about summary refs log tree commit diff
path: root/web/bubblegum/README.md
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'web/bubblegum/README.md')
-rw-r--r--web/bubblegum/README.md68
1 files changed, 68 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/web/bubblegum/README.md b/web/bubblegum/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..48c2ba6e0328
--- /dev/null
+++ b/web/bubblegum/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,68 @@
+# //web/bubblegum
+
+`bubblegum` is a CGI programming library for the Nix expression language.
+It provides a few helpers to make writing CGI scripts which are executable
+using [//nix/nint](../../nix/nint/README.md) convenient.
+
+An example nix.cgi script looks like this (don't worry about the shebang
+too much, you can use `web.bubblegum.writeCGI` to set this up without
+thinking twice):
+
+```nix
+#!/usr/bin/env nint --arg depot '(import /path/to/depot {})'
+{ depot, ... }:
+
+let
+  inherit (depot.web.bubblegum)
+    respond
+    ;
+in
+
+respond "OK" {
+  "Content-type" = "text/html";
+  # further headers…
+} ''
+  <!doctype html>
+  <html>
+    <head>
+      <meta charset="utf-8">
+      <title>hello world</title>
+    </head>
+    <body>
+      hello world!
+    </body>
+  </html>
+''
+```
+
+As you can see, the core component of `bubblegum` is the `respond`
+function which takes three arguments:
+
+* The response status as the textual representation which is also
+  returned to the client in the HTTP protocol, e. g. `"OK"`,
+  `"Not Found"`, `"Bad Request"`, …
+
+* An attribute set mapping header names to header values to be sent.
+
+* The response body as a string.
+
+Additionally it exposes a few helpers for working with the CGI
+environment like `pathInfo` which is a wrapper around
+`builtins.getEnv "PATH_INFO"`. The documentation for all exposed
+helpers is inlined in [default.nix](./default.nix) (you should be
+able to use `nixdoc` to render it).
+
+For deployment purposes it is recommended to use `writeCGI` which
+takes a nix CGI script in the form of a derivation, path or string
+and builds an executable nix CGI script which has the correct shebang
+set and is automatically passed a version of depot from the nix store,
+so the script has access to the `bubblegum` library.
+
+For example nix CGI scripts and a working deployment using `thttpd`
+see the [examples directory](./examples). You can also start a local
+server running the examples like this:
+
+```
+$ nix-build -A web.bubblegum.examples && ./result
+# navigate to http://localhost:9000
+```