Beru

Monocle, the Epub render I’m using, expects the books to be coming from a server. While you can work around this, it’s ugly, hacky, and fragile. (I should know; I wrote the work-around.) So my plan is to put a simple HTTP server in the app to serve up the components of the Epub.

In Python (oh, dear sweet Python, how I miss thee) it is dead simple to fire up a HTTP server. In QML, not so much. So I was pleasantly surprised to find QHttpServer, a HTTP server written in Qt. With my previous experience, it was rather straightforward to add the QML bindings.

Thus, if you check out my branch, you can write a HTTP server in QML:

import QtQuick 2.0
import HttpServer 1.0

Item {
    width: 300; height: 200

    HttpServer {
        id: server
        Component.onCompleted: listen("127.0.0.1", 5000)
        
        onNewRequest: { // request, response
            response.writeHead(200)
            response.write("<h1>Hello, world!</h1>")
            response.end()
        }
    }

    Text {
        anchors.centerIn: parent
        text: "Serving at <a href='http://localhost:5000'>localhost:5000</a>"
        onLinkActivated: Qt.openUrlExternally(link)
    }
}

One of the interesting things about QHttpServer is that it’s completely event-driven. Unlike Python’s BaseHttpServer, you don’t need to put it in its own thread. Instead, it just pops to life in the main thread whenever a request comes in. That’s pretty cool.

Don’t worry, Python, I still love you plenty.