Network.Wai

This module defines a generic web application interface. It is a common protocol between web servers and web applications.

The overriding design principles here are performance and generality. To address performance, this library is built on top of the conduit and blaze-builder packages. The advantages of conduits over lazy IO have been debated elsewhere and so will not be addressed here. However, helper functions like responseLBS allow you to continue using lazy IO if you so desire.

Generality is achieved by removing many variables commonly found in similar projects that are not universal to all servers. The goal is that the Request object contains only data which is meaningful in all circumstances.

Please remember when using this package that, while your application may compile without a hitch against many different servers, there are other considerations to be taken when moving to a new backend. For example, if you transfer from a CGI application to a FastCGI one, you might suddenly find you have a memory leak. Conversely, a FastCGI application would be well served to preload all templates from disk when first starting; this would kill the performance of a CGI application.

This package purposely provides very little functionality. You can find various middlewares, backends and utilities on Hackage. Some of the most commonly used include:

warp

http://hackage.haskell.org/package/warp

wai-extra

http://hackage.haskell.org/package/wai-extra

wai-test

http://hackage.haskell.org/package/wai-test

Types

type Application = Request -> IO Response

The WAI application.

type Middleware = Application -> Application

Middleware is a component that sits between the server and application. It can do such tasks as GZIP encoding or response caching. What follows is the general definition of middleware, though a middleware author should feel free to modify this.

As an example of an alternate type for middleware, suppose you write a function to load up session information. The session information is simply a string map [(String, String)]. A logical type signature for this middleware might be:

 loadSession :: ([(String, String)] -> Application) -> Application

Here, instead of taking a standard Application as its first argument, the middleware takes a function which consumes the session information as well.

Request

data Request

Information on the request sent by the client. This abstracts away the details of the underlying implementation.

Instances

Typeable Request

defaultRequest :: Request

A default, blank request.

Since 2.0.0

data RequestBodyLength

The size of the request body. In the case of chunked bodies, the size will not be known.

Since 1.4.0

Constructors

ChunkedBody

KnownLength Word64

Request accessors

requestMethod :: Request -> Method

Request method such as GET.

httpVersion :: Request -> HttpVersion

HTTP version such as 1.1.

rawPathInfo :: Request -> ByteString

Extra path information sent by the client. The meaning varies slightly depending on backend; in a standalone server setting, this is most likely all information after the domain name. In a CGI application, this would be the information following the path to the CGI executable itself. Do not modify this raw value- modify pathInfo instead.

rawQueryString :: Request -> ByteString

If no query string was specified, this should be empty. This value will include the leading question mark. Do not modify this raw value- modify queryString instead.

requestHeaders :: Request -> RequestHeaders

A list of header (a pair of key and value) in an HTTP request.

isSecure :: Request -> Bool

Was this request made over an SSL connection?

Note that this value will not tell you if the client originally made this request over SSL, but rather whether the current connection is SSL. The distinction lies with reverse proxies. In many cases, the client will connect to a load balancer over SSL, but connect to the WAI handler without SSL. In such a case, isSecure will be False, but from a user perspective, there is a secure connection.

remoteHost :: Request -> SockAddr

The client's host information.

pathInfo :: Request -> [Text]

Path info in individual pieces- the url without a hostname/port and without a query string, split on forward slashes.

queryString :: Request -> Query

Parsed query string information

requestBody :: Request -> Source IO ByteString

A request body provided as Source.

vault :: Request -> Vault

A location for arbitrary data to be shared by applications and middleware.

requestBodyLength :: Request -> RequestBodyLength

The size of the request body. In the case of a chunked request body, this may be unknown.

Since 1.4.0

requestHeaderHost :: Request -> Maybe ByteString

The value of the Host header in a HTTP request.

Since 2.0.0

requestHeaderRange :: Request -> Maybe ByteString

The value of the Range header in a HTTP request.

Since 2.0.0

lazyRequestBody :: Request -> IO ByteString

Get the request body as a lazy ByteString. This uses lazy I/O under the surface, and therefore all typical warnings regarding lazy I/O apply.

Since 1.4.1

Response

data Response

The strange structure of the third field or ResponseSource is to allow for exception-safe resource allocation. As an example:

 app :: Application
 app _ = return $ ResponseSource status200 [] $ \f -> bracket
     (putStrLn "Allocation" >> return 5)
     (\i -> putStrLn $ "Cleaning up: " ++ show i)
     (\_ -> f $ do
         yield $ Chunk $ fromByteString "Hello "
         yield $ Chunk $ fromByteString "World!")

Instances

Typeable Response

data FilePart

Information on which part to be sent. Sophisticated application handles Range (and If-Range) then create FilePart.

Constructors

FilePart

Fields

filePartOffset :: Integer

filePartByteCount :: Integer

filePartFileSize :: Integer

Instances

Show FilePart

type WithSource m a b = (Source m a -> m b) -> m b

Auxiliary type for ResponseSource.

Response composers

responseFile :: Status -> ResponseHeaders -> FilePath -> Maybe FilePart -> Response

Creating Response from a file.

responseBuilder :: Status -> ResponseHeaders -> Builder -> Response

Creating Response from Builder.

Some questions and answers about the usage of Builder here:

Q1. Shouldn't it be at the user's discretion to use Builders internally and then create a stream of ByteStrings?

A1. That would be less efficient, as we wouldn't get cheap concatenation with the response headers.

Q2. Isn't it really inefficient to convert from ByteString to Builder, and then right back to ByteString?

A2. No. If the ByteStrings are small, then they will be copied into a larger buffer, which should be a performance gain overall (less system calls). If they are already large, then blaze-builder uses an InsertByteString instruction to avoid copying.

Q3. Doesn't this prevent us from creating comet-style servers, since data will be cached?

A3. You can force blaze-builder to output a ByteString before it is an optimal size by sending a flush command.

responseLBS :: Status -> ResponseHeaders -> ByteString -> Response

Creating Response from ByteString. This is a wrapper for responseBuilder.

responseSource :: Status -> ResponseHeaders -> Source IO (Flush Builder) -> Response

Creating Response from Source.

responseSourceBracket :: IO a -> (a -> IO ()) -> (a -> IO (Status, ResponseHeaders, Source IO (Flush Builder))) -> IO Response

Creating Response with allocated resource safely released.

• The first argument is an action to allocate resource.
• The second argument is a function to release the resource.
• The third argument is a function to create (Status,ResponseHeaders,Source IO (Flush Builder)) from the resource.

responseRaw :: (Source IO ByteString -> Sink ByteString IO () -> IO ()) -> Response -> Response

Create a response for a raw application. This is useful for "upgrade" situations such as WebSockets, where an application requests for the server to grant it raw network access.

This function requires a backup response to be provided, for the case where the handler in question does not support such upgrading (e.g., CGI apps).

In the event that you read from the request body before returning a responseRaw, behavior is undefined.

Since 2.1.0

Response accessors

responseStatus :: Response -> Status

Accessing Status in Response.

responseHeaders :: Response -> ResponseHeaders

Accessing ResponseHeaders in Response.

responseToSource :: Response -> (Status, ResponseHeaders, WithSource IO (Flush Builder) b)

Converting the body information in Response to Source.