Inspired by @JEG2's talk at Rubyconf... Any ruby object, as a webapp! 'Cause we can. :-)

webapp.rb

require 'rubygems'
require 'rack'

class Object
  def webapp
    class << self
       define_method :call do |env|
         func, *attrs = env['PATH_INFO'].split('/').reject(&:empty?)
         [200, {}, send(func, *attrs)]
       end
    end
    self
  end
end

Rack::Handler::Mongrel.run [].webapp, :Port => 9292
#                         ^^^^^^^^^^^
#                              |          (x)
#                         ROFLSCALE DB ---/
#


# http://localhost:9292/push/1  -> 1
# http://localhost:9292/push/2  -> 12
# http://localhost:9292/push/3  -> 123

# http://localhost:9292/to_a    -> 123

# http://localhost:9292/pop     -> 3
# http://localhost:9292/shift   -> 1

# Implementations in other languages (thanks guys!):
# Node.js: https://gist.github.com/700995
# Groovy: https://gist.github.com/702337
# Python: https://gist.github.com/702001
# Perl w/ plack: https://gist.github.com/703620
# Perl w/ continuity: https://gist.github.com/703651
# Io: https://gist.github.com/703431

# Great explanation of how this works in Ruby on Stackoverflow:
# http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4198883/exposing-any-ruby-object-over-the-web

Luc, you have to be careful with your version of Ruby. Rack expects an object on which you can call "each". Under Ruby 1.9, String does not have an .each method. Chances are, Rack is erroring out because of that. A simple workaround would be wrap every returned object into a "StringIO.new(send(...).to_s))".

Hello,
Hmm, sounds strange. In fact I'm using Ruby 1.8.7

luc@venus:~/Projects/rubyobject ruby --version
ruby 1.8.7 (2009-06-12 patchlevel 174) [universal-darwin10.0]

Should it work with this version ?
Thanks a lot for your help.
Regards,
Luc

Yep, 1.8.7 should work. What does your console output when you run the server and make that request?

hmmm, you'r right, it's talking about the each method... but I'm running ruby 1.8.7

config.ru:1:in new' config.ru:1 Wed Nov 24 16:03:46 +0100 2010: Read error: #<NoMethodError: undefined methodeach' for Array:Class>
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rack-1.2.1/lib/rack/chunked.rb:37:in each' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rack-1.2.1/lib/rack/handler/mongrel.rb:80:inprocess'
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.1.5/lib/mongrel.rb:159:in process_client' /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.1.5/lib/mongrel.rb:158:ineach'
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.1.5/lib/mongrel.rb:158:in `process_cli

Right, you're seeing the problem I described below. You need to convert everything to a StringIO and then you're good to go.

So I updated it a bit in my fork; it removes url encoding and returns json serialization of results

https://gist.github.com/737959

@danny: nice!

How come you didn’t settle with def self.call(env) instead?

require 'rack'

class Object
  def to_webapp
    def self.call(env)
      func, *attrs = env['PATH_INFO'].split('/').reject(&:empty?)
      [200, {}, send(func || :inspect, *attrs)]
    end
    self
  end
end

Rack::Handler::WEBrick.run [].to_webapp, :Port => 9292