[Mongrel] Writing a mod_put HttpHandler

[cremes.devlist at mac.com]

I'm looking at writing a Mongrel handler that mimics the behavior of  
the Apache mod_put [1]. It allows for the streaming upload of very  
large (GB) files; it also supports resumable upload.

Before I get too involved, I'd like to ask if my reading of the  
mongrel source code is correct, i.e. what I want to do isn't  
currently possible.

Looking at the class HttpRequest I see that request bodies larger  
than Mongrel::MAX_BODY get streamed to a tempfile before they are  
handed off to any handlers registered in the chain. Things were  
looking up for me when I saw the HttpHandler#request_progress call,  
but it doesn't hand the body off to the handler (only the params). In  
other words, mongrel would need to stream the entire upload to a  
tempfile before it hands off to my "PUT handler," right?

If that's the case, any suggestions on how I could hack the code to  
hook into the HttpRequest class and redirect the write from  
"tempfile" to the real permanent file? This code path would only need  
to be activated for HTTP PUT where Content-Length is greater than  
Mongrel::MAX_BODY. Of course, I'd like that hack to allow all other  
requests to work normally.

Thanks for any input and pointers.

If you think I'm nuts for looking at Mongrel to do this operation,  
suggest another method that doesn't involve Apache and mod_put.

cr

[1] http://www.gknw.at/development/apache/httpd-2.0/unix/modules/ 
mod_put-2.0.8.tar.gz