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

open Opium

module Person = struct
  type t =
    { name : string
    ; age : int
    }

  let yojson_of_t t = `Assoc [ "name", `String t.name; "age", `Int t.age ]

  let t_of_yojson yojson =
    match yojson with
    | `Assoc [ ("name", `String name); ("age", `Int age) ] -> { name; age }
    | _ -> failwith "invalid person json"
  ;;
end

let print_person_handler 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_handler req =
  let open Lwt.Syntax in
  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_handler req =
  let length = Body.length req.Request.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_handler req =
  Printf.sprintf "Hello, %s\n" (Router.param req "name")
  |> Response.of_plain_text
  |> Lwt.return
;;

let _ =
  App.empty
  |> App.post "/hello/stream" streaming_handler
  |> App.get "/hello/:name" print_param_handler
  |> App.get "/person/:name/:age" print_person_handler
  |> App.patch "/person" update_person_handler
  |> 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

module Reject_user_agent = struct
  let is_ua_msie =
    let re = Re.compile (Re.str "MSIE") in
    Re.execp re
  ;;

  let m =
    let filter handler req =
      match Request.header "user-agent" req with
      | Some ua when is_ua_msie ua ->
        Response.of_plain_text ~status:`Bad_request "Please upgrade your browser"
        |> Lwt.return
      | _ -> handler req
    in
    Rock.Middleware.create ~filter ~name:"Reject User-Agent"
  ;;
end

let index_handler _request = Response.of_plain_text "Hello World!" |> Lwt.return

let _ =
  App.empty
  |> App.get "/" index_handler
  |> App.middleware Reject_user_agent.m
  |> App.cmd_name "Reject UA"
  |> App.run_command
;;

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 --help to see the options that are available to you. For example:

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