This is a socketting exercise written for my Data Communications class. The goal of this assignment is to implement HTTP/1.0 GET and PUT requests using sockets.
This project is dependent on Poco, a C++ library. This project was developed in Linux so only linux installation instructions will be provided.
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Download and extract Poco. The download link for Poco can be found here. The Basic edition of Poco is sufficiant. Once downloaded, extract the file to a location of your choosing.
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Install Poco The newly extracted directory will contain a script called
config. Run./config
Once the script has finished, the library must be built.
make -s
This process will take some time.
After Poco has finished building, install it to /usr/local for the linker to find.
sudo make -s install
Followed by
sudo ldconfig
Poco should now be installed
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Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/ClaytonSmith/CPP-HTTP-1.0-Server
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Build
make
If you are able to successfully build the server and client, then Poco was installed correctly.
The build process will produce two executable, server and client.
Run ./server or ./client to see what arguments each application expects.
To run the server, run ./server 3000.
This will run the server on port 3000.
When the server is running, open a web browser and navigate to 127.0.0.1:3000 (or the address of the machine).
A simple HTML page should be displayed.
If the page is visible, than the server is running properly.
The client requires four run-time arguments.
The client require a host to connect to, port number, HTTP method (GET, PUT), and file to retrieve or transmit.
If the server is running, try running
./client http://127.0.0.1 3000 GET index.html
This contents of index.html will be displayed on screen.
The client is also capable of making PUT requests. When given the path of a local file, the client is able to upload any reasonably sized sized file to any host, provided the host is willing to accept the upload.
The server works by using Poco's HTTP server application tool set and extending it to suit the needs of the project.
The server contains three main types of objects, a server, request handler, and a request handler factory.
MyServerApp extends from ServerApplication, MyRequestHandlerFactory from ``, and both GET and 'POST' handlers from `HTTPRequestHandler`.
When any connection made to the server, a page is generated as a response to that connection.
If a GET request is made asking for index.html, then the server will generate a page titled index.html and send it to the client.
Note how the response read "Hello world! this file name is /index.html".
Same same is true for a PUT request.
When a PUT request is made, a page reading "Hello friend ..." will be made instead.
The server is able to differentiate between GET and PUT requests.
When a GET request is made for a particular page, the server will generate that page and return it to the client.
When a PUT request is made, the server is able to identify the request and assign the response action to the PutRequestHandler.
Unfortunately, the server is unable to download a file form the client.
When a PUT request is made, the server is able to generate a response for the request but is unable to establish a connection to download the file.
I believe this is due to a misunderstanding of the library rather than a networking issue.
The error is I/O Error: Broken pipe.
One of the trade-offs with this application is that Poco does not provide a clean pathing solution for request and route handling.
It may be due to my inexperience with Poco but I was unable to devise or find a scalable method for handling requests that did not involve massive if or switch statements.
I would prefer to see req.on( <path x>, <do y>) type solution.
The client is a very simple application.
There are no additional classes declared within client.cpp.
The client only looks to take in ether a GET or PUT directive.
Within client.cpp there exists one if else statement.
If the request being made is a GET request, then the client will execute the GET procedure located in the fist half of the conditional.
If the request is a PUT request, then the client will execute the PUT procedure in the second half of the conditional.
Yes, the client is able to make both GET and PUT requests.
Here is an example of the client performing a GET from CNN.com.
Due to the servers inability to receive the PUT file request, I am unsure whether or not the client is able to make the request.
When I attempted a PUT on sites like cnn.com, I received an error stating that the request being made is not accepted by the server.
I assume that this is cnn.com disallowing PUT requests on their site rather then an improperly formed request on the client.
There are no major trade-offs for this application.