WEBrick is a Ruby library providing simple HTTP web servers. It uses basic access authentication and digest access authentication for different kinds of servers that it can create - HTTP based server, HTTPS server, proxy server and virtual-host server. Construction of several non-HTTP servers such as the Day Time Server which uses the Daytime Protocol rather than the HTTP is also facilitated by WEBrick. It is used by the Ruby on Rails and Padrino frameworks to test applications in a development environment as well as production mode for small loads. It is now a part of Ruby standard library. WEBrick follows open-source distribution model. History WEBrick has originated from an idea in an article named "Internet Programming with Ruby" in Open Design, a Japanese Engineering magazine. It was initially developed as a toolkit for the development of HTTP servers using Ruby. Due to the nature of open source model and contributions from several Ruby developers across the world, WEBrick was greatly augmented and was eventually bundled as a standard library from Ruby 1.8.0. The WEBrick ERB Handler and WEBrick Proxy Server were first introduced in Ruby 1.9.3, while the WEBrick Virtual Host was included from Ruby 2.0.0. Usage A WEBrick server understands only the language of servlets. It uses multiple independent servlets, joined together by the programmer, for handling CGI scripts, ERB pages, Ruby Blocks and directory listings to provide a web application or to service a request URI on a per-host or per-path basis. For example, HTTPServlet::FileHandler, HTTPServlet::ProcHandler, HTTPServlet::CGIHandler, HTTPServlet::ERBHandler are the examples of the standard servlets that WEBrick comes with. WEBrick is included in Ruby and hence is available to the user at no additional cost. WEBrick has been written completely in Ruby and supports several standards such as HTTP, HTML and even RHTML. During the development stage, there is no necessity for the installation of a discrete web server since WEBrick is already built into the Rails framework. It is the default web server when the Ruby application is deployed without any procfile on Rails. Furthermore, since being implemented entirely in Ruby, direct calls can be made from WEBrick to the Rails application. On the whole, it provides a reliable, low configuration option for testing in development. Instantiating servers Instantiating an HTTP server The following commands are used to start an HTTP Server at the required port. # Include WEBrick class with require require 'webrick' # FileHandler