WebShard

Small web server for standalone applications

This web server started out when the ridiculousness of HttpContext.Current was made apparent for the millionth time. It is intended to be a slim, no-nonsense web server that supplies you with everything you need to be able to set up simple applications that can be used for configuration of services or other data front ends. It is not intended for large scale web applications.

It has built-in dependency injection, url routing, serialization and a controller model. Generally there is no need for inheritence. Most processes can be done either by implementing (simple) interfaces, dependency injection or attributes.

It supports:

• HTTP
• HTTPS (using TLS 1.2 currently, and the certificate path is hard-coded)
• IPv4
• IPv6
• Dependency Injection
• Controllers and routing
• Request filtering
• JSON serialization
• www-x-form deserialization

Using WebShard

Setup is relatively simple. You need a HttpApplication and a WebServer. The WebServer acts as the entry point, and sets up all the listeners. The HttpApplication handles all the work when the request has been de-serialized.

In order to render anything you need to provide a controller and a route. If nothing else is said, the action performed will default to the http method provided by the request.

Routing

Routing is fairly similar to MVC or Web API, and is of the following pattern: {RouteValueName?:RegularExpression}

• RouteValueName is a identifier which must be valid in C# as a identifier.
• ? is optional and specifies that the route segment is optional.
• RegularExpression is a optional regular expression that must match the expression for the route to be considered a match.

Route example

httpApplication.RouteTable.Add("/{controller}/{action?}/{id?\d+}", new { action = "Index" }); 

Controllers

Controllers are classes with one or several methods that return a IResponse. There are no base class to inherit from, or interfaces to implement, but they have to be registered before they will be matched, end with 'Controller' and have to have at least one public constructor. Note that DI will try to match the most comprehensive constructor.

Controller example

public sealed class HelloWorldExample
{
  public IResponse Get()
  {
    return new ContentResponse("Hello World!");
  }
}

Complete example

public sealed class HelloWorldController
{
  public IResponse Get()
  {
    return new ContentResponse("Hello World!");
  }
}

static class Program
{
  static void Main()
  {
    var app = new HttpApplication();
    app.ControllerRegistry.Register<HelloWorldController>();
    app.RouteTable.Add("/", new { controller = "HelloWorld" });
    
    var webServer = new WebServer(app);
    webServer.Start();
  }
}

Minimalist example

static class Program
{
 static void Main()
 {
  var app = new HttpApplication();
  app.RouteTable.Add("/", new { action = new Func<IResponse>(() => new ContentResponse("Hello World!")) })
  new WebServer(app).Start();
 }
}

Advanced route configuration

Controller

The controller key in the defaults object can be any of the following types:

• string
• Func<object>
• Func<IHttpRequest, object> The Func versions can either return a controller instance or a controller type. Note that when using a controller type the controller must still be registered.

Action

The action key in the defaults object can be any of the following types:

• string
• Func<IResponse>
• Func<IHttpRequest, IResponse>