From: Brian Candler <B.Candler@...>
Date: 2004-11-02T00:32:57+09:00
Subject: Re: fastcgi + eruby

> What is the best way to handle .rhtml (eruby) documents using fastcgi?
> 
> I'm using Linux, Apache2 and fcgi 0.8.4.
> 
> I'm trying to convert a site from mod_ruby to fastcgi so I can run some 
> comparison tests.
> 
> Converting .rbx was easy but I'm not sure how to best handle .rhtml.

Tricky, because it's a different way of working.

If you change each .rhtml page into a separate fcgi script, then you will
have a separate persistent process for every page, which you probably don't
want if there are hundreds of pages.

You can write a simple fcgi program which reads a filename from the URL,
fetches and compiles the appropriate page (or gets it from a cache) and runs
it: e.g.

http://www.example.com/fcgi-bin/view/foo.rhtml

But then your URLs change. You could use mod_rewrite to chomp your URLs into
the appropriate new format though. Or you might be able to use "Action
handler-name" in the appropriate Directory / Location section.

I wouldn't just do it for the fun of it, or for making speed comparisons
(almost certainly the speed will be the same or slightly slower than
mod_ruby, since you're still doing the eruby work in Ruby, and you have the
extra overhead of communicating with a separate worker process rather than
the Apache httpd process running the Ruby itself)

I'd suggest you only do it if you're moving to an environment where
mod_fastcgi is available but mod_ruby isn't.

Cheers,

Brian.