Sneaky Abstractions

Welcome to the past!

In the beginning of the Internet, before there was even a Web 0.1, there was Gopher. It was awesome. Oh, wait, no it wasn’t. That’s why no-one uses it anymore. But it didn’t suck, and most decent Web browsers still support it. So, how can you integrate this with your Rails app to make your very own phlog? You can’t really, because Rails is HTTP and Gopher is not. But you can write a simple Gopher server that uses ActiveRecord to fetch your blog posts:

require File.dirname(__FILE__)+'/../config/environment'
require 'socket'

hostname = "tore.darell.no"
port = 70
server = TCPServer.new('0.0.0.0', port)
while session = server.accept
  request = session.gets.chomp

  begin
    if request.blank? #index
      session.puts "iWelcome to my phlog.\tfake\t(NULL)\t0"
      session.puts "i \tfake\t(NULL)\t0"
      Post.find_published(:all, :order => "created_at DESC").each do |post|
        session.puts "0#{post.title}\t#{post.slug}\t#{hostname}\t#{port}"
      end
    else #a post
      post = Post.find_by_slug(request)
      session.puts "#{post.title} by Tore Darell on #{post.created_at.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M')}"
      session.puts
      session.puts post.summary
      session.puts
      session.puts post.body
    end
  rescue Exception => e
    session.puts request.blank? ? "iFAIL\tfake\t(NULL)\t0" : "OH NOES :("
  ensure
    session.close
  end
end

It loads the entire Rails environment, which probably certainly isn’t necessary, but it’s just easier that way. To start the server, you probably have to be root. Also, remember to set RAILS_ENV if necessary:

RAILS_ENV=production sudo ruby script/gopher &

And just like that your blog has been transformed into a living relic from the early 90s. Take that, Web 2.0!