README.cpp.md

Opium

Since version 0.19.0, Opium uses httpaf. The last version that used Cohttp can be found at https://github.com/rgrinberg/opium/tree/0.18.0

Executive Summary

Sinatra like web toolkit for OCaml based on httpaf & lwt

Design Goals

• Opium should be very small and easily learnable. A programmer should be instantly productive when starting out.

• Opium should be extensible using independently developed plugins. This is a Rack inspired mechanism borrowed from Ruby. The middleware mechanism in Opium is called Rock.

Installation

Stable

The latest stable version is available on opam

$ opam install opium

Master

$ opam pin add rock.~dev https://github.com/rgrinberg/opium.git
$ opam pin add opium.~dev https://github.com/rgrinberg/opium.git

Documentation

For the API documentation:

• Read the hosted documentation for the latest version.
• Build and view the docs for version installed locally using odig: odig doc opium.

The following tutorials walk through various usecases of Opium:

• A Lightweight OCaml Webapp Tutorial covers a simple webapp generating dynamic HTML on the backend and interfacing with PostgreSQL.

For examples of idiomatic usage, see the ./examples directory and the simple examples below.

Examples

Assuming the necessary dependencies are installed, $ dune build @example will compile all examples. The binaries are located in _build/default/example/.

You can execute these binaries directly, though in the examples below we use dune exec to run them.

Hello World

Here's a simple hello world example to get your feet wet:

$ cat hello_world.ml

#include "example/hello_world/main.ml"

compile and run with:

$ dune exec examples/hello_world.exe &

then call

curl http://localhost:3000/person/john_doe/42

You should see the greeting

{"name":"john_doe","age":42}

Middleware

The two fundamental building blocks of opium are:

• Handlers: Request.t -> Response.t Lwt.t
• Middleware: Rock.Handler.t -> Rock.Handler.t

Almost all of opium's functionality is assembled through various middleware. For example: debugging, routing, serving static files, etc. Creating middleware is usually the most natural way to extend an opium app.

Here's how you'd create a simple middleware turning away everyone's favourite browser.

#include "example/simple_middleware/main.ml"

Compile with:

$ dune build example/simple_middleware/main.ml

Here we also use the ability of Opium to generate a cmdliner term to run your app. Run your executable with -h to see the options that are available to you. For example:

# run in debug mode on port 9000
$ dune exec dune build example/simple_middleware/main.exe -- -p 9000 -d