Cerise handles HTTP requests and responses via a custom HTTP 1.1 server. Another server such as Apache can be used as a front-end with appropriate configuration. However, a cerise application sees requests as coming from the cerise HTTP server and needs to know how the request and response are handled.

Request

HTTP requests are encapsulated in a Cerise::HTTP::Request object.

Client Connection

The client ip address and source port are available through client_ip and client_port accessors.

Request Line

The Request class provides access to the request method, path, and version via accessors of the same name.

• method the request method, one of the following symbols: :OPTIONS, :GET, :HEAD, :POST, :PUT, :DELETE, :TRACE
• path the request path, with any '+' or '%XX' encoded values decoded, and any '/.' or '/..' paths removed
• version the request version, a decimal number such as 1.1

Headers

The HTTP headers are available via a call to headers which returns a Hash of name-value pairs. Header names are converted to lowercase, so accessing the 'Connection' header should be done as request.headers['connection'] rather than request.headers['Connection']. This avoids a lowercase conversion on each request to a particular header.

When multiple headers with the same name are received, they are condensed into a single header with the values separated by commas.

Query

If a query is passed via the request URI or a POST body, it is available in query which is a hash of name-value pairs. The value is stored as a String, or an Array if multiple values are passed, unless the content is MIME encoded. In the case of MIME encoding the value may be a simple String or a Cerise::Mime::MimePart.

Body

The content, if any, of a request is available in body. The object contained in body can be of several types:

• IO if there is no body expected, or if there is a body of an unknown type.
• Cerise::Mime::MimeContent if the body is a MIME encoded POST.

Response

The HTTP response is encapsulated in a Cerise::HTTP::Response object.

Status Code

If necessary, the HTTP response code may be set via code. This takes either a Cerise::HTTP::StatusCode or a Cerise::HTTP::ErrorCode

Headers

Response headers can be accessed by calling headers which returns a Hash of key-value pairs as in the Request.

Body

The body of the response is stored in body and may be of any type that supports a size method to get the content length, and a http_write(io) method to write the content to the response IO stream. These methods already exist or are provided for the following types:

• String
• StringIO
• File (closed when the response is sent)
• Tempfile (closed when the response is sent)

Cookies

Cookies are supported in the request and response via the accessor cookies which returns an Array of Cerise::HTTP::Cookie objects.