Webserver67

A simple webserver written in C. See todo.txt for immediate priorities for what needs to be done.

Usage

Installation

1. Install the required dependencies (see Dependencies below).
2. Build and install:

   make
   make install

   You may need superuser privileges for make install.

Running the Server

Basic command:

ws67 [options] <website_root>

Full form:

ws67 --port <port> --config <config_path> <website_root>

Short flags: -p = --port -c = --config

Configuration Behavior

The server uses exactly one configuration file, selected in this order:

1. Path provided via --config
2. ./config.yml
3. /etc/webserver67/config.yml

If none of these exist, the server runs with defaults.

Note: Configuration files are not merged. Only one is loaded.

Overrides

Command-line arguments override values from the selected config file:

--port overrides the configured port <website_root> overrides the configured root directory

All command-line arguments are optional. If omitted, values are taken entirely from the config file.

Examples

ws67
ws67 -c ./myconfig.yml # the site root can be omitted and just use the config
ws67 -p 8080 ./public
ws67 -c ./config.yml ./site

Dependencies

All of these should present on most Linux distributions except LibCYAML.

• LibCYAML v1.4.2
  • LibYAML
• Zlib v1.3.2.1 (compression)
• C Standard Library
• Make
• GCC

Current Capabilities

• Receives HTTP requests
  • Processes control data (i.e. first line)
  • Processes a limited set of request headers
• Serve static files over HTTP
  • Can serve many common filetypes used on the web
• Directory browsing
• Reads YAML config files
  • Can receive overrides from command line arguments

Planned Capabilities

• Read requests of unlimited size
• Chunked transfer coding in responses (not requests)
• Process more types of request headers
• Reverse proxy
• Allow subdirectories to have their own index.html files

Limitations

• Only supports HTTP/1.1
  • Things like processing control data become more annoying in later versions
• Only supports unix systems
  • Socket-related functions are in different headers on windows
  • Relies on unistd.h and time.h, unistd is unix-specific and time functions are different on windows
• Does not support chunked transfer coding
  • Assumes content is just one giant blob sent with the request