Server Configuration

The [server] section in config.toml controls the behavior of salata-server, the standalone development and lightweight production server.

Configuration

[server]
hot_reload = true

hot_reload

Type: bool Default: true

When enabled, salata-server watches for file changes in the served directory and automatically reparses .slt files when they are modified. This also invalidates the parsed file cache, ensuring that the next request picks up the latest changes.

Set to false in production to avoid the overhead of file watching:

[server]
hot_reload = false

Usage

salata-server serves directories or individual .slt files over HTTP:

# Serve a directory on port 3000
salata-server ./my-site --port 3000

# Serve a single file
salata-server index.slt --port 3000

When serving a directory:

  • .slt files are processed through the Salata engine and the output is returned as the response
  • All other files (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, fonts, media) are served as static files with correct MIME types
  • Directory index files (e.g., index.slt) are served automatically when a directory path is requested

Framework Capabilities

salata-server is built on a mature Rust web framework (actix-web) that provides:

  • Cookies and headers -- full HTTP cookie and header handling
  • Sessions -- server-side session management
  • Redirects -- HTTP redirect responses
  • Compression -- gzip/brotli response compression
  • TLS/HTTPS -- built-in TLS support for secure connections
  • Keep-alive -- persistent HTTP connections
  • Chunked transfer -- streaming responses for large outputs
  • Content negotiation -- automatic content type handling
  • Static file serving -- efficient static file delivery with proper MIME types

Relationship to Other Binaries

salata-server depends on salata-cgi, which in turn depends on salata-core. The dependency chain is:

salata-server → salata-cgi → salata-core

This means salata-server includes all of the CGI security protections. The CGI configuration in [cgi] applies to requests processed by salata-server as well. See CGI Configuration for those settings.

Logging

When salata-server is running, it writes to the server log files configured in [logging.server]:

[logging.server]
access_log = "access.log"
error_log = "error.log"
format = "combined"

The access log records every request in the configured format. The error log captures server-level errors. Runtime errors from .slt file processing are written to the per-runtime log files (see Logging Configuration).