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diff --git a/web/bubblegum/README.md b/web/bubblegum/README.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..0e09c1c65ed6 --- /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 [//users/sterni/nint](../../users/sterni/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 +``` |