webserv

A work-in-progress HTTP/1.1 web server written in C++17 for the 42/CODAM webserv project. The server is event-driven: it uses non-blocking sockets and poll() to serve multiple clients without one connection blocking the others.

Current status

The following functionality is implemented and covered at least in part by the included unit tests:

• HTTP/1.0 and HTTP/1.1 request handling, including keep-alive behaviour.
• Non-blocking TCP server with poll()-based I/O.
• Multiple server blocks on one port and virtual-host selection through the Host header.
• Parsing of server and location configuration blocks.
• Static-file delivery with MIME-type detection, index-file lookup, optional directory listing, custom error pages, and path-traversal checks.
• GET, POST, and DELETE, controlled per location with allow_methods.
• Request bodies sent with Content-Length or Transfer-Encoding: chunked.
• Binary uploads to upload_store; multipart/form-data uploads save the first part that has a filename parameter.
• Configurable request-body limits and standard error responses such as 400, 403, 404, 405, 413, 500, 501, and 505.

cgi_extension, cgi_path, and return are accepted by the configuration parser, but CGI execution and redirect handling are not connected to the response path yet. They should therefore be considered unfinished.

Requirements

• A C++17-compatible compiler (c++)
• make
• A POSIX-compatible system (the current implementation uses sockets, poll(), and POSIX filesystem APIs)

Build and run

make
./webserv

Without arguments, the server reads ./config/default.conf. To use another configuration file:

The default configuration listens on port `8080`. With the supplied site
files available, try:

```sh
curl -i http://127.0.0.1:8080/

Tests

make test

The current test suite verifies configuration parsing, request parsing, response serialization, request buffering, chunked-body decoding, virtual hosts, body-size limits, and binary upload handling. The test suite passes in the supplied project snapshot.

Configuration overview

The syntax follows the familiar server / location block structure:

server {
    listen 8080;
    server_name localhost;
    root ./site/www;
    index index.html;
    client_max_body_size 1000000;
    error_page 404 /error_pages/404.html;

    location / {
        allow_methods GET;
        autoindex off;
    }

    location /upload {
        allow_methods GET POST DELETE;
        upload_store ./site/www/uploads;
        autoindex on;
    }
}

Supported server directives are listen, server_name, root, index, client_max_body_size, and error_page. Supported location directives are allow_methods, upload_store, autoindex, root, index, cgi_extension, cgi_path, and return.

For file uploads, create the configured upload directory before starting the server; it is not created automatically:

mkdir -p site/www/uploads
curl -i --data-binary @./photo.webp http://127.0.0.1:8080/upload

Project layout

main.cpp          Application entry point
code/             Server, parsing, request, response, and upload code
code/hpp/         Headers
config/           Example server configurations
site/             Static website and error-page assets
tests/            Unit tests and configuration fixtures

Team

• Ivan Pavlov — 12Ivan03
• Anastasia Erokhina — agerokhina

Make targets

make          # build webserv
make test     # build and run unit tests
make clean    # remove object and dependency files
make fclean   # also remove binaries
make re       # rebuild the server