webserv

This project's aim is to build a webserver adhering to the HTTP/1.1 protocol.

How to Run

Requirements

• make
• C++98

Execution

git clone [email protected]:winstonallo/webserv.git
cd webserv
make
./webserv

The logs printed to the console will show you which URL to look up in order to look at the static website we programmed for testing purposes.

The default configuration shows many of the implemented features.

Links

Once executed with the default configuration, follow these links to test functionality:

• CGI (Python)
• CGI (Bash)
• File upload and deletion
• Session management

Requirements

webserv must:

• Support non-blocking I/O operations for up to 1024 concurrent clients using only one select call, which must check for reads and writes at the same time.
• Support client timeout in case oh hanging requests.
• Have accurate response status codes.
• Generate default error pages if none are provided in the configuration.
• Be able to serve a fully static website.
• Support file uploads.
• Implement at least GET, POST and DELETE methods.
• Keep 100% availability during stress tests with siege.
• Be able to listen to multiple ports.
• Support configuration:
  • Choose the port and host of each server.
  • Set up server names (or not).
  • Set up default error pages.
  • Limit client body size.
  • Set up locations with one or multiple of the following rules:
    • Define a list of allowed methods for the location.
    • Define a HTTP redirection.
    • Define a root directory.
    • Define an index file.
    • Enable/Disable directory listing.
    • Execute CGI.
    • Enable file upload, including target upload directory.
• Support cookies.
• Support session management.
• Handle multiple CGI interpreters.

Configuration

We chose a configuration format inspired by Nginx. Here is a fully-fledged configuration for running a test server, serving static files and showing execution of CGI scripts.

Rules

The whole configuration must be encapsulated in a webserv block as follows:

webserv {
    ...
}

Inside of the block, any amount of servers can be configured:

webserv {
    server {
        ...
    }

    server {
        ...
    }
}

Options

Server Block

Each server block has multiple levels of configuration. The only required options are:

webserv {
    server {
        host        localhost;          # Host, localhost or IP address.
        port        8080; 
    }
}

Every other configuration option has a default value and can therefore be left out.

Option	Description	Default Value
server_name	Host name of the server	default.com
access_log	Access log path	access.log
client_max_body_size	Maximum request body size	1M
index	Default file to serve
root	Root of server (all paths will be relative to this)	/
allowed_methods	List of HTTP methods to allow for this server	GET
autoindex	Whether to list the content of the server's root (only applicable if index is not set)	false

Location Block

For more fine-grained configuration, a specific location inside a server can be configured to have different rules. The syntax is as follows:

webserv {
    server {
        host        localhost;
        port        8080;
        root        /root/;

        location /data { 
            ...
        }
    }
}

The location path is relative to the server's root - above examples expanded path will be /root/data. Any configuration options set here will override the server's configuration for this location.

Option	Description	Default Value
index	Default file to serve
root	Root of server (all paths will be relative to this)	/
allowed_methods	List of HTTP methods to allow for this server	GET
autoindex	Whether to list the content of the server's root (only applicable if index is not set)	false
return	Specify a redirect path and status code	null
alias	Define another directory the location should map to	null

Location Block: CGI

A location block pointing to the /cgi-bin location will be treated as a CGI block, which supports setting a handler (e.g., /usr/bin/python3) and an extension (e.g., .py), additionally to all other location configuration options.

When receiving a request for a file ending with extension, the server will try to execute it with handler.