes the
PID of the process you ran into log/mongrel.pid.

There are also many more new options for configuring the rails runner including
changing to a different directory, adding more MIME types, and setting processor
threads and timeouts.


== 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.register("/files", Mongrel::DirHandler.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.

This also shows the DirHandler with directory listings.  This is still
rough but it should work for basic hosting.  *File extension to mime
type mapping is missing though.*

== Contact

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