Advanced Webserver

1. Description
2. Modes
3. Usage
4. Building

Description

This is a simple C++ project to deploy an HTTPS server mostly from scratch with options to configure URI relocation and different URI handling modes. Note this server only supports Linux environments at the moment.

Modes

The server includes four different request handling modes including:

• file_io
• folder_io
• executable
• cascading_executable

File_IO

Let you define a static location on your disk to map to a specific URI from a request. Example:

Setup: AdvancedWebserver-Configure-Tool / file_io /opt/Website/index.html text/html

https://127.0.0.1:8081/: / is mapped to /opt/Website/index.html file on my hard drive and returns the file.

Folder_IO

Let you define a dynamic location on your disk to map to a range of URI's from a request. Example:

Setup: AdvancedWebserver-Configure-Tool / folder_io /opt/Website/ text/html

https://127.0.0.1:8081/: / is mapped to the /opt/Website/ directory and will return the corresponding files in the directory. e.g.

• https://127.0.0.1:8081/index.html -> /opt/Website/index.html
• https://127.0.0.1:8081/home.html -> /opt/Website/home.html

Executable

Let you define a static path to a program to map to a specific URI from a request. This program will recieve a file path as a command line argument that will contain a file with an HTTP request from the server. The program will then do some calculations defined by the author and return an HTTP response to the same file provided by the argument. Example:

Setup: AdvancedWebserver-Configure-Tool /run executable /opt/Website/RunProgram

https://127.0.0.1:8081/run -> /opt/Website/RunProgram $FILE_PATH

Cascading_Executable

Let you define a static path to a program to map to a range of URI's from a request. This program will recieve a file path as a command line argument that will contain a file with an HTTP request from the server. The program will then do some calculations defined by the author and return an HTTP response to the same file provided by the argument. Example:

Setup: AdvancedWebserver-Configure-Tool /run cascading_executable /opt/Website/RunProgram

https://127.0.0.1:8081/run/arg1 -> /opt/Website/RunProgram $FILE_PATH https://127.0.0.1:8081/run/arg2 -> /opt/Website/RunProgram $FILE_PATH https://127.0.0.1:8081/run/arg3 -> /opt/Website/RunProgram $FILE_PATH

Usage

Note that a valid SSL certificate and key must be provided to the server through command line arguments

Both tools can be run with --help flag for more information.

Run the build/src/Server/AdvancedWebserver file to start the server. Run the build/src/ConfigureTool/AdvancedWebserver-Configure-Tool to configure the server.

If the sudo cmake --install build command has been run, the programs can be accessed by just typing AdvancedWebserver and AdvancedWebserver-Configure-Tool respectively to launch the programs

Building

Prerequisites

Install OpenSSL Static development libraries. (On some Linux distros the development package doesn't include the static libraries and will require you to manually compile OpenSSL libraries statically)

Building

# Clone the source code and the submodules
git clone --recursive https://github.com/GustavJones/AdvancedWebserver.git
cd AdvancedWebserver

# Configure the project to the build directory
cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=OFF

# Build the source code to the output build directory
cmake --build build -j `nproc` # Run nproc first and replace result here

Install

After the build you can run sudo cmake --install build and enter your password to install the AdvancedWebserver and AdvancedWebserver-Configure-Tool to /usr/local/bin/ directory