jagged-teeth / 42-webserv

A homemade HTTP webserv from scratch

Please find the project's documentation here.

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Usage

./webserv [**_configuration_file_**](#configuration-files-format)

Configuration files format:

The format of our configuration files are directly inspired from NGINX.

There is two types of data:

• directives
• block

Directives

Directives are mades as follow:

keyword:	value;

Blocks

Blocks are used to provide contextual data within a scope. The scope is surrounded by curly brackets. There are two kinds of blocks:

• Server block
• Location block

Server block

Location blocks are used to differentiate the behavior of your server based on the address and port requested by the client.

server {
	listen			8080;				# listening port [REQUIRED]
	server_names	42.fr www.42.fr;	# Will match HTTP Header-field `Host`
	location / { ... }					# zero or more location blocks
}

Location block

Location blocks are used to differentiate the behavior of your server based on the path requested by the client (URI path in the HTTP start-line). They inherit the directives from the parent block (server or location). Each of these scopes defines a route.

List of available directives

specific server block directive

• listen: unsigned int - represents the port on which the virtual server is listening
• server_names: one or more URI separated by space(s) - matches with the HTTP Header-field Host

one definition directive

• allowed_methods: zero or more flags (GET | POST | DELETE) separated by space(s) - HTTP request methods allowed for the route
• client_max_body_size: unsigned int - maximum request body size (in bytes) allowed for the route
• redirect: URI - request made on this route will be answered by a Moved Permanently (308) response pointing to this URI
• root: path - path which the server will use to serve files requested by the client
• index: filename - filename used to resolve a request pointing to a directory path
• autoindex: (on | off) - if on, a request pointing to a directory path will be answered by an HTML representation of the files contained in the directory

multiple definition directive

• cgi_setupt: file-extention and path-to-the-binary, separated by a space - if a request is pointing to a file that ends with the file-extention, it will be answerd by the STDOUT of this file given as an argument to the path-to-the-binary executable
• error_file: status-code and path-to-error-file, separated by a space - if an error occured with the same statuts-code as the one set, the server will respond by sending the file at path-to-error-file

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Examples

Example 1: Simple server configuration

This configuration sets up a server that listens on port 8080 and responds to requests on the / route.

server {
	listen 8080;
	server_names 42.fr www.42.fr;
	root /var/www/html;
	index index.html;
	autoindex on;
	location / {
		allowed_methods GET POST;
		client_max_body_size 1024;
	}
}

Example 2: Redirect configuration

This configuration redirects requests to the root route to a new URL.

server {
	listen 8080;
	server_names 42.fr
	location / {
		redirect /new-location;
	}
	location /new-location {
		root /var/www/new-location;
		index index.html;
	}
}

Example 3: CGI configuration

This configuration sets up a CGI script to handle requests for .py files.

server {
	listen 8080;
	server_names 42.fr;
	location / {
		root /var/www/html;
		index index.html;
		cgi_setup .py /usr/bin/python3;
	}
}

Note that these are just examples, and you will need to adjust them to match the specific needs of your application.