Rack is Ruby’s standard web interface. Rails uses it, Sinatra uses it, basically every Ruby web server and framework use it.
And Rack adds “middleware,” pieces of software that you can build an app out of. They see requests and responses, and they can modify both. Middleware is so powerful that Rails...
A reader recently asked me why Ruby web app deploys usually have a web server (NGinX, Apache) and an application server (Unicorn, Thin, Puma, Racer, Mongrel, Passenger, Jakarta, TorqueBox or whatever I’ve forgotten this week).
Actually, he asked, “why do I need to run NGinX and Unicorn?” It’s a fair...
A fellow asked me how he could store information per-user in Rack. This was my (brief) response:
Generally with the cookies object. Specifically, Rack has a “session”, which encodes a session identity into the cookies object, usually with some or all of your data.
You can also map from the session...
Rack comes with a fair bit of built-in middleware that you can use to put together a simple app frame. Unfortunately, Rack authentication’s documentation is pretty bad, so let’s see some simple, self-explanatory examples, shall we?
We’ll need a config.ru file for this, and you’ll need Rack...
If you do Ruby web programming, you’ll often hear about “Rack.” You might hear about it from a Ruby dev you respect, and that you won’t get better at Ruby web stuff until you know what’s underneath.
Or you might have to write a config.ru to use Heroku and you’re thinking, “what’s config.ru?”. It...
