Ruby TCPServer fails to work sometimes - ruby

Question

I've implemented a very simple kind of server in Ruby, using TCPServer. I have a Server class with serve method:
def serve
# Do the actual serving in a child process
#pid = fork do
# Trap signal sent by #stop or by pressing ^C
Signal.trap('INT') { exit }
# Create a new server on port 2835 (1 ounce = 28.35 grams)
server = TCPServer.new('localhost', 2835)
#logger.info 'Listening on http://localhost:2835...'
loop do
socket = server.accept
request_line = socket.gets
#logger.info "* #{request_line}"
socket.print "message"
socket.close
end
end
end
and a stop method:
def stop
#logger.info 'Shutting down'
Process.kill('INT', #pid)
Process.wait
#pid = nil
end
I run my server from the command line, using:
if __FILE__ == $0
server = Server.new
server.logger = Logger.new(STDOUT)
server.logger.formatter = proc { |severity, datetime, progname, msg| "#{msg}\n" }
begin
server.serve
Process.wait
rescue Interrupt
server.stop
end
end
The problem is that, sometimes, when I do ruby server.rb from my terminal, the server starts, but when I try to make a request on localhost:2835, it fails. Only after several requests it starts serving some pages. In other cases, I need to stop/start the server again for it to properly serve pages. Why is this happening? Am I doing something wrong? I find this very weird...
The same things applies to my specs: I have some specs defined, and some Capybara specs. Before each test I create a server and start it and after each test I stop the server. And the problem persists: tests sometimes pass, sometimes fail because the requested page could not be found.
Is there something fishy going on with my forking?
Would appreciate any answer because I have no more place to look...

Answer 1

Your code is not an HTTP server. It is a TCP server that sends the string "message" over the socket after receiving a newline.
The reason that your code isn't a valid HTTP server is that it doesn't conform to the HTTP protocol. One of the many requirements of the HTTP protocol is that the server respond with a message of the form
HTTP/1.1 <code> <reason>
Where <code> is a number and <reason> is a human-readable "status", like "OK" or "Server Error" or something along those lines. The string message obviously does not conform to this requirement.
Here is a simple introduction to how you might build a HTTP server in ruby: https://practicingruby.com/articles/implementing-an-http-file-server