If you want to check it out, install Node and start the sample app with `node app.js`. There are no other dependencies.
Picard uses Haml thanks to creationix’s haml-js project.
A sample application:
require('./config/env')
get('/', function(){
return { text: 'Hello Universe' }
})
get('/haml', function(){
return {
template: 'index',
print_date: function () {
return (new Date()).toDateString();
},
current_user: {
name: "Jean-Luc Picard",
bio: "Captain of the USS Enterprise"
}
}
})
var commands = [
{ command: 'Make it so' },
{ command: 'You have the bridge, Number One' }
]
get('/json', function(){
return {
type: 'application/json',
body: JSON.stringify(commands)
}
})
get('/partial', function(){
return {
template: 'partial_test',
layout: 'application',
commands: commands
}
})
get('/redirect/?', function(request){
// the '?' at the end of the route
// makes the trailing slash optional
return request.redirect('/haml')
})
post('/order', function(){
return { text: 'Tea, Earl Grey, Hot' }
})
put('/weapon/:id', function(params){
return { text: '<p>Phaser with id #' + params.id + ' set to stun</p>' }
})
del('/fire/:number', function(params){
var text = '<p>Borg cube destroyed using ' + params.number + ' photon torpedoes</p>'
if ( Number(params.number) > 12 )
text = '<h1>Maximum yield, full spread!</h1>'
return { text: text }
})
get(/\/regex\/(.*)\/(.*)/, function(params){
return { text: params.captures[0] + ' ' + params.captures[1] }
})
get(/\/selective\/(\d+)/, function(params){ // must be a number
return { text: params.captures[0] }
})
get('/cookie', function(request){
// a simple key-value cookie
request.cookie('hobby', 'literature')
// cookie with all options
var expires=new Date()
expires.setDate(expires.getDate() + 30)
request.cookie('user', 'LCDR Data', {
domain: '.your_domain.org',
path: '/cookie',
expires: expires,
secure: true
})
// will render 'literature'
return { text: '<h1>' + request.cookie('hobby').value + '</h1>' }
})
// Below we make a GET request to /haml (to simulate an http service call).
// Rather than block other processing while waiting for a response,
// we attach event listeners to the request without returning a value from our callback.
// Only when the GET has returned do we render the result via the 'on_screen' method.
get('/async_example', function(params){
// This could easily be a call to CouchDB or other service
var local = require('http').createClient(9900, 'localhost')
var request = local.request('GET', '/haml', {'host': 'localhost'})
var body = ''
request.addListener('response', function (response) {
response.addListener('data', function (chunk) {
body += chunk
})
response.addListener('end', function(){
params.on_screen({ body: body })
})
}).end()
})
// You can also use helper functions for logic that is shared across routes.
// Every Picard callback function gets called with a request/environment
// variable as the single argument. Here we pass this object to our helper
// function for evaluation:
var authorized = function(request){
return (request.parsed_url().pathname == '/holodeck') // very simple example
}
get('/holodeck', function(request){
if(authorized(request))
return 'Welcome'
else
return request.redirect('/')
})
See the sample app for more examples.
The included sinatra_app_for_benchmarks is a Ruby port of the Picard sample_app. According to these benchmarks, the Picard app on node.js runs about twice as fast as the Sinatra app on Thin and can handle around 10x as many requests per second for some routes (due to the asynchronous nature of node.js). Below is a sample output of the benchmarks:
$ cd sinatra_app_for_benchmarks $ ruby benchmark.rb Running Sinatra specs 10 times: Finished in 0.083148 seconds Finished in 0.083371 seconds Finished in 0.112633 seconds Finished in 0.083442 seconds Finished in 0.083424 seconds Finished in 0.082644 seconds Finished in 0.083286 seconds Finished in 0.084136 seconds Finished in 0.113771 seconds Finished in 0.08323 seconds Average time was 0.0893085 seconds Running Picard specs 10 times: Finished in 0.040487 seconds Finished in 0.040587 seconds Finished in 0.041176 seconds Finished in 0.042727 seconds Finished in 0.04083 seconds Finished in 0.040875 seconds Finished in 0.040128 seconds Finished in 0.039876 seconds Finished in 0.040797 seconds Finished in 0.041551 seconds Average time was 0.0409034 seconds Picard was 2.18 times faster!
$ ab -n 5000 -c 50 http://127.0.0.1:3000/haml ... Server Software: thin Server Hostname: 127.0.0.1 Server Port: 3000 Document Path: /haml Requests per second: 95.83 [#/sec] (mean) Time per request: 521.740 [ms] (mean) Time per request: 10.435 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
$ ab -n 5000 -c 50 http://127.0.0.1:9900/haml ... Server Software: Picard Server Hostname: 127.0.0.1 Server Port: 9900 Document Path: /haml Requests per second: 988.58 [#/sec] (mean) Time per request: 50.578 [ms] (mean) Time per request: 1.012 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
988.58 requests per second for Picard verses 95.83 for Sinatra!
Specs: MacBook Pro 2 × 2.53 GHz, 4 GB RAM, Ruby v1.8.7 on Thin 1.2.5, node.js v0.1.18
Note: The Sinatra app is not event driven, so to be fair I should really be testing Picard verses Sinatra + EventMachine. However, this illustrates the fact that node.js is evented out of the box, and obviates the need for separate libraries like EventMachine.
Copyright © 2009 Kellen Presley
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
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