WebServer

WebServer is a C++98 project developed from the ground up, providing a scalable and efficient web server solution. This README.md file serves as a comprehensive guide to understanding the project, setting it up, and implementing its features.

This is a group project of 42 school curriculum done with my colleagues Alberto Barriga and José Carlos Limones.

To check how we divided the work and how we managed everything, you can check all our issues

Project Structure

The project structure is organized as follows:

• include: Contains header files for the project.
• src: Includes the source code files.
• LICENSE: The license information for the project.
• Makefile: Used for building the project.
• README.md: This documentation file.
• example_config.yaml: An example configuration file.

Building the WebServer

To build the project, execute the following commands:

make 

This will compile the source code and generate the executable named webserv.

Running the WebServer

To run the web server, use the following command:

./webserv <config_file_path>

Replace <config_file_path> with the path to your configuration file.

If you want to see the example server that we created to check in the evaluation, you can move to this branch and run this command there.

Configuration

The configuration file is crucial for defining server parameters. An example configuration file (example_config.yaml) is provided:

server: (a configuration can have multiple servers)
  root: example/ (folder that will be the root of the server)
  server_name: example.com (server virtual name) 
  cgi_path: /usr/bin/python3 (cgi executable path) 
  client_max_body_size: 3000000 (max size that server will allow, expressed on bytes)
  error_page (a server can have multiple error pages):
    path: /errorPages/404.html (custom error page path)
    status_code: 404 (corresponding status code for said error page)
  listen: (ip and port that the server will listen on)
    host: 127.0.0.1 
    port: 8080
  location: (a server can have multiple locations)
    route: / (url that will match this route)
    root: alberto/ (corresponding file system path for this server route, concatenated with server root)
    index: index.html (file that will be served when requesting for a folder)
    autoindex: on (generate a file listing if the index file is deactivated or not found)
    allow_methods: GET POST (allowed methods for this location, can be GET, POST, and/or DELETE)
    allow_uploads: on (if the given location accepts file uploading on post requests)
    uploads_path: files/ (server path to save the uploaded files)
    cgi_ext: .py (call the CGI with files that end with this extension)

Results

Our webserver proved to be really strong on stress tests, as it had an availability 100% of the time when stressed with siege as you can see here:

Feel free to reach out for any additional information or assistance in further developing and extending the functionality of this web server!