FastCGI::NativeCall

This is an implementation of FastCGI for Raku using NativeCall

Synopsis

use FastCGI::NativeCall;

my $fcgi = FastCGI::NativeCall.new(path => "/tmp/fastcgi.sock", backlog => 32 );

my $count = 0;

while $fcgi.accept() {
    say $fcgi.env;
    $fcgi.header(Content-Type => "text/html");
    $fcgi.Print("{ ++$count }");
}

There is an example nginx configuration in the examples directory.

If you are using Apache httpd with mod_fcgid your script will be executed by the server with its STDIN (file descriptor 0) opened as the listening socket so you don't need to create your own socket and the script above becomes something like:

use FastCGI::NativeCall;

my $fcgi = FastCGI::NativeCall.new(socket => 0 );

my $count = 0;

while $fcgi.accept() {
    say $fcgi.env;
    $fcgi.header(Content-Type => "text/html");
    $fcgi.Print("{ ++$count }");
}

There is a snippet of Apache configuration in the examples directory. You will almost certainly want to tweak that to your own requirements.

Description

FastCGI is a protocol that allows an HTTP server to communicate with a persistent application over a socket, thus removing the process startup overhead of, say, traditional CGI applications. It is supported as standard (or through supporting modules,) by most common HTTP server software (such as Apache, nginx, lighthttpd and so forth.)

This module provides a simple mechanism to create FastCGI server applications in Raku.

The FastCGI servers are single threaded, but with good support from the front end server and tuning of the configuration it can be quite efficient.

Installation

In order to use this properly you will need some front end server that supports FastCGI using unix domain sockets.

Assuming you have a working Rakudo installation you should be able to install this with zef:

zef install FastCGI::NativeCall

# Or from a local clone of the distribution

zef install .

Support

I'm probably not the right person to ask about configuring various HTTP servers for FastCGI. Though I'd be interested in sample configurations if anyone wants to provide any.

If you are running under SELinux with Apache you may find that it won't run your script and you will need to do something like:

chcon -R -t httpd_sys_script_exec_t /var/www/fcgi

obviously adjusting this to your own circumstances.

Also the tests are a bit rubbish, I haven't worked out how to mock an HTTP server that does FastCGI yet.

If you have any suggestions/bugs etc please report them at https://github.com/jonathanstowe/raku-fastcgi-nativecall/issues

Licence and Copyright

This is free software please see the LICENSE file in the distribution.

The FastCGI C application library is distributed under its own license. See "ext/LICENSE.TERMS" for the license.