Zerogw is a http to zeromq gateway. Which means it listens HTTP, parses request and sends it using zeromq socket (ZMQ_REQ). Then waits for the reply and responds with data received from zeromq socket.
Starting with v0.3 zerogw also supports WebSockets. Websockets are implemented by forwarding incoming messages using ZMQ_PUB socket, and listening clommands from ZMQ_SUB socket. Each WebSocket client can be subscribed to unlimited number of topics. Each zeromq message it either control message (e.g. subscription) or message to a specified topic which will be efficiently sent to every WebSocket subscribed to that particular topic.
Zerogw is written in C and uses libwebsite library for handling HTTP (which itself uses libev).
Zerogw is not a full-blown http server. It knows nothing about static files, caches, CGI, whatever. It knows some routing and that's almost it. That makes it very fast and perfectly scalable.
- Use it for:
- RPC's
- REST API's
- Ajax
- WebSockets
- Don't use it for:
- Serving static
- File uploads
- Huge full-blown web pages (maybe)
First two usually compiled statically, so you don't need them at runtime. Same with python. (Eventually, I'll release a bundle with precompiled configuration parser and embedded few other libraries for easier compiling :) )
./waf configure --prefix=/usr
./waf build
./waf install