Description
Cheyenne is a full-featured Apache-class web server implementation using the REBOL programming language. The project started just as a simple rewrite of our UniServe's HTTPd service to make it more flexible and
ended as creating Cheyenne !
Cheyenne is built on top of our UniServe async network framework, so Cheyenne's kernel inherits the gains of asynchronous I/O and mono-process lightweight design while being able to spawn worker processes to dispatch the load for heavier requests. So, Cheyenne has good scalability making it suitable for small or medium sized web sites. It can sustain the load of up to 500 simultaneous requests on servers with dual-core CPU.
It's still on beta stage, but it has reached a good level of features and stability, so it's already in use by several companies (including our own) and private users.
Besides providing a REBOL-based production level web server, Cheyenne can be a good choice for a small,
fast, personal web server. In order to achieve that, we're releasing free Cheyenne binary versions for
Windows, Linux and OSX platforms in addition to the raw source package.
The current beta version offers the following features :
- HTTP/1.0 and 1.1 protocols supported.
- Persistent connections for HTTP/1.1 and Keep-Alive support for HTTP/1.0.
- Browser cache management (headers: If-Modified-Since/Last-modified).
- Customizable HTTP error pages.
- Chunk-encoding transfers support (streamed data transfers for RSP).
- Memory caching for static pages.
- Full support for virtual hosts.
- Support for a wide range of OS (Windows, OSX and most of UNIX variants).
- Requests cut in phases for modular architecture (Apache-like).
- Built-in modules :
- mod-static : core features and static file handler.
- mod-alias : aliases and redirection support.
- mod-ssi : server side includes support.
- mod-action : dynamic handlers executed in background processes.
- mod-rsp : REBOL server pages support.
- mod-userdir : cheyenne's exe runtime user and group rights settings (for unix).
- mod-fastcgi : third-party applications support thru FastCGI interface (experimental).
- mod-extapp : launch and control third-party external servers.
- mod-embed : easy Cheyenne integration in any REBOL app.
- Configuration file with dedicated and expandable dialect.
- Update configuration in live without restarting the server.
- Support for "kill -HUP" UNIX signal for reloading configuration.
- REBOL CGI support with persistent processes (FastCGI performances).
- General CGI support (run any CGI script).
- RSP, REBOL Server Pages support including:
- WebApp container: web application framework.
- Complete API with dozens of useful functions built-in.
- Automatic sessions management.
- Database Access abstraction layer.
- SQL queries results transparent caching.
- Localization framework provided.
- Automatic output compression (using deflate method)
- Windows OS specific features:
- Can be controlled from system tray icon and menu.
- Can run as a Windows Service.