Question

Is it possible to use Ruby as a scripting language with a HTTP server ? I’d like to be able to simply put some Ruby files in a web directory and be able to execute them from my browser – just like I did with PHP.

I have absolutely nothing against frameworks such as RoR, but I was told that I should first learn Ruby and only then move on with higher level frameworks. Of course, I could write some Ruby scripts and run them in the console, but I would prefer getting the input/output from my browser 🙂

Is that possible at all ? Otherwise, how hard would it be for me to build a quick and simple web framework ?

Answer 1

Depends on your server, but any language can be used with CGI Programming, including Ruby.

Generally speaking – to find out – put a basic “Hello World” .rb or .cgi file on your web server and chmod it’s permissions so it is executable to “others”:

chmod 755 YourScript.rb

When writing CGI scripts, you have to ensure that you have the appropriate shebang at the top of your file. For Ruby you’d probably use something like…

#!/usre/bin/ruby

(no promises this is the one)

Then write yourself a little hello world CGI script. The output of a CGI script is kind of a partial HTTP Response: (I’m not really a Ruby coder so this might be completely arse-backwards)

puts "Content-Type:text/plain\n"
puts "Content-Length:12\n"
puts "\n"
puts "Hello World!"

Visit the file the same way you would a PHP or Perl script and you’ll see if it works. Again; it depends on your server.