FastCGI¶

FastCGI is a binary protocol that multiplexes requests over a single connection.

VSGI uses fcgi/FastCGI under the hood to provide a compliant implementation. See Installation for more information about the framework dependencies.

The whole request cycle is processed in a thread and dispatched in the main context, so it’s absolutely safe to use shared states.

By default, the FastCGI implementation listens on the file descriptor 0, which is conventionally the case when the process is spawned by an HTTP server.

The implementation only support file descriptors, UNIX socket paths and IPv4 addresses on the loopback interface.

Parameters¶

The only available parameter is backlog which set the depth of the listen queue when performing the accept system call.

var fastcgi_server = Server.new ("fastcgi", backlog: 1024);

Lighttpd¶

Lighttpd can be used to develop and potentially deploy your application. More details about the FastCGI module are provided in their wiki.

server.document-root = var.CWD + "/build/examples/fastcgi"
server.port = 3003

server.modules += ( "mod_fastcgi" )

fastcgi.server = (
    "" => (
        "valum" => (
            "socket"            => var.CWD + "/valum.sock",
            "bin-path"          => var.CWD + "/build/examples/fastcgi/fastcgi",
            "check-local"       => "disable",
            "allow-x-send-file" => "enable"
        )
    )
)

You can run the FastCGI example with Lighttpd:

./waf configure build --enable-examples
lighttpd -D -f examples/fastcgi/lighttpd.conf

Apache¶

Under Apache, there are two mods available: mod_fcgid is more likely to be available as it is part of Apache and mod_fastcgi is developed by those who did the FastCGI specifications.

<Location />
    FcgidWrapper /usr/libexec/app
</Location>

Apache 2.5 provide a mod_proxy_fcgi, which can serve FastCGI instance like it currently does for SCGI using the ProxyPass directive.

ProxyPass fcgi://localhost:3003

Nginx¶

Nginx expects a process to be already spawned and will communicate with it on a TCP port or a UNIX socket path. Read more about ngx_http_fastcgi_module.

location / {
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:3003;
}

If possible, it’s preferable to spawn processes locally and serve them through a UNIX sockets. It is safer and much more efficient considering that requests are not going through the whole network stack.

location / {
    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/app.sock;
}

To spawn and manage a process, it is recommended to use a systemd unit and socket. More details are available in Lighttpd wiki. Otherwise, it’s possible to use the spawn-fcgi tool.