Cheyenne QuickStart

Download

Cheyenne binaries are available in download page. Select the download link that matches your OS. Typical archive size is around 500KB, so it will take just a couple of seconds to retrieve it.

Install

Select the folder on your local disk where you want to install Cheyenne and un-archive the downloaded file there. You can rename the extracted executable to just cheyenne. That's all folks!

Run

The archive contains only the main binary. Run the binary once, a text file named httpd.cfg is generated in the same folder. You can edit freely this configuration file to suit your needs.

If it's your first installation of Cheyenne, you might want to download also the source archive that contains lot of small useful examples to play with. Just put the binary in the Cheyenne/ folder, a custom httpd.cfg is already provided in the same folder.

Note for Windows users running Cheyenne from desktop:

The config file will be created in "All Users" application data folder, under \Cheyenne. Location of this system folder varies with Windows versions and installs. Typical location for Windows XP is: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Cheyenne\

Alternatively, you can also run Cheyenne from the source version, just make sure you use at least a REBOL kernel v2.7.6+. From the console, type :

>> change-dir %/path/to/Cheyenne/

>> do %cheyenne.r

or

>> do/args %cheyenne.r "command line arguments"

Windows

On Windows, you can launch Cheyenne just by clicking on its icon. An new icon will then sit in the system tray, giving you access to a control menu.

• Run as service: restart Cheyenne in Windows Services mode.
• Reload config: force Cheyenne to reload the config file after changes.
• Reset Workers: force Cheyenne to restart all the workers process (to flush webapps caches).
• Quit: ask Cheyenne to exit gracefully.

UNIX/Linux/OS X

On UNIX systems, ensure that you have root privileges to run the cheyenne binary as a daemon on default listening port 80. The easiest way to launch it is to "su root" :

$ su -

$ ./cheyenne &

If you prefer the SUDO way, you need to wrap the ./cheyenne call in a shell script :

$ cat > start.sh

#!/bin/sh

./cheyenne &

<CTRL-D>

then

$ chmod +x start.sh

$ sudo ./start.sh

Test

Now that Cheyenne is running, go to http://localhost/, you should see Cheyenne default page with a Cheyenne logo image. Congratulations, you have now a working web server! (You need to have installed the source archive to be able to view that page)

Configure

Edit the httpd.cfg configuration file with your favorite text editor.

To add your own web site definition, uncomment and edit the my.vhost.com virtual host definition at the end of the config file :

1. Replace my.vhost.com with the hostname of your web site.
2. Set the root-dir? to the root of your web site folder using a REBOL file! value (% as prefix).
3. Set the default(s) file(s) to be served using default? keyword. Indicate one of more REBOL file! values without prefixing with any path.
4. Save the file, and restart Cheyenne.
   
   

You can add as much virtual hosts as you need.

You can now start building your web site. The www/ folder in Cheyenne's source archive provides samples of static pages and CGI? or RSP scripts examples for generating dynamic content.

In order to test the CGI scripts provided in the www/ folder (from source archives), it is required to first adapt the shebang line to your local configuration:

• on UNIX: just open a REBOL console, go to the Cheyenne/ folder, and run the %cgi-conf.r script.
• on Windows: you have to manually edit the first line of www/show.cgi and www/perl/*.cgi files.

Write your first RSP script

RSP scripts are page templates where you can insert snippets of REBOL code anywhere in order to make some parts generated dynamically. The templates can be HTML, XML, CSS, in fact, it can be any kind of file.

RSP code uses <% and %> respectively as begin and end markers to delimit REBOL code inside the template.

In your favorite text editor, type the following code :

<% print "Hello Word!" %>

Create a www/ folder in the same folder as Cheyenne binary and save your script there as test.rsp file (the .rsp extension is what makes it recognized and interpreted by Cheyenne as an RSP script).

Now test the result on http://localhost/test.rsp. You should see "Hello World!" printed out. You can test your code also directly from the REBOL console :

>> read http://localhost/test.rsp

== "Hello World!"

If you have defined your own virtual host, for example, as :

domain.com [

root-dir %/c/web/

default [%index.rsp %index.html]

]

you would save your file to %/c/web/test.rsp and test the result on http://domain.com/test.rsp.

Quick FAQ

• Run Cheyenne listening on a different port: use the -p <port> command line option or uncomment the listen line in config file and list the port(s) you want Cheyenne to listen on.