README

Name
    ngx_chunkin - HTTP 1.1 chunked-encoding request body support for Nginx.

    *This module is not distributed with the Nginx source.* See the
    installation instructions.

Status
    This module is considered production ready.

Version
    This document describes chunkin-nginx-module v0.21
    (<http://github.com/agentzh/chunkin-nginx-module/tarball/v0.21>)
    released on August 3, 2010.

Synopsis
      chunkin on;

      error_page 411 = @my_411_error;
      location @my_411_error {
          chunkin_resume;
      }

      location /foo {
          # your fastcgi_pass/proxy_pass/set/if and
          # any other config directives go here...
      }
      ...

      chunkin on;

      error_page 411 = @my_411_error;
      location @my_411_error {
          chunkin_resume;
      }

      location /bar {
        chunkin_keepalive on;  # WARNING: too experimental!

        # your fastcgi_pass/proxy_pass/set/if and
        # any other config directives go here...
      }

Description
    This module adds HTTP 1.1 chunked
    (<http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-3.6.1>) input support for
    Nginx without the need of patching the Nginx core.

    Behind the scene, it registers an access-phase handler that will eagerly
    read and decode incoming request bodies when a "Transfer-Encoding:
    chunked" header triggers a 411 error page in Nginx. For requests that
    are not in the "chunked" transfer encoding, this module is a "no-op".

    To enable the magic, just turn on the chunkin config option and define a
    custom "411 error_page" using chunkin_resume, like this:

      server {
        chunkin on;

        error_page 411 = @my_411_error;
        location @my_411_error {
            chunkin_resume;
        }

        ...
      }

    No other modification is required in your nginx.conf file and everything
    should work out of the box including the standard [module
    (HttpProxyModule)] (except for those known issues). Note that the
    chunkin directive is not allowed in the location block while the
    chunkin_resume directive is only allowed on in "locations".

    The core module's client_body_buffer_size, client_max_body_size, and
    client_body_timeout directive settings are honored. Note that, the "body
    sizes" here always indicate chunked-encoded body, not the data that has
    already been decoded. Basically, the chunked-encoded body will always be
    slightly larger than the original data that is not encoded.

    The client_body_in_file_only and client_body_in_single_buffer settings
    are followed partially. See Know Issues.

    This module is not supposed to be merged into the Nginx core because
    I've used Ragel (<http://www.complang.org/ragel/>) to generate the
    chunked encoding parser for joy :)

  How it works
    Nginx explicitly checks chunked "Transfer-Encoding" headers and absent
    content length header in its very early phase. Well, as early as the
    "ngx_http_process_request_header" function. So this module takes a
    rather tricky approach. That is, use an output filter to intercept the
    "411 Length Required" error page response issued by
    "ngx_http_process_request_header", fix things and finally issue an
    internal redirect to the current location, thus starting from those
    phases we all know and love, this time bypassing the horrible
    "ngx_http_process_request_header" function.

    In the "rewrite" phase of the newly created request, this module eagerly
    reads in the chunked request body in a way similar to that of the
    standard "ngx_http_read_client_request_body" function, but using its own
    chunked parser generated by Ragel. The decoded request body will be put
    into "r->request_body->bufs" and a corresponding "Content-Length" header
    will be inserted into "r->headers_in".

    Those modules using the standard "ngx_http_read_client_request_body"
    function to read the request body will just work out of box because
    "ngx_http_read_client_request_body" returns immediately when it sees
    "r->request_body->bufs" already exists.

    Special efforts have been made to reduce data copying and dynamic memory
    allocation.

Directives
  chunkin
    syntax: *chunkin on|off*

    default: *off*

    context: *http, server*

    phase: *access*

    Enables or disables this module's hooks.

  chunkin_resume
    syntax: *chunkin_resume*

    default: *no*

    context: *location*

    phase: *content*

    This directive must be used in your custom "411 error page" location to
    help this module work correctly. For example:

      error_page 411 = @my_error;
      location @my_error {
          chunkin_resume;
      }

    For the technical reason behind the necessity of this directive, please
    read the "nginx-devel" thread Content-Length is not ignored for chunked
    requests: Nginx violates RFC 2616
    (<http://nginx.org/pipermail/nginx-devel/2009-December/000041.html>).

    This directive was first introduced in the v0.17 release.

  chunkin_max_chunks_per_buf
    syntax: *chunkin_max_chunks_per_buf <number>*

    default: *512*

    context: *http, server, location*

    Set the max chunk count threshold for the buffer determined by the
    client_body_buffer_size directive. If the average chunk size is "1 KB"
    and your client_body_buffer_size setting is 1 meta bytes, then you
    should set this threshold to 1024 or 2048.

    When the raw body size is exceeding client_body_buffer_size *or* the
    chunk counter is exceeding this "chunkin_max_chunks_per_buf" setting,
    the decoded data will be temporarily buffered into disk files, and then
    the main buffer gets cleared and the chunk counter gets reset back to 0
    (or 1 if there's a "pending chunk").

    This directive was first introduced in the v0.17 release.

  chunkin_keepalive
    syntax: *chunkin_keepalive on|off*

    default: *off*

    context: *http, server, location, if*

    Turns on or turns off HTTP 1.1 keep-alive and HTTP 1.1 pipelining
    support.

    Keep-alive without pipelining should be quite stable but pipelining
    support is very preliminary, limited, and almost untested.

    This directive was first introduced in the v0.07 release.

    Technical note on the HTTP 1.1 pipeling support

    The basic idea is to copy the bytes left by my chunked parser in
    "r->request_body->buf" over into "r->header_in" so that nginx's
    "ngx_http_set_keepalive" and "ngx_http_init_request" functions will pick
    it up for the subsequent pipelined requests. When the request body is
    small enough to be completely preread into the "r->header_in" buffer,
    then no data copy is needed here -- just setting "r->header_in->pos"
    correctly will suffice.

    The only issue that remains is how to enlarge "r->header_in" when the
    data left in "r->request_body->buf" is just too large to be hold in the
    remaining room between "r->header_in->pos" and "r->header_in->end". For
    now, this module will just give up and simply turn off "r->keepalive".

    I know we can always use exactly the remaining room in "r->header_in" as
    the buffer size when reading data from "c->recv", but's suboptimal when
    the remaining room in "r->header_in" happens to be very small while
    "r->request_body->buf" is quite large.

    I haven't fully grokked all the details among "r->header_in",
    "c->buffer", busy/free lists and those so-called "large header buffers".
    Is there a clean and safe way to reallocate or extend the "r->header_in"
    buffer?

Trouble Shooting
    When combining this module with ngx_proxy and ngx_fastcgi, nginx sends a
    "Transfer-Encoding: " header which is invalid and not being treated well
    by some webservers on backend, for example, riak. So a work-around for
    now is to use the ngx_headers_more module to remove the
    "Transfer-Encoding" completely, as in

    chunkin on;

    error_page 411 = @my_411_error; location @my_411_error { chunkin_resume;
    }

    location / { more_clear_input_headers 'Transfer-Encoding'; proxy_pass
    http://riak; }

    Thanks hoodoos (<http://github.com/hoodoos>) for sharing this trick :)

Installation
    Grab the nginx source code from nginx.net (<http://nginx.net/>), for
    example, the version 0.8.41 (see nginx compatibility), and then build
    the source with this module:

        $ wget 'http://sysoev.ru/nginx/nginx-0.8.41.tar.gz'
        $ tar -xzvf nginx-0.8.41.tar.gz
        $ cd nginx-0.8.41/

        # Here we assume you would install you nginx under /opt/nginx/.
        $ ./configure --prefix=/opt/nginx \
            --add-module=/path/to/chunkin-nginx-module

        $ make -j2
        $ make install

    Download the latest version of the release tarball of this module from
    chunkin-nginx-module file list
    (<http://github.com/agentzh/chunkin-nginx-module/downloads>).

  For Developers
    The chunked parser is generated by Ragel
    (<http://www.complang.org/ragel/>). If you want to regenerate the
    parser's C file, i.e., src/chunked_parser.c
    (<http://github.com/agentzh/chunkin-nginx-module/blob/master/src/chunked
    _parser.c>), use the following command from the root of the chunkin
    module's source tree:

        $ ragel -G2 src/chunked_parser.rl

Packages from users
  Fedora 13 RPM files
    The following source and binary rpm files are contributed by Ernest
    Folch, with nginx 0.8.54, ngx_chunkin v0.21 and ngx_headers_more v0.13:

    *   nginx-0.8.54-1.fc13.src.rpm
        (<http://agentzh.org/misc/nginx/ernest/nginx-0.8.54-1.fc13.src.rpm>)

    *   nginx-0.8.54-1.fc13.x86_64.rpm
        (<http://agentzh.org/misc/nginx/ernest/nginx-0.8.54-1.fc13.x86_64.rp
        m>)

Compatibility
    The following versions of Nginx should work with this module:

    *   1.0.x (last tested: 1.0.2)

    *   0.8.x (last tested: 0.8.54)

    *   0.7.x >= 0.7.21 (last tested: 0.7.67)

    Earlier versions of Nginx like 0.6.x and 0.5.x will *not* work.

    If you find that any particular version of Nginx above 0.7.21 does not
    work with this module, please consider reporting a bug.

Report Bugs
    Although a lot of effort has been put into testing and code tuning,
    there must be some serious bugs lurking somewhere in this module. So
    whenever you are bitten by any quirks, please don't hesitate to

    1.  send a bug report or even patches to <agentzh@gmail.com>,

    2.  or create a ticket on the issue tracking interface
        (<http://github.com/agentzh/chunkin-nginx-module/issues>) provided
        by GitHub.

Source Repository
    Available on github at agentzh/chunkin-nginx-module
    (<http://github.com/agentzh/chunkin-nginx-module>).

ChangeLog
  v0.21
    *   applied a patch from Gong Kaihui (龚开晖) to always call "post_handler"
        in "ngx_http_chunkin_read_chunked_request_body".

  v0.20
    *   fixed a bug that may read incomplete chunked body. thanks Gong
        Kaihui (龚开晖).

    *   fixed various memory issues in the implementation which may cause
        nginx processes to crash.

    *   added support for chunked PUT requests.

    *   now we always require "error_page 411 @resume" and no default
        (buggy) magic any more. thanks Gong Kaihui (龚开晖).

  v0.19
    *   we now use ragel -G2 to generate the chunked parser and we're 36%
        faster.

    *   we now eagerly read the data octets in the chunked parser and we're
        43% faster.

  v0.18
    *   added support for "chunk-extension" to the chunked parser as per RFC
        2616 (<http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-3.6.1>), but we
        just ignore them (if any) because we don't understand them.

    *   added more diagnostic information for certian error messages.

  v0.17
    *   implemented the chunkin_max_chunks_per_buf directive to allow
        overriding the default 512 setting.

    *   we now bypass nginx's discard requesty body bug
        (<http://nginx.org/pipermail/nginx-devel/2009-December/000041.html>)
        by requiring our users to define explicit "411 error_page" with
        chunkin_resume in the error page location. Thanks J for reporting
        related bugs.

    *   fixed "r->phase_handler" in our post read handler. our handler may
        run one more time before :P

    *   the chunkin handler now returns "NGX_DECLINED" rather than "NGX_OK"
        when our "ngx_http_chunkin_read_chunked_request_body" function
        returns "NGX_OK", to avoid bypassing other access-phase handlers.

  v0.16
    *   turned off ddebug in the previous release. thanks J for reporting
        it.

  v0.15
    *   fixed a regression that ctx->chunks_count never incremented in
        earlier versions.

  v0.14
    *   now we no longer skip those operations between the (interrupted)
        ngx_http_process_request_header and the server rewrite phase. this
        fixed the security issues regarding the internal directive as well
        as SSL sessions.

    *   try to ignore CR/LF/SP/HT at the begining of the chunked body.

    *   now we allow HT as padding spaces and ignore leading CRLFs.

    *   improved diagnostic info in the error.log messages when parsefail
        occurs.

  v0.11
    *   added a random valid-chunked-request generator in t/random.t.

    *   fixed a new connection leak issue caught by t/random.t.

  v0.10
    *   fixed a serious bug in the chunked parser grammer: there would be
        ambiguity when CRLF appears in the chunked data sections. Thanks J
        for reporting it.

  v0.08
    *   fixed gcc compilation errors on x86_64, thanks J for reporting it.

    *   used the latest Ragel 6.6 to generate the "chunked_parser.c" file in
        the source tree.

  v0.07
    *   marked the disgarded 411 error page's output chain bufs as consumed
        by setting "buf->pos = buf->last". (See this nginx-devel thread
        (<http://nginx.org/pipermail/nginx-devel/2009-December/000025.html>)
        for more details.)

    *   added the chunkin_keepalive directive which can enable HTTP 1.1
        keep-alive and HTTP 1.1 pipelining, and defaults to "off".

    *   fixed the "alphtype" bug in the Ragel parser spec; which caused
        rejection of non-ascii octets in the chunked data. Thanks J for his
        bug report.

    *   added "Test::Nginx::Socket" to test our nginx module on the socket
        level. Thanks J for his bug report.

    *   rewrote the bufs recycling part and preread-buf-to-rb-buf transition
        part, also refactored the Ragel parser spec, thus eliminating lots
        of serious bugs.

    *   provided better diagnostics in the error log message for "bad
        chunked body" parsefails in the chunked parser. For example:

     2009/12/02 17:35:52 [error] 32244#0: *1 bad chunked body (offset 7, near "4^M
     hell <-- HERE o^M
     0^M
     ^M
     ", marked by " <-- HERE ").
     , client: 127.0.0.1, server: localhost, request: "POST /main
    HTTP/1.1", host: "localhost"

    *   added some code to let the chunked parser handle special 0-size
        chunks that are not the last chunk.

    *   fixed a connection leak bug regarding incorrect "r->main->count"
        reference counter handling for nginx 0.8.11+ (well, the
        "ngx_http_read_client_request_body" function in the nginx core also
        has this issue, I'll report it later.)

  v0.06
    *   minor optimization: we won't traverse the output chain link if the
        chain count is not large enough.

Test Suite
    This module comes with a Perl-driven test suite. The test cases
    (<http://github.com/agentzh/chunkin-nginx-module/tree/master/test/t/>)
    are declarative
    (<http://github.com/agentzh/chunkin-nginx-module/blob/master/test/t/sani
    ty.t>) too. Thanks to the Test::Base
    (<http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Test::Base>) module in the Perl world.

    To run it on your side:

        $ cd test
        $ PATH=/path/to/your/nginx-with-chunkin-module:$PATH prove -r t

    You need to terminate any Nginx processes before running the test suite
    if you have changed the Nginx server binary.

    At the moment, LWP::UserAgent
    (<http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?LWP::UserAgent>) is used by the test
    scaffold
    (<http://github.com/agentzh/chunkin-nginx-module/blob/master/test/lib/Te
    st/Nginx/LWP.pm>) for simplicity.

    Because a single nginx server (by default, "localhost:1984") is used
    across all the test scripts (".t" files), it's meaningless to run the
    test suite in parallel by specifying "-jN" when invoking the "prove"
    utility.

    Some parts of the test suite requires modules proxy and echo to be
    enabled as well when building Nginx.

Known Issues
    *   May not work with certain 3rd party modules like the upload module
        (<http://www.grid.net.ru/nginx/upload.en.html>) because it
        implements its own request body reading mechanism.

    *   "client_body_in_single_buffer on" may *not* be obeyed for short
        contents and fast network.

    *   "client_body_in_file_only on" may *not* be obeyed for short contents
        and fast network.

    *   HTTP 1.1 pipelining may not fully work yet.

TODO
    *   make the chunkin handler run at the end of the "access phase" rather
        than beginning.

    *   add support for "trailers" as specified in the RFC 2616
        (<http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-3.6.1>).

    *   fix the known issues.

Getting involved
    You'll be very welcomed to submit patches to the author or just ask for
    a commit bit to the source repository on GitHub.

Author
    Zhang "agentzh" Yichun (章亦春) *<agentzh@gmail.com>*

    This wiki page is also maintained by the author himself, and everybody
    is encouraged to improve this page as well.

Copyright & License
    The basic client request body reading code is based on the
    "ngx_http_read_client_request_body" function and its utility functions
    in the Nginx 0.8.20 core. This part of code is copyrighted by Igor
    Sysoev.

    Copyright (c) 2009, Taobao Inc., Alibaba Group ( http://www.taobao.com
    ).

    Copyright (c) 2009, 2010, 2011, Zhang "agentzh" Yichun (章亦春)
    <agentzh@gmail.com>.

    This module is licensed under the terms of the BSD license.

    Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
    modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are
    met:

    *   Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
        notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

    *   Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
        notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
        documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

    *   Neither the name of the Taobao Inc. nor the names of its
        contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from
        this software without specific prior written permission.

    THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS
    IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED
    TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A
    PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT
    HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,
    SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED
    TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR
    PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF
    LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING
    NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
    SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

See Also
    *   The original thread on the Nginx mailing list that inspires this
        module's development: "'Content-Length' header for POSTs"
        (<http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,4453,20543>).

    *   The orginal announcement thread on the Nginx mailing list: "The
        chunkin module: Experimental chunked input support for Nginx"
        (<http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,22967>).

    *   The original blog post
        (<http://agentzh.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!FF3A735632E41548!481.entry
        >) about this module's initial development.

    *   The thread discussing chunked input support on the nginx-devel
        mailing list: "Chunked request body and HTTP header parser"
        (<http://nginx.org/pipermail/nginx-devel/2009-December/000021.html>)
        .

    *   The [module (HttpEchoModule)] for Nginx module's automated testing.

    *   RFC 2616 - Chunked Transfer Coding
        (<http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-3.6.1>).