Opium

The current master branch is a WIP port to httpaf. If you are looking for the last version published to opam (that was using Cohttp), please take a look 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 opium_kernel --dev-repo
$ opam pin add opium --dev-repo

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 @examples will compile all examples. The binaries are located in _build/default/examples/.

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

open Opium.Std
open Lwt.Syntax

module Person = struct
  type t =
    { name : string
    ; age : int
    }
  [@@deriving yojson]
end

let print_person =
  get "/person/:name/:age" (fun req ->
      let name = Router.param req "name" in
      let age = Router.param req "age" |> int_of_string in
      let person = { Person.name; age } |> Person.yojson_of_t in
      Lwt.return (Response.of_json person))
;;

let update_person =
  patch "/person" (fun req ->
      let+ json = Request.to_json_exn req in
      let person = Person.t_of_yojson json in
      Logs.info (fun m -> m "Received person: %s" person.Person.name);
      Response.of_json (`Assoc [ "message", `String "Person saved" ]))
;;

let streaming =
  post "/hello/stream" (fun req ->
      let length = Body.length req.body in
      let content = Body.to_stream req.Request.body in
      let body = Lwt_stream.map String.uppercase_ascii content in
      Response.make ~body:(Body.of_stream ?length body) () |> Lwt.return)
;;

let print_param =
  get "/hello/:name" (fun req ->
      Lwt.return
        (Response.of_plain_text @@ Printf.sprintf "Hello, %s\n" (Router.param req "name")))
;;

let _ =
  Logs.set_reporter (Logs_fmt.reporter ());
  Logs.set_level (Some Logs.Debug);
  App.empty
  |> streaming
  |> print_param
  |> print_person
  |> update_person
  |> App.run_command
;;

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.

open Opium.Std

let is_substring ~substring =
  let re = Re.compile (Re.str substring) in
  Re.execp re
;;

let reject_ua ~f =
  let filter handler req =
    match Httpaf.Headers.get req.Request.headers "user-agent" with
    | Some ua when f ua ->
      Response.make
        ~status:`Bad_request
        ~body:(Body.of_string "Please upgrade your browser\n")
        ()
      |> Lwt.return
    | _ -> handler req
  in
  Rock.Middleware.create ~filter ~name:"reject_ua"
;;

let _ =
  App.empty
  |> get "/" (fun _ ->
         Response.make ~body:(Body.of_string "Hello World\n") () |> Lwt.return)
  |> middleware (reject_ua ~f:(is_substring ~substring:"MSIE"))
  |> App.cmd_name "Reject UA"
  |> App.run_command
;;

Compile with:

$ dune build examples/middleware_ua.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 examples/middleware_ua.exe -- -p 9000 -d