xyproto / gnetlark

:bird: Fast HTTP server that supports handlers written in Starlark

Fast HTTP server that supports handlers written in Starlark.

Pronounced as "jetlark", just to keep people on their toes.

Features and limitations

• It's fast, due to the excellent performance of gnet.
• Starlark is easy to learn and use. It is similar to Python.
• The selection of functions available from Starlark scripts is currently a bit limited. There is no file or database access.
• gnetlark offers an easy and fun way to try out the Starlark programming language.
• Support for providing and calling REST/JSON APIs might be added in the future.
• Serving static files is currently not supported, unless you embed them.

Installation

Quick installation of the development version, using Go 1.17 or later:

go install github.com/xyproto/gnetlark/cmd/gnetlark@latest

Another way of building and installing the server:

git clone https://github.com/xyproto/gnetlark
cd gnetlark/cmd/gnetlark
go build
sudo install -Dm755 gnetlark /usr/bin/gnetlark

Configuration

One way to allow access to port 80 on Linux:

sudo setcap cap_net_bind_service=+ep /usr/bin/gnetlark

It's also possible to specify a port with --port or run it as root (not recommended).

Depends on

• gnet, for serving HTTP.
• starlark-go, for running Starlark scripts.

Screenshot

Screenshot of a page served by index.star, with the server running on port 7711:

Served in 0ms:

Example

A short Starlark script for handling requests and outputting "Hello, World!" (hello.star):

def index(status, msg, method, path, date):
    return "HTTP/1.1 " + status + "\r\nServer: gnetlark\r\nDate: " + date + "\r\nContent-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8\r\n\r\n" + "Hello, World!"

The "Hello World" page can be served by a command like this:

gnetlark -main hello.star -port 7711

General info

• Version: 1.0.1
• Author: Alexander F. Rødseth <[email protected]>
• License: BSD-3

gnetlark's Issues

Add support for interacting with SQLite databases

Currently, gnetlark is fast and sweet, but it completely lacks a way to communicate with a database or interact with the filesystem. With support for SQLite, there would be at least one way to interact with the host system, and to have some sort of state.

This is a feature request for adding SQLite support, so that accessing a SQLite database is possible, from within the Starlark language, when running gnetlark.