Standalone-Server

A very simple, fast, multithreaded, platform independent HTTP and HTTPS server and client library implemented using C++17 and Asio standalone. Created to be an easy way to make REST resources available from C++ applications.

Requires

• Zig toolchain v0.14.0 or master

Features

• Asynchronous request handling
• Thread pool if needed
• Platform independent
• HTTP/1.1 supported, including persistent connections
• HTTPS supported
• Chunked transfer encoding and server-sent events
• Can set timeouts for request/response and content
• Can set max request/response size
• Sending outgoing messages is thread safe
• Client creates necessary connections and perform reconnects when needed

Usage

See: http_examples.cpp or https_examples.cpp for example usage. The following server resources are setup using regular expressions to match request paths:

• POST /string - responds with the posted string.
• POST /json - parses the request content as JSON, and responds with some of the parsed values.
• GET /info - responds with information extracted from the request.
• GET /match/([0-9]+) - matches for instance /match/123 and responds with the matched number 123.
• GET /work - starts a thread, simulating heavy work, and responds when the work is done.
• GET - a special default_resource handler is called when a request path does not match any of the above resources. This resource responds with the content of files in the web/-folder if the request path identifies one of these files.

Dependencies

• standalone Asio
• For HTTPS: OpenSSL libraries

Installation instructions for the dependencies needed to compile the examples on a selection of platforms can be seen below. Default build with standalone Asio is assumed.

Debian based distributions

sudo apt-get install libssl-dev

Arch Linux based distributions

sudo pacman -S openssl

MacOS

brew install openssl

Compile and run

Choose Release_Type = (ReleaseSafe|ReleaseFast|ReleaseSmall)

Compile with a C++17 compliant compiler (like zig c++ eql to clang++ -stdlib=libc++ -fuse-ld=lld):

zig build -Doptimize={Release_type}

HTTP

Run the server and client examples: zig build http_examples -Doptimize=ReleaseSafe

Direct your favorite browser to for instance http://localhost:8080/

HTTPS

Before running the server, an RSA private key (server.key) and an SSL certificate (server.crt) must be created.

Run the server and client examples: zig build https_examples -Doptimize=ReleaseSafe

Direct your favorite browser to for instance https://localhost:8080/

Contributing

Contributions are welcome, either by creating an issue or a merge request. However, before you create a new issue or merge request, please search for previous similar issues or requests. A response will normally be given within a few days.

Acknowledgments

Main author: Ole Christian Eidheim - original project Simple-Web-Server - Gitlab