Plack Handbook - Using plackup

Day 3: Using plackup

In the Day 2 article I used the plackup command to run the Hello World PSGI application.

plackup is a command line launcher of PSGI applications inspired by Rack's rackup command. It can be used to run any PSGI application saved in a .psgi file with one of the PSGI web server backends using Plack handlers. The usage is simple: just pass a .psgi file path to the command:

 > plackup hello.psgi
 HTTP::Server::PSGI: Accepting connections at http://0:5000/

You can actually omit the filename if you're trying to run the file named app.psgi in the current directory.

The default backend is chosen using one of the following methods:

• If the environment variable PLACK_SERVER is set it is used.
• If some environment specific variable like GATEWAY_INTERFACE or FCGI_ROLE is set the backend for CGI or FCGI is used accordingly.
• If the loaded .psgi file uses a specific event module like AnyEvent, Coro or POE the equivalent and most appropriate backend is chosen automatically.
• Otherwise, fallback to the default "Standalone" backend implemented in the HTTP::Server::PSGI module.

You can also specify the backend yourself from the command line using the -s or --server switch:

 > plackup -s Starman hello.psgi

By default the plackup command enables three middleware components to aid development: Lint, AccessLog, and StackTrace. You can disable them with the -E (or --environment) switch:

 > plackup -E production -s Starman hello.psgi

In the case that you really want to use the development Plack environment but want to disable the default middleware there is the --no-default-middleware option.

Other command line switches can be passed to the server. You can specify the server listen port with:

 > plackup -s Starlet --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8080 hello.psgi
 Plack::Handler::Starlet: Accepting connections at http://127.0.0.1:8080/

or specify the unix domain socket the FCGI backend should listen on with:

 > plackup -s FCGI --listen /tmp/fcgi.sock app.psgi

For more options for plackup, run perldoc plackup from the command line. You'll see more plackup options and hacks tomorrow as well.