ATTENTION: Tempwork has been renamed "Hat Rack"

New Github Repository

New NPM Package

tempwork

A simple server for launching mini-apps temporarily.

tempwork will map URL prefixes to launch simple web service commands you configure and proxy requests to them. They'll be terminated after 10 seconds, but restarted if more requests come in to them.

tempwork is a prototype, but has a short and robust time line:

• Configurable timeout with keep-alive as requests come in
• Static file configuration for services
• Logging about worker lifespan
• Recycling ports when the max port number is reached

tempwork is useful if you build lots of mini-projects, want to host them all somewhere, but none of them will get traffic often enough to support running 24/7.

Usage

npm install -g tempwork
tempwork --config=tempwork.conf

Where tempwork.conf is a YAML file like this:

workers:
  test_worker:
    command: "node"
    arguments:
      - "testworker.js"
    prefix: "test"
    port_env: "PORT"
  someproject:
    host: "www.someproject.local"
    cwd: "~/projects/someproject/"
    env:
      PATH: "~/.virtualenvs/someproject/bin/:~/projects/someproject/node_modules/.bin/"
    command: "~/.virtualenvs/someproject/bin/python manage.py runserver $PORT"
  default:
    static: "noservice.html"

workers defines one or more workers and must define a "default" worker.

command is a command to run to launch the worker if it is not working, and will be run with the list of defined arguments. If the command has space-separated arguments, it will be run with a shell and ignores the arguments option.

prefix is the URL prefix that will be routed to this worker. The worker will not see the prefix.

port_env is an environment variable to launch the worker with defining what port number it should listen to.

host defines a hostname to route traffic from to the worker.

env defines one or more environment variables for the command.

cwd defines a current working directory to change to when running the worker.

static defines a file the service should read instead of launching a worker.