WebServ - HTTP Server Implementation

📖 Overview

WebServ is a lightweight HTTP server implementation in C++98. This project is developed to understand the internals of HTTP protocol and web servers, providing hands-on experience with network programming, concurrent connections handling, and HTTP protocol implementation.

"This is when you finally understand why a URL starts with HTTP"

✨ Features

• Fully compliant with HTTP/1.1 protocol specifications
• Non-blocking I/O operations using poll/select/epoll/kqueue
• Multiple virtual servers support with different configurations
• Method support: GET, POST, DELETE
• Static file serving with directory listings
• CGI support for dynamic content
• File uploads handling
• Error pages customization
• Redirections configuration
• Client body size limit configuration

🧰 Requirements

• C++ compiler with C++98 support
• Make build system
• UNIX/Linux environment (or MacOS)
• No external libraries (standard library only)

🏗️ Project Structure

webserv/
├── src/
│   ├── config/        # Configuration parsing
│   ├── http/          # HTTP protocol handling
│   ├── socket/        # Socket operations
│   ├── server/        # Main server implementation
│   ├── cgi/           # CGI implementation
│   ├── utils/         # Utility functions and classes
│   └── main.cpp       # Entry point
├── include/           # Header files
├── conf/              # Configuration examples
├── www/               # Web content examples
├── tests/             # Test scripts and files
├── Makefile           # Build script
└── README.md          # This file

🚀 Building and Running

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/jos-felipe/webserv.git
cd webserv

# Build the project
make

# Run with default configuration
./webserv

# Run with custom configuration
./webserv conf/custom.conf

⚙️ Configuration File

The server uses a configuration file inspired by NGINX to set up different server instances and routes. Here's a basic example:

# Simple server configuration
server {
    listen 8080;
    server_name example.com;
    root /var/www/html;
    
    # Default error pages
    error_page 404 /404.html;
    error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
    
    # Client body size limit (in bytes)
    client_max_body_size 10M;
    
    # Route configuration
    location / {
        # Accepted HTTP methods
        method GET POST;
        
        # Directory listing
        autoindex on;
        
        # Default file for directories
        index index.html;
    }
    
    # CGI configuration
    location ~ \.php$ {
        method GET POST;
        cgi_pass /usr/bin/php-cgi;
    }
    
    # Redirection example
    location /old {
        return 301 /new;
    }
    
    # Upload configuration
    location /upload {
        method POST;
        upload_store /tmp/uploads;
    }
}

📋 Development Progress

• Project setup and repository initialization
• Configuration file parsing
• Socket management and non-blocking I/O
• HTTP request parsing
• HTTP response generation
• Static file serving
• Directory listing
• Error handling
• CGI implementation
• File upload handling
• Testing and documentation

🧪 Testing

The server can be tested using:

• Web browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.)
• Command-line tools (curl, wget)
• Testing scripts (Python, Bash)
• Telnet for raw HTTP request testing
• External tools like Apache Bench for stress testing

👥 Contributors

• jos-felipe
• Adedayo-Sanni
• Thiagosdcavalcante

📄 License

This project is part of the School 42 curriculum.