class Mongrel::HttpResponse

Writes and controls your response to the client using the HTTP/1.1 specification. You use it by simply doing:

response.start(200) do |head,out|
  head['Content-Type'] = 'text/plain'
  out.write("hello\n")
end

The parameter to start is the response code–which Mongrel will translate for you based on HTTP_STATUS_CODES. The head parameter is how you write custom headers. The out parameter is where you write your body. The default status code for HttpResponse.start is 200 so the above example is redundant.

As you can see, it’s just like using a Hash and as you do this it writes the proper header to the output on the fly. You can even intermix specifying headers and writing content. The HttpResponse class with write the things in the proper order once the HttpResponse.block is ended.

You may also work the HttpResponse object directly using the various attributes available for the raw socket, body, header, and status codes. If you do this you’re on your own. A design decision was made to force the client to not pipeline requests. HTTP/1.1 pipelining really kills the performance due to how it has to be handled and how unclear the standard is. To fix this the HttpResponse gives a “Connection: close” header which forces the client to close right away. The bonus for this is that it gives a pretty nice speed boost to most clients since they can close their connection immediately.

One additional caveat is that you don’t have to specify the Content-length header as the HttpResponse will write this for you based on the out length.

Attributes

body [RW]

body_sent [R]

header [R]

header_sent [R]

socket [R]

status [RW]

status_sent [R]

Public Class Methods

new (socket)

Source

# File lib/mongrel/http_response.rb, line 42
def initialize(socket)
  @socket = socket
  @body = StringIO.new
  @status = 404
  @reason = nil
  @header = HeaderOut.new(StringIO.new)
  @header[Const::DATE] = Time.now.httpdate
  @body_sent = false
  @header_sent = false
  @status_sent = false
end

Public Instance Methods

done ()

Source

# File lib/mongrel/http_response.rb, line 158
def done
  (@status_sent and @header_sent and @body_sent)
end

done= (val)

Source

# File lib/mongrel/http_response.rb, line 152
def done=(val)
  @status_sent = true
  @header_sent = true
  @body_sent = true
end

Used during error conditions to mark the response as “done” so there isn’t any more processing sent to the client.

finished ()

Source

# File lib/mongrel/http_response.rb, line 144
def finished
  send_status
  send_header
  send_body
end

This takes whatever has been done to header and body and then writes it in the proper format to make an HTTP/1.1 response.

reset ()

Source

# File lib/mongrel/http_response.rb, line 72
def reset
  if @body_sent
    raise "You have already sent the request body."
  elsif @header_sent
    raise "You have already sent the request headers."
  else
    @header.out.truncate(0)
    @body.close
    @body = StringIO.new
  end
end

Primarily used in exception handling to reset the response output in order to write an alternative response. It will abort with an exception if you have already sent the header or the body. This is pretty catastrophic actually.

send_body ()

Source

# File lib/mongrel/http_response.rb, line 100
def send_body
  if not @body_sent
    @body.rewind
    write(@body.read)
    @body_sent = true
  end
end

send_file (path, small_file = false)

Source

# File lib/mongrel/http_response.rb, line 112
def send_file(path, small_file = false)
  if small_file
    File.open(path, "rb") {|f| @socket << f.read }
  else
    File.open(path, "rb") do |f|
      while chunk = f.read(Const::CHUNK_SIZE) and chunk.length > 0
        begin
          write(chunk)
        rescue Object => exc
          break
        end
      end
    end
  end
  @body_sent = true
end

Appends the contents of path to the response stream. The file is opened for binary reading and written in chunks to the socket.

Sendfile API support has been removed in 0.3.13.4 due to stability problems.

send_header ()

Source

# File lib/mongrel/http_response.rb, line 92
def send_header
  if not @header_sent
    @header.out.rewind
    write(@header.out.read + Const::LINE_END)
    @header_sent = true
  end
end

send_status (content_length=@body.length)

Source

# File lib/mongrel/http_response.rb, line 84
def send_status(content_length=@body.length)
  if not @status_sent
    @header['Content-Length'] = content_length if content_length and @status != 304
    write(Const::STATUS_FORMAT % [@status, @reason || HTTP_STATUS_CODES[@status]])
    @status_sent = true
  end
end

socket_error (details)

Source

# File lib/mongrel/http_response.rb, line 129
def socket_error(details)
  # ignore these since it means the client closed off early
  @socket.close rescue nil
  done = true
  raise details
end

start (status=200, finalize=false, reason=nil) { |header, body| ... }

Source

# File lib/mongrel/http_response.rb, line 62
def start(status=200, finalize=false, reason=nil)
  @status = status.to_i
  @reason = reason
  yield @header, @body
  finished if finalize
end

Receives a block passing it the header and body for you to work with. When the block is finished it writes everything you’ve done to the socket in the proper order. This lets you intermix header and body content as needed. Handlers are able to modify pretty much any part of the request in the chain, and can stop further processing by simple passing “finalize=true” to the start method. By default all handlers run and then mongrel finalizes the request when they’re all done.

write (data)

Source

# File lib/mongrel/http_response.rb, line 136
def write(data)
  @socket.write(data)
rescue => details
  socket_error(details)
end