WebServerLite

Introduction

WebServerLite is a high-performance HTTP web server in C++14. Many functionalities are integrated into it including

• resolving HTTP messages to support GET and POST primitives by state machine
• supporting concurrent requests by non-blocking socket and multiplexing I/O
• register and login user interface
• Asynchronized logging system
• responsing request for images and videos

Prerequisites

• OS: ubuntu 22.04

• tools:

  • g++ 11.2.0
  • make 4.3

• libraries:

  • mysql-server
  • mysql-client
  • libmysqlclient-dev
  • libntirpc-dev

Framework

The diagram below shows the data flow from a request by a client to a response by the WebServerLite.

graph TD;
	req(I/O requests) -- Epoller --> WebServerLite;
	WebServerLite --> threadp;
	threadp(thread pool) --> httpreq(HTTP requests);
	httpreq --> httprsp(HTTP responses);
	httpreq -- SqlConn --> SqlConnPool;
	SqlConnPool --> database;
	database --> httprsp;

Benchmark

To test the performance of WebServerLite on your computer, you can input following command

make test
./server_test -c 2000 -t 5 http://127.0.0.1:1234/

through terminal in your root path of WebServerLite. And you can also use options to adjust the configuration of this test as following.

 -f|--force               Don't wait for reply from server.
 -r|--reload              Send reload request - Pragma: no-cache.
 -t|--time <sec>          Run benchmark for <sec> seconds. Default 30.
 -p|--proxy <server:port> Use proxy server for request.
 -c|--clients <n>         Run <n> HTTP clients at once. Default one.
 -9|--http09              Use HTTP/0.9 style requests.
 -1|--http10              Use HTTP/1.0 protocol.
 -2|--http11              Use HTTP/1.1 protocol.
 --get                    Use GET request method.
 --head                   Use HEAD request method.
 --options                Use OPTIONS request method.
 --trace                  Use TRACE request method.
 -?|-h|--help             This information.
 -V|--version             Display program version.

The performance of WebServerLite in our test can be shown after you input the above commands and wait few seconds.

Installation

To install prerequisites on Debian system, you can input following command.

sudo apt install mysql-server mysql-client libmysqlclient-dev libntirpc-dev

After install the mysql database, we should add record to our database for login.

create database WebServerLite;

USE WebServerLite;
CREATE TABLE user(
    username char(50) NULL,
    password char(50) NULL
)ENGINE=InnoDB;

INSERT INTO user(username, password) VALUES('root', '1234');

And then compiler the WebServerLite from the source code.

make

Because we need root authentication to connect to the mysql database, so input the next command.

sudo -i

Finally, we can run our HTTP web server by inputing command.

./server

Open browser and see the home page.