How to serve static files? (css)

Question

In Camping, how's it best to serve static files, such as css?

---

Right now I have

class Style < R '/cards.css'
    def get
         @headers["Content-Type"] = "text/css"
         File.read('cards.css')
    end
end 

Is there a smarter way involving Rack?

Answer 1

Camping's current (remember to install the latest version from RubyGems!) stance on static files is that the server should be responsible for serving static files.

If you use the camping-command then the public/-directory should automatically be served for you. Simply move cards.css into public/cards.css and localhost:3301/cards.css should return the file.

In production you should configure Apache/Nginx/whatever to serve files directly from the public/-directory.

---

If you can't configure Apache/Nginx (e.g. in Heroku) you can write a custom config.ru like this:

# Your Camping app:
app = MyApp
# Static files:
files = Rack::File.new('public')

# First try the static files, then "fallback" to the app 
run Rack::Cascade.new([files, app], [405, 404, 403])

(This is what Camping::Server does internally: https://github.com/camping/camping/blob/5201b49b753fe29dc3d2e96405d724bcaa7ad7d4/lib/camping/server.rb#L151)

---

For small files, you can store them in the DATA-block of your app.rb: https://github.com/camping/camping/blob/5201b49b753fe29dc3d2e96405d724bcaa7ad7d4/test/app_file.rb#L37

This is also useful if you want to keep everything inside one file.

Camping.goes :Foo

__END__

@@ /cards.css
...

Camping will use the file extension to set the correct Content-Type.

---

Also, the latest version of Camping has a serve-method which handles the Content-Type for you. You could simplify your controller to this:

class Style < R '/style.css'
  def get
    serve "cards.css", File.read("cards.css")
  end
end

---

I'll have to apologize for the bad documentation. For now you

Answer 2

Here's a suggestion originally by whytheluckystiff:

class Static < R '/static/(.+)'
  MIME_TYPES = {
    '.html' => 'text/html',
    '.css'  => 'text/css',
    '.js'   => 'text/javascript',
    '.jpg'  => 'image/jpeg',
    '.gif'  => 'image/gif'
  }
  PATH = File.expand_path(File.dirname(@__FILE__@))
  def get(path)
    @headers['Content-Type'] = MIME_TYPES[path[/\.\w+$/, 0]] || "text/plain" 
    unless path.include? ".." # prevent directory traversal attacks
      @headers['X-Sendfile'] = "#{PATH}/static/#{path}" 
    else
      @status = "403" 
      "403 - Invalid path" 
    end
  end
end

PS- Actually, you can find some other great ideas here, like file uploads, sessions, etc.