Webserve

Webserv is a custom HTTP server written in C++ as part of the 42 curriculum. The goal of this project is to build a fully functional web server compliant with HTTP/1.1, without using external libraries, and capable of handling multiple clients simultaneously.

This project focuses on:

• Low-level network programming
• Event-driven I/O
• HTTP protocol parsing
• Configuration file parsing
• Robust error handling

Features

• HTTP/1.1 compliant

• Non-blocking I/O using poll() (or select() / epoll, depending on implementation)

• Multiple client handling

• Configurable server using a .conf file

• Supports:

  • GET
  • POST
  • DELETE

• Static file serving

• CGI execution (e.g. PHP, Python)

• Custom error pages

• Directory listing (autoindex)

• File upload support

• Virtual servers (multiple ports / hosts)

Configuration File

The server is configured using a configuration file inspired by Nginx syntax.

Example:

server {
    listen 8080;
    server_name localhost;

    root ./www;
    index index.html;

    location /upload {
        methods POST;
        upload_dir ./uploads;
    }

    location /cgi {
        cgi_pass /usr/bin/php-cgi;
    }

    error_page 404 ./errors/404.html;
}

Installation and Usage

• Build

 bash

    make 

• Run

 bash
    
    ./webserv config/default.conf

Supported HTTP Methods

Method	Description
GET	Retrieve a resource
POST	Send data to the server
DELETE	Remove a resource

Architecture

+-------------+        +-----------------+
|   Client    | <----> |   Webserv Core  |
+-------------+        +-----------------+
                                |
       -------------------------------------------------
       |          |            |           |           |
  Socket      Event Loop   Request     Response     Config
  Layer       (poll)       Parser      Generator    Parser
       |                        |
       |                     CGI Handler

• Socket layer

  • Server socket creation
  • Client connection handling

• Event loop

  • Non-blocking polling
  • Read / write multiplexing

• Request parsing

  • Headers
  • Body
  • Chunked encoding

• Response generation

  • Status codes
  • Headers
  • Body

• CGI handler

  • Environment setup
  • Process execution

• Configuration parser

  • Server blocks
  • Location blocks
  • Validation

Testing

The server was tested using:

• curl
• Web browsers (Firefox / Chrome)
• Stress tests with multiple clients
• Invalid requests and edge cases

Example

bash

   curl -X GET http://localhost:8080
   curl -X POST -d "hello=world" http://localhost:8080/upload

❌ Error Handling

• Invalid HTTP requests
• Unsupported methods
• Missing files
• Permission errors
• CGI execution failures
• Timeout handling

Each error returns the appropriate HTTP status code and custom error page when configured.

📚 Allowed Functions

• socket, bind, listen, accept
• recv, send
• poll / select
• fcntl
• fork, execve, waitpid
• open, read, write, close

No external networking or HTTP libraries are used.

Recources

https://www.codequoi.com/en/sockets-and-network-programming-in-c/#sources-and-further-reading

https://youtu.be/bdIiTxtMaKA?si=JiQrYKLevrn8Qc5P

https://youtu.be/iInUBOVeBCc?si=dKDa0u5wekWuqqnp

https://youtu.be/q8OleYuqntY?si=TfxLAsJsAPiLgjbr

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6KMWPQP_DM9Y7IgaEWa_OHAl3RkAQwqH&si=HoxR1a_vUFnWZGpt

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP

AI to enhance understanding

Autors

• Javad:
• Anatoli:
• Maryam: