¶ ↑ ¶ ↑Rack provides a minimal, modular and adaptable interface for developing web applications in Ruby. By wrapping HTTP requests and responses in the simplest way possible, it unifies and distills the API for web servers, web frameworks, and software in between (the so-called middleware) into a single method call.
The exact details of this are described in the Rack specification, which all Rack applications should conform to.
The included handlers connect all kinds of web servers to Rack:
Mongrel
EventedMongrel
SwiftipliedMongrel
WEBrick
FCGI
CGI
SCGI
LiteSpeed
Thin
These web servers include Rack handlers in their distributions:
Ebb
Fuzed
Glassfish v3
Phusion Passenger (which is mod_rack for Apache and for nginx)
Puma
Rainbows!
Reel
Unicorn
unixrack
uWSGI
Zbatery
Any valid Rack app will run the same on all these handlers, without changing anything.
These frameworks include Rack adapters in their distributions:
Camping
Coset
Espresso
Halcyon
Mack
Maveric
Merb
Racktools::SimpleApplication
Ramaze
Ruby on Rails
Rum
Sinatra
Sin
Vintage
Waves
Wee
… and many others.
Between the server and the framework, Rack can be customized to your applications needs using middleware, for example:
Rack::URLMap, to route to multiple applications inside the same process.
Rack::CommonLogger, for creating Apache-style logfiles.
Rack::ShowException, for catching unhandled exceptions and presenting them in a nice and helpful way with clickable backtrace.
Rack::File, for serving static files.
…many others!
All these components use the same interface, which is described in detail in the Rack specification. These optional components can be used in any way you wish.
If you want to develop outside of existing frameworks, implement your own ones, or develop middleware, Rack provides many helpers to create Rack applications quickly and without doing the same web stuff all over:
Rack::Request, which also provides query string parsing and multipart handling.
Rack::Response, for convenient generation of HTTP replies and cookie handling.
Rack::MockRequest and Rack::MockResponse for efficient and quick testing of Rack application without real HTTP round-trips.
The plethora of useful middleware created the need for a project that collects fresh Rack middleware. rack-contrib includes a variety of add-on components for Rack and it is easy to contribute new modules.
rackup is a useful tool for running Rack applications, which uses the Rack::Builder DSL to configure middleware and build up applications easily.
rackup automatically figures out the environment it is run in, and runs your application as FastCGI, CGI, or standalone with Mongrel or WEBrick—all from the same configuration.
Try the lobster!
Either with the embedded WEBrick starter:
ruby -Ilib lib/rack/lobster.rb
Or with rackup:
bin/rackup -Ilib example/lobster.ru
By default, the lobster is found at localhost:9292.
A Gem of Rack is available at rubygems.org. You can install it with:
gem install rack
I also provide a local mirror of the gems (and development snapshots) at my site:
gem install rack --source http://chneukirchen.org/releases/gems/
Testing Rack requires the bacon testing framework:
bundle install --without extra # to be able to run the fast tests
Or:
bundle install # this assumes that you have installed native extensions!
There are two rake-based test tasks:
rake test tests all the fast tests (no Handlers or Adapters) rake fulltest runs all the tests
The fast testsuite has no dependencies outside of the core Ruby installation and bacon.
To run the test suite completely, you need:
* fcgi * memcache-client * mongrel * thin
The full set of tests test FCGI access with lighttpd (on port 9203) so you will need lighttpd installed as well as the FCGI libraries and the fcgi gem:
Download and install lighttpd:
http://www.lighttpd.net/download
Installing the FCGI libraries:
curl -O http://www.fastcgi.com/dist/fcgi-2.4.0.tar.gz tar xzvf fcgi-2.4.0.tar.gz cd fcgi-2.4.0 ./configure --prefix=/usr/local make sudo make install cd ..
Installing the Ruby fcgi gem:
gem install fcgi
Furthermore, to test Memcache sessions, you need memcached (will be run on port 11211) and memcache-client installed.
March 3rd, 2007: First public release 0.1.
May 16th, 2007: Second public release 0.2.
HTTP Basic authentication.
Cookie Sessions.
Static file handler.
Improved Rack::Request.
Improved Rack::Response.
Added Rack::ShowStatus, for better default error messages.
Bug fixes in the Camping adapter.
Removed Rails adapter, was too alpha.
February 26th, 2008: Third public release 0.3.
LiteSpeed handler, by Adrian Madrid.
SCGI handler, by Jeremy Evans.
Pool sessions, by blink.
OpenID authentication, by blink.
:Port and :File options for opening FastCGI sockets, by blink.
Last-Modified HTTP header for Rack::File, by blink.
Rack::Builder#use now accepts blocks, by Corey Jewett. (See example/protectedlobster.ru)
HTTP status 201 can contain a Content-Type and a body now.
Many bugfixes, especially related to Cookie handling.
August 21st, 2008: Fourth public release 0.4.
New middleware, Rack::Deflater, by Christoffer Sawicki.
OpenID authentication now needs ruby-openid 2.
New Memcache sessions, by blink.
Explicit EventedMongrel handler, by Joshua Peek <josh@joshpeek.com>
Rack::Reloader is not loaded in rackup development mode.
rackup can daemonize with -D.
Many bugfixes, especially for pool sessions, URLMap, thread safety and tempfile handling.
Improved tests.
Rack moved to Git.
January 6th, 2009: Fifth public release 0.9.
Rack is now managed by the Rack Core Team.
Rack::Lint is stricter and follows the HTTP RFCs more closely.
Added ConditionalGet middleware.
Added ContentLength middleware.
Added Deflater middleware.
Added Head middleware.
Added MethodOverride middleware.
Rack::Mime now provides popular MIME-types and their extension.
Mongrel Header now streams.
Added Thin handler.
Official support for swiftiplied Mongrel.
Secure cookies.
Made HeaderHash case-preserving.
Many bugfixes and small improvements.
January 9th, 2009: Sixth public release 0.9.1.
Fix directory traversal exploits in Rack::File and Rack::Directory.
April 25th, 2009: Seventh public release 1.0.0.
SPEC change: Rack::VERSION has been pushed to [1,0].
SPEC change: header values must be Strings now, split on “n”.
SPEC change: Content-Length can be missing, in this case chunked transfer encoding is used.
SPEC change: rack.input must be rewindable and support reading into a buffer, wrap with Rack::RewindableInput if it isn't.
SPEC change: rack.session is now specified.
SPEC change: Bodies can now additionally respond to #to_path with a filename to be served.
NOTE: String bodies break in 1.9, use an Array consisting of a single String instead.
New middleware Rack::Lock.
New middleware Rack::ContentType.
Rack::Reloader has been rewritten.
Major update to Rack::Auth::OpenID.
Support for nested parameter parsing in Rack::Response.
Support for redirects in Rack::Response.
HttpOnly cookie support in Rack::Response.
The Rakefile has been rewritten.
Many bugfixes and small improvements.
October 18th, 2009: Eighth public release 1.0.1.
Bump remainder of rack.versions.
Support the pure Ruby FCGI implementation.
Fix for form names containing “=”: split first then unescape components
Fixes the handling of the filename parameter with semicolons in names.
Add anchor to nested params parsing regexp to prevent stack overflows
Use more compatible gzip write api instead of “<<”.
Make sure that Reloader doesn't break when executed via ruby -e
Make sure WEBrick respects the :Host option
Many Ruby 1.9 fixes.
January 3rd, 2010: Ninth public release 1.1.0.
Moved Auth::OpenID to rack-contrib.
SPEC change that relaxes Lint slightly to allow subclasses of the required types
SPEC change to document rack.input binary mode in greator detail
SPEC define optional rack.logger specification
File servers support X-Cascade header
Imported Config middleware
Imported ETag middleware
Imported Runtime middleware
Imported Sendfile middleware
New Logger and NullLogger middlewares
Added mime type for .ogv and .manifest.
Don't squeeze PATH_INFO slashes
Use Content-Type to determine POST params parsing
Update Rack::Utils::HTTP_STATUS_CODES hash
Add status code lookup utility
Response should call #to_i on the status
Add Request#user_agent
Request#host knows about forwared host
Return an empty string for Request#host if HTTP_HOST and SERVER_NAME are both missing
Allow MockRequest to accept hash params
Optimizations to HeaderHash
Refactored rackup into Rack::Server
Added Utils.build_nested_query to complement Utils.parse_nested_query
Added Utils::Multipart.build_multipart to complement Utils::Multipart.parse_multipart
Extracted set and delete cookie helpers into Utils so they can be used outside Response
Extract parse_query and parse_multipart in Request so subclasses can change their behavior
Enforce binary encoding in RewindableInput
Set correct external_encoding for handlers that don't use RewindableInput
June 13th, 2010: Tenth public release 1.2.0.
Removed Camping adapter: Camping 2.0 supports Rack as-is
Removed parsing of quoted values
Add Request.trace? and Request.options?
Add mime-type for .webm and .htc
Fix HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR
Various multipart fixes
Switch test suite to bacon
June 15th, 2010: Eleventh public release 1.2.1.
Make CGI handler rewindable
Rename spec/ to test/ to not conflict with SPEC on lesser operating systems
March 13th, 2011: Twelfth public release 1.2.2/1.1.2.
Security fix in Rack::Auth::Digest::MD5: when authenticator returned nil, permission was granted on empty password.
May 22nd, 2011: Thirteenth public release 1.3.0
Various performance optimizations
Various multipart fixes
Various multipart refactors
Infinite loop fix for multipart
Test coverage for Rack::Server returns
Allow files with '..', but not path components that are '..'
rackup accepts handler-specific options on the command line
Request#params no longer merges POST into GET (but returns the same)
Use URI.encode_www_form_component instead. Use core methods for escaping.
Allow multi-line comments in the config file
Bug L#94 reported by Nikolai Lugovoi, query parameter unescaping.
Rack::Response now deletes Content-Length when appropriate
Rack::Deflater now supports streaming
Improved Rack::Handler loading and searching
Support for the PATCH verb
env now contains session options
Cookies respect renew
Session middleware uses SecureRandom.hex
May 22nd, 2011: Fourteenth public release 1.2.3
Pulled in relevant bug fixes from 1.3
Fixed 1.8.6 support
July 13, 2011: Fifteenth public release 1.3.1
Fix 1.9.1 support
Fix JRuby support
Properly handle $KCODE in Rack::Utils.escape
Make method_missing/respond_to behavior consistent for Rack::Lock, Rack::Auth::Digest::Request and Rack::Multipart::UploadedFile
Reenable passing rack.session to session middleware
Rack::CommonLogger handles streaming responses correctly
Rack::MockResponse calls close on the body object
Fix a DOS vector from MRI stdlib backport
July 16, 2011: Sixteenth public release 1.3.2
Fix for Rails and rack-test, Rack::Utils#escape calls to_s
September 16, 2011: Seventeenth public release 1.3.3
Fix bug with broken query parameters in Rack::ShowExceptions
Rack::Request#cookies no longer swallows exceptions on broken input
Prevents XSS attacks enabled by bug in Ruby 1.8's regexp engine
Rack::ConditionalGet handles broken If-Modified-Since helpers
September 16, 2011: Eighteenth public release 1.2.4
Fix a bug with MRI regex engine to prevent XSS by malformed unicode
October 1, 2011: Nineteenth public release 1.3.4
Backport security fix from 1.9.3, also fixes some roundtrip issues in URI
Small documentation update
Fix an issue where BodyProxy could cause an infinite recursion
Add some supporting files for travis-ci
October 17, 2011: Twentieth public release 1.3.5
Fix annoying warnings caused by the backport in 1.3.4
December 28th, 2011: Twenty first public release: 1.1.3.
Security fix. www.ocert.org/advisories/ocert-2011-003.html Further information here: jruby.org/2011/12/27/jruby-1-6-5-1
December 28th, 2011: Twenty fourth public release 1.4.0
Ruby 1.8.6 support has officially been dropped. Not all tests pass.
Raise sane error messages for broken config.ru
Allow combining run and map in a config.ru
Rack::ContentType will not set Content-Type for responses without a body
Status code 205 does not send a response body
Rack::Response::Helpers will not rely on instance variables
Rack::Utils.build_query no longer outputs '=' for nil query values
Various mime types added
Rack::MockRequest now supports HEAD
Rack::Directory now supports files that contain RFC3986 reserved chars
Rack::File now only supports GET and HEAD requests
Rack::Server#start now passes the block to Rack::Handler::<h>#run
Rack::Static now supports an index option
Added the Teapot status code
rackup now defaults to Thin instead of Mongrel (if installed)
Support added for HTTP_X_FORWARDED_SCHEME
Numerous bug fixes, including many fixes for new and alternate rubies
January 22nd, 2012: Twenty fifth public release 1.4.1
Alter the keyspace limit calculations to reduce issues with nested params
Add a workaround for multipart parsing where files contain unescaped “%”
Added Rack::Response::Helpers#method_not_allowed? (code 405)
Rack::File now returns 404 for illegal directory traversals
Rack::File now returns 405 for illegal methods (non HEAD/GET)
Rack::Cascade now catches 405 by default, as well as 404
Cookies missing '–' no longer cause an exception to be raised
Various style changes and documentation spelling errors
Rack::BodyProxy always ensures to execute its block
Additional test coverage around cookies and secrets
Rack::Session::Cookie can now be supplied either secret or old_secret
Tests are no longer dependent on set order
Rack::Static no longer defaults to serving index files
Rack.release was fixed
January 6th, 2013: Twenty sixth public release 1.1.4
Add warnings when users do not provide a session secret
January 6th, 2013: Twenty seventh public release 1.2.6
Add warnings when users do not provide a session secret
Fix parsing performance for unquoted filenames
January 6th, 2013: Twenty eighth public release 1.3.7
Add warnings when users do not provide a session secret
Fix parsing performance for unquoted filenames
Updated URI backports
Fix URI backport version matching, and silence constant warnings
Correct parameter parsing with empty values
Correct rackup '-I' flag, to allow multiple uses
Correct rackup pidfile handling
Report rackup line numbers correctly
Fix request loops caused by non-stale nonces with time limits
Fix reloader on Windows
Prevent infinite recursions from Response#to_ary
Various middleware better conforms to the body close specification
Updated language for the body close specification
Additional notes regarding ECMA escape compatibility issues
Fix the parsing of multiple ranges in range headers
January 6th, 2013: Twenty ninth public release 1.4.2
Add warnings when users do not provide a session secret
Fix parsing performance for unquoted filenames
Updated URI backports
Fix URI backport version matching, and silence constant warnings
Correct parameter parsing with empty values
Correct rackup '-I' flag, to allow multiple uses
Correct rackup pidfile handling
Report rackup line numbers correctly
Fix request loops caused by non-stale nonces with time limits
Fix reloader on Windows
Prevent infinite recursions from Response#to_ary
Various middleware better conforms to the body close specification
Updated language for the body close specification
Additional notes regarding ECMA escape compatibility issues
Fix the parsing of multiple ranges in range headers
Prevent errors from empty parameter keys
Added PATCH verb to Rack::Request
Various documentation updates
Fix session merge semantics (fixes rack-test)
Rack::Static :index can now handle multiple directories
All tests now utilize Rack::Lint (special thanks to Lars Gierth)
Rack::File cache_control parameter is now deprecated, and removed by 1.5
Correct Rack::Directory script name escaping
Rack::Static supports header rules for sophisticated configurations
Multipart parsing now works without a Content-Length header
New logos courtesy of Zachary Scott!
Rack::BodyProxy now explicitly defines #each, useful for C extensions
Cookies that are not URI escaped no longer cause exceptions
January 7th, 2013: Thirtieth public release 1.3.8
Security: Prevent unbounded reads in large multipart boundaries
January 7th, 2013: Thirty first public release 1.4.3
Security: Prevent unbounded reads in large multipart boundaries
January 13th, 2013: Thirty second public release 1.4.4, 1.3.9, 1.2.7, 1.1.5
Rack::Auth::AbstractRequest no longer symbolizes arbitrary strings
Fixed erroneous test case in the 1.3.x series
January 21st, 2013: Thirty third public release 1.5.0
Introduced hijack SPEC, for before-response and after-response hijacking
SessionHash is no longer a Hash subclass
Rack::File cache_control parameter is removed, in place of headers options
Rack::Auth::AbstractRequest#scheme now yields strings, not symbols
Rack::Utils cookie functions now format expires in RFC 2822 format
Rack::File now has a default mime type
rackup -b 'run Rack::File.new(“.”)', option provides command line configs
Rack::Deflater will no longer double encode bodies
Rack::Mime#match? provides convenience for Accept header matching
Rack::Utils#q_values provides splitting for Accept headers
Rack::Utils#best_q_match provides a helper for Accept headers
Rack::Handler.pick provides convenience for finding available servers
Puma added to the list of default servers (preferred over Webrick)
Various middleware now correctly close body when replacing it
Rack::Request#params is no longer persistent with only GET params
Rack::Request#update_param and #delete_param provide persistent operations
Rack::Request#trusted_proxy? now returns true for local unix sockets
Rack::Response no longer forces Content-Types
Rack::Sendfile provides local mapping configuration options
Rack::Utils#rfc2109 provides old netscape style time output
Updated HTTP status codes
Ruby 1.8.6 likely no longer passes tests, and is no longer fully supported
January 28th, 2013: Thirty fourth public release 1.5.1
Rack::Lint check_hijack now conforms to other parts of SPEC
Added hash-like methods to Abstract::ID::SessionHash for compatibility
Various documentation corrections
February 7th, Thirty fifth public release 1.1.6, 1.2.8, 1.3.10
Fix CVE-2013-0263, timing attack against Rack::Session::Cookie
February 7th, Thirty fifth public release 1.4.5
Fix CVE-2013-0263, timing attack against Rack::Session::Cookie
Fix CVE-2013-0262, symlink path traversal in Rack::File
February 7th, Thirty fifth public release 1.5.2
Fix CVE-2013-0263, timing attack against Rack::Session::Cookie
Fix CVE-2013-0262, symlink path traversal in Rack::File
Add various methods to Session for enhanced Rails compatibility
Request#trusted_proxy? now only matches whole stirngs
Add JSON cookie coder, to be default in Rack 1.6+ due to security concerns
URLMap host matching in environments that don't set the Host header fixed
Fix a race condition that could result in overwritten pidfiles
Various documentation additions
Prevent extremely deep parameters from being parsed. CVE-2015-3225
Please post bugs, suggestions and patches to the bug tracker at <github.com/rack/rack/issues>.
Please post security related bugs and suggestions to the core team at <groups.google.com/group/rack-core> or rack-core@googlegroups.com. This list is not public. Due to wide usage of the library, it is strongly preferred that we manage timing in order to provide viable patches at the time of disclosure. Your assistance in this matter is greatly appreciated.
Mailing list archives are available at <groups.google.com/group/rack-devel>.
Git repository (send Git patches to the mailing list):
You are also welcome to join the #rack channel on irc.freenode.net.
The Rack Core Team, consisting of
Christian Neukirchen (chneukirchen)
James Tucker (raggi)
Josh Peek (josh)
Michael Fellinger (manveru)
Ryan Tomayko (rtomayko)
Scytrin dai Kinthra (scytrin)
Aaron Patterson (tenderlove)
Konstantin Haase (rkh)
would like to thank:
Adrian Madrid, for the LiteSpeed handler.
Christoffer Sawicki, for the first Rails adapter and Rack::Deflater.
Tim Fletcher, for the HTTP authentication code.
Luc Heinrich for the Cookie sessions, the static file handler and bugfixes.
Armin Ronacher, for the logo and racktools.
Alex Beregszaszi, Alexander Kahn, Anil Wadghule, Aredridel, Ben Alpert, Dan Kubb, Daniel Roethlisberger, Matt Todd, Tom Robinson, Phil Hagelberg, S. Brent Faulkner, Bosko Milekic, Daniel Rodríguez Troitiño, Genki Takiuchi, Geoffrey Grosenbach, Julien Sanchez, Kamal Fariz Mahyuddin, Masayoshi Takahashi, Patrick Aljordm, Mig, Kazuhiro Nishiyama, Jon Bardin, Konstantin Haase, Larry Siden, Matias Korhonen, Sam Ruby, Simon Chiang, Tim Connor, Timur Batyrshin, and Zach Brock for bug fixing and other improvements.
Eric Wong, Hongli Lai, Jeremy Kemper for their continuous support and API improvements.
Yehuda Katz and Carl Lerche for refactoring rackup.
Brian Candler, for Rack::ContentType.
Graham Batty, for improved handler loading.
Stephen Bannasch, for bug reports and documentation.
Gary Wright, for proposing a better Rack::Response interface.
Jonathan Buch, for improvements regarding Rack::Response.
Armin Röhrl, for tracking down bugs in the Cookie generator.
Alexander Kellett for testing the Gem and reviewing the announcement.
Marcus Rückert, for help with configuring and debugging lighttpd.
The WSGI team for the well-done and documented work they've done and Rack builds up on.
All bug reporters and patch contributors not mentioned above.
Copyright (C) 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Christian Neukirchen <purl.org/net/chneukirchen>
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
