A simple demonstration of rack
Rack is a modular ruby web server interface, i.e it is an (API) interface between web servers and web applications. An application written in ruby needs to be rack compliant to be hosted in the web. Thus, frameworks like Rails, Sinatra etc are rack compliant.
A rack app has an object that responds to a call method that takes environment as an argument. The environment describes information like:
- HTTP request method
- redirect url
- rack version
- an object to report errors
It returns a response with the following parameters:
- HTTP status code
- Response header
- Response body with data
A app rack also makes it possible to add middleware between the web server and application.
This project is a simple MVC like app. It is aware of 2 paths - / and /joke. For the root path, it serves a welcome page and for the joke path, it returns a random joke. Any other path will return a 404 page.
Typically, the entry point for a rack app is config.ru and this is places at the root folder.