doc/yaws.tex

\documentclass[11pt,oneside,english]{book}

\usepackage{ifpdf}

\ifpdf
  \usepackage[pdftex]{graphicx}
  \pdfcompresslevel=9
  \DeclareGraphicsExtensions{.png,.jpg,.pdf,.mps}
\else
  \usepackage{graphicx}
  \DeclareGraphicsExtensions{.ps,.eps}
\fi
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{verbose,letterpaper,tmargin=1in,bmargin=1in,lmargin=1in,rmargin=1in}
\usepackage{babel}
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{3}
\setlength\parskip{\medskipamount}
\setlength\parindent{0pt}
\usepackage{url}
\usepackage{pslatex}
\usepackage[colorlinks=false]{hyperref}

\newcommand{\Erlang}            % Write Erlang correctly
        {{\sc Erlang}}


\newcommand{\Yaws}            % Write Yaws correctly
        {{\sc Yaws}}


\makeatletter

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{xspace}
\usepackage{html}

\makeatother
\begin{document}


\title{Yaws - Yet Another Web Server}


\author{Claes Wikstrom\\
klacke@hyber.org}


\maketitle
\tableofcontents{}


\chapter{Introduction}


\begin{figure}[h]
\begin{center}

 \includegraphics[scale=0.6] {yaws_head}

\end{center}
\end{figure}

\Yaws\  is an \Erlang\  web server. It's written in \Erlang\  and it uses
\Erlang\  as its embedded language similar to PHP in Apache or Java in Tomcat.

The advantages of \Erlang\  as an embedded web page language as opposed to
Java or PHP are many.
\begin{itemize}

\item{Speed - Using \Erlang\  for both implementing the web server itself as well
as embedded script language gives excellent dynamic page generation
performance.}

\item{Beauty - Well this is subjective}

\item{Scalability - due to the lightweight processes of \Erlang{}, \Yaws\
is able to handle a very large number of concurrent connections}

\end{itemize}

\Yaws\  has a wide feature set, it supports:

\begin{enumerate}
\item HTTP 1.0 and HTTP 1.1
\item Static content page delivery
\item Dynamic content generation using embedded \Erlang\  code in the
HTML pages
\item Common Log Format traffic logs
\item Virtual hosting with several servers on the same IP address
\item Multiple servers on multiple IP addresses.
\item HTTP tracing for debugging
\item An interactive interpreter environment in the Web server while
developing and debugging the web site.
\item RAM caching of commonly accessed pages.
\item Full streaming capabilities of both up and down load of dynamically
generated pages.
\item SSL
\item Support for WWW-Authenticated pages.
\item Support API for cookie based sessions.
\item Application Modules where virtual directory hierarchies can
be made.
\item Embedded mode
\item WebSockets (RFC 6455)
\end{enumerate}

\section{Prerequisites}
This document requires that the reader:
\begin{itemize}
\item Is well acquainted with the \Erlang\  programming language.
\item Understands basic Web technologies.
\end{itemize}


\section{A tiny example}

We introduce \Yaws\  by help of a tiny example.
 The web server \Yaws\  serves  and delivers
static content pages similar to any old web server, except that \Yaws\  does this
much faster than most web servers. It's the dynamic pages
that makes \Yaws\  interesting. Any page with the suffix ``.yaws'' is considered
a dynamic \Yaws\  page. A \Yaws\  page can contain embedded \Erlang\  snippets that
are executed while the page is being delivered to the WWW browser.

Example 1.1 is the HTML code for a small \Yaws\  page.


\begin{figure}[h]
\begin{verbatim}
<html>

<p> First paragraph

<erl>
out(Arg) ->
    {html, "<p>This string gets inserted into HTML document dynamically"}.
</erl>

<p> And here is some more HTML code

</html>
\end{verbatim}
\caption{Example 1.1}
\end{figure}

It illustrates the basic idea behind \Yaws{}. The HTML code, generally
stored in a file ending with a ``.yaws'' suffix, can contain
\verb+<erl>+ and \verb+</erl>+ tags and inside these tags an
\Erlang\ function called \verb+out/1+ gets called and the output of
that function is inserted into the HTML document, dynamically.

It is possible to have several chunks of HTML code together with several
chunks of \Erlang\  code in the same \Yaws\  page.

The \verb+Arg+ argument supplied to the automatically invoked \verb+out/1+
function is an \Erlang\  record that contains various data which is interesting
when generating dynamic pages. For example the HTTP headers which were sent
from the WWW client, the actual TCP/IP socket leading to the WWW client.
This will be elaborated on thoroughly in later chapters.

The \verb+out/1+ function returned the tuple \verb+{html, String}+ and
\verb+String+ gets inserted into the HTML output. There are number
of different return values that can be returned from the \verb+out/1+ function
in order to control the behavior and output from the \Yaws\  web server.


\chapter{Compile, Install, Config and Run}

This chapter is more of a ``Getting started'' guide than a full
description of the \Yaws\ configuration.  \Yaws\ is hosted on Github
at \url{ https://github.com/klacke/yaws }. This is where the source
code resides in a git repository and the latest unreleased version is
available via git through the following commands:

\begin{verbatim}

$ git clone https://github.com/klacke/yaws

\end{verbatim}

Released version of \Yaws\ are available at
\url{http://yaws.hyber.org/download}.

\subsection{Compile and Install}

To compile and install a \Yaws\  release
one of the prerequisites is a properly installed \Erlang\  system. \Yaws\
runs on \Erlang\  releases OTP R8 and later. Get \Erlang\  from
\url{http://www.erlang.org/}

Compile and install is straight forward:
\begin{verbatim}
# cd /usr/local/src
# tar xfz yaws-X.XX.tar.gz
# cd yaws
# ./configure && make
# make install
\end{verbatim}

The \verb+make+ command will compile the \Yaws\ web server with the
\verb+erlc+ compiler found by the configure script.

\begin{itemize}

\item  \verb+make install+ - will install the executable called
         \verb+yaws+ in \verb+/usr/local/bin/+ and a working
         configuration file in \verb+/etc/yaws.conf+

\item  \verb+make local_install+ - will install the executable in
         \verb+$HOME/bin+ and a working configuration file in
         \verb+$HOME/yaws.conf+

\end{itemize}

While developing a \Yaws\  site, it's typically most convenient to
use the local\_install and run \Yaws\  as a non-privileged user.


\subsection{Configure}
Let's take a look at the config file that gets written to \$HOME after
a local\_install.


\begin{figure}[h]
\begin{verbatim}

# first we have a set of globals

logdir = .
ebin_dir = /home/klacke/yaws/yaws/examples/ebin
include_dir = /home/klacke/yaws/yaws/examples/include

# and then a set of servers

<server localhost>
        port = 8000
        listen = 127.0.0.1
        docroot = /home/klacke/yaws/yaws/scripts/../www
</server>


\end{verbatim}
\caption{Minimal Local Configuration}
\end{figure}

The configuration consists of an initial set of global
variables that are valid for all defined servers.

The only global directive we need to care about for now is the logdir.
\Yaws\ produces a number of log files and they will---using the
Configuration from Figure 2.1---end up in the current working
directory.  We start \Yaws\ interactively as

\begin{verbatim}
# ~/bin/yaws -i
Erlang (BEAM) emulator version 5.1.2.b2 [source]

Eshell V5.1.2.b2  (abort with ^G)
1>
=INFO REPORT==== 30-Oct-2002::01:38:22 ===
Using config file /home/klacke/yaws.conf
=INFO REPORT==== 30-Oct-2002::01:38:22 ===
Listening to 127.0.0.1:8000 for servers ["localhost:8000"]

1>
\end{verbatim}

By starting \Yaws\ in interactive mode (using the command switch
\textit{-i}) we get a regular \Erlang\ prompt. This is most convenient
when developing \Yaws\ pages. For example we:

\begin{itemize}
\item{Can dynamically compile and load optional helper modules we need.}
\item{Get all the crash and error reports written directly to the
terminal.}
\end{itemize}

The configuration in Example 2.1 defined one HTTP server on address
127.0.0.1:8000 called "localhost".  It is important to understand the
difference between the name and the address of a server. The name is
the expected value in the client HTTP \verb+Host:+ header. That is
typically the same as the fully-qualified DNS name of the server
whereas the address is the actual IP address of the server.

Since \Yaws\  support virtual hosting with several servers on the same
IP address, this matters.

Nevertheless, our server listens to \textit{127.0.0.1:8000} and
has the name "localhost", thus the correct URL for this server
is \verb+http://localhost:8000+.

The document root (docroot) for the server is set to the \verb+www+
directory in the \Yaws\ source code distribution. This directory
contains a bunch of examples and we should be able to run all those
 example now on the URL \verb+http://localhost:8000+.

Instead of editing and adding files in the \Yaws\ \verb+www+
directory, we create yet another server on the same IP address but a
different port number --- and in particular a different document root
where we can add our own files.

\begin{verbatim}
# mkdir ~/test
# mkdir ~/test/logs
\end{verbatim}

Now change the config so it looks like this:

\begin{verbatim}

logdir = /home/klacke/test/logs
ebin_dir = /home/klacke/test
include_dir = /home/klacke/test

<server localhost>
        port = 8000
        listen = 127.0.0.1
        docroot = /home/klacke/yaws/yaws/www
</server>

<server localhost>
        port = 8001
        listen = 127.0.0.1
        docroot = /home/klacke/test
</server>


\end{verbatim}

We define two servers, one being the original default
and a new pointing to a document root in our home directory.

We can now start to add static content in the form of HTML pages,
dynamic content in the form of \verb+.yaws+ pages or
\Erlang\ \verb+.beam+ code that can be used to generate the dynamic
content.

The load path will be set so that beam code in the directory
\char`\~\verb+/test+ will be automatically loaded when referenced.

It is best to run \Yaws\  interactively while developing the site.
In order to start the \Yaws\  as a daemon, we give the flags:
\begin{verbatim}
# yaws -D --heart
\end{verbatim}

The \textit{-D} or \textit{--daemon} flags instructs \Yaws\ to run as
a daemon and the \textit{--heart} flag will start a heartbeat program
called heart which restarts the daemon if it should crash or if it
stops responding to a regular heartbeat. By default, heart will
restart the daemon unless it has already restarted 5 times in 60
seconds or less, in which case it considers the situation fatal and
refuses to restart the daemon again. The \textit{-heart-restart=C,T}
flag changes the default 5 restarts in 60 seconds to \textit{C}
restarts in \textit{T} seconds. For infinite restarts, set both
\textit{C} and \textit{T} to 0. This flag also enables the
\textit{--heart} flag.

Once started in daemon mode, we have very limited ways of interacting
with the daemon. It is possible to query the daemon using:
\begin{verbatim}
# yaws -S
\end{verbatim}

This command produces a simple printout of uptime and number of hits
for each configured server.

If we change the configuration, we can HUP the daemon using the
command:
\begin{verbatim}
# yaws -h
\end{verbatim}

This will force the daemon to reread the configuration file.


\chapter{Static content}

\Yaws\  acts very much like any regular web server while delivering
static pages. By default \Yaws\  will cache static content in RAM.
The caching behavior is controlled by a number of global
configuration directives. Since the RAM caching occupies memory,
it may be interesting to tweak the default values for the caching directives
or even to turn it off completely.

The following configuration directives control the caching behavior
\begin{itemize}
\item \textit{max\_num\_cached\_files = Integer}

\Yaws\   will  cache  small  files  such  as  commonly
              accessed  GIF images in RAM.  This directive sets a
              maximum number on the number of cached files.   The
              default value is 400.

\item\textit{max\_num\_cached\_bytes = Integer}

 This  directive  controls  the  total amount of RAM
             which can maximally be used for cached  RAM  files.
              The default value is 1000000, 1 megabyte.


\item\textit{max\_size\_cached\_file = Integer}

 This  directive  sets  a  maximum size on the files
              that are RAM cached by \Yaws{}.  The default value is
              8000 bytes, 8 batters.


\end{itemize}

It may be considered to be confusing, but the numbers specified
in the above mentioned cache directives are local to each
server. Thus if we have specified \verb+max_num_cached_bytes = 1000000+
and have defined 3 servers, we may actually use $3 * 1000000$ bytes.


\chapter{Dynamic content}

Dynamic content is what \Yaws\ is all about. Most web servers are
designed with HTTP and static content in mind whereas \Yaws\ is
designed for dynamic pages from the start.  Most large sites on the
Web today make heavy use of dynamic pages.


\section{Introduction}

When the client \verb+GET+s a page that has a ``.yaws'' suffix, the
\Yaws\ server will read that page from the hard disk and divide it in
parts that consist of HTML code and \Erlang\ code. Each chunk of
\Erlang\ code will be compiled into a module. The chunk of
\Erlang\ code must contain a function \verb+out/1+. If it doesn't the
\Yaws\ server will insert a proper error message into the generated
HTML output.

When the \Yaws\ server ships a \verb+.yaws+ page it will process it
chunk by chunk through the \verb+.yaws+ file. If it is HTML code, the
server will ship that as is, whereas if it is \Erlang\ code, the
\Yaws\ server will invoke the \verb+out/1+ function in that code and
insert the output of that \verb+out/1+ function into the stream of
HTML that is being shipped to the client.

\Yaws\ will (of course) cache the result of the compilation and the
next time a client requests the same \verb+.yaws+ page \Yaws\ will be
able to invoke the already-compiled modules directly.


\section{EHTML}

There are two ways to make the \verb+out/1+ function generate HTML
output. The first and most easy to understand is by returning a tuple
\verb+{html, String}+ where \verb+String+ then is regular HTML data
(possibly as a deep list of strings and/or binaries) which will simply
be inserted into the output stream.
An example:

\begin{verbatim}
<html>
<h1> Example 1 </h1>

<erl>
out(A) ->
    Headers = A#arg.headers,
    {html, io_lib:format("You say that you're running ~p",
                         [Headers#headers.user_agent])}.

</erl>

</html>

\end{verbatim}


The second way to generate output is by returning a tuple
\verb+{ehtml, EHTML}+. The term \verb+EHTML+ must adhere to the
following structure:

$EHTML = [EHTML] | \{TAG, Attrs, Body\} |
               \{TAG, Attrs\} | \{TAG\} |\\*
\hspace*{0.75 in} \{Module, Fun, [Args]\} | fun/0 |\\*
\hspace*{0.75 in} binary() | character()$

$TAG   = atom()$

$Attrs = [\{HtmlAttribute, Value\}]$

$HtmlAttribute = atom()$

$Value = string() | atom() |
         \{Module, Fun, [Args]\} | fun/0$

$Body  = EHTML$

We give an example to show what we mean. The tuple

\begin{verbatim}
{ehtml, {table, [{bgcolor, grey}],
         [
          {tr, [],
           [
            {td, [], "1"},
            {td, [], "2"},
            {td, [], "3"}
           ]
          },
          {tr, [],
           [{td, [{colspan, "3"}], "444"}]}]}}.
\end{verbatim}

expands into the following HTML code:

\begin{verbatim}
<table bgcolor="grey">
  <tr>
    <td> 1 </td
    <td> 2 </td>
    <td> 3 </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td colspan="3"> 444 </td>
  </tr>
</table>

\end{verbatim}

At a first glance it may appears as if the HTML code is more beautiful
than the \Erlang\ tuple. That may very well be the case from a purely
aesthetic point of view. However the \Erlang\ code has the advantage
of being perfectly indented by editors that have syntax support for
\Erlang\ (read Emacs). Furthermore, the \Erlang\ code is easier to
manipulate from an \Erlang\ program.

Note that ehtml supports function calls as values. Functions can
return any legal ehtml value, including other function
values. \Yaws\ supports \verb+{M,F,[Args]}+ and \verb+fun/0+ function
value forms.

As an example of some more interesting ehtml we could have an
\verb+out/1+ function that prints some of the HTTP headers.  In the
\verb+www+ directory of the \Yaws\ source code distribution we have a
file called \verb+arg.yaws+. The file demonstrates the \verb+Arg+
\verb+#arg+ record parameter which is passed to the \verb+out/1+
function.

But before we discuss that code, we describe the \verb+Arg+ record
in detail.

Here is the \verb+yaws_api.hrl+ file which is in included by default
in all \Yaws\ files. The \verb+#arg{}+ record contains many fields
that are useful when processing HTTP request dynamically.  We have
access to basically all the information associated with the client
request such as:

\begin{itemize}

\item The actual socket leading back to the HTTP client
\item All the HTTP headers -- parsed into a \verb+#headers+ record
\item The HTTP request -- parsed into a \verb+#http_request+ record
\item \verb+clidata+ -- data which is \verb+POST+ed by the client
\item \verb+querydata+ -- this is the remainder of the URL following
  the first occurrence of a '?' character, if any.
\item \verb+docroot+ -- the absolute path to the docroot of the
  virtual server that is processing the request.
\end{itemize}


\begin{verbatim}


-record(arg, {
          clisock,        %% the socket leading to the peer client
          client_ip_port, %% {ClientIp, ClientPort} tuple
          headers,        %% headers
          req,            %% request
          clidata,        %% The client data (as a binary in POST requests)
          server_path,    %% The normalized server path
                          %% (pre-querystring part of URI)
          querydata,      %% For URIs of the form ...?querydata
                          %%  equiv of cgi QUERY_STRING
          appmoddata,     %% (deprecated - use pathinfo instead) the remainder
                          %% of the path leading up to the query
          docroot,        %% Physical base location of data for this request
          docroot_mount,  %% virtual directory e.g /myapp/ that the docroot
                          %%  refers to.
          fullpath,       %% full deep path to yaws file
          cont,           %% Continuation for chunked multipart uploads
          state,          %% State for use by users of the out/1 callback
          pid,            %% pid of the yaws worker process
          opaque,         %% useful to pass static data
          appmod_prepath, %% (deprecated - use prepath instead) path in front
                          %%of: <appmod><appmoddata>
          prepath,        %% Path prior to 'dynamic' segment of URI.
                          %%  ie http://some.host/<prepath>/<script-point>/d/e
                          %% where <script-point> is an appmod mount point,
                          %% or .yaws,.php,.cgi,.fcgi etc script file.
          pathinfo        %% Set to '/d/e' when calling c.yaws for the request
                          %% http://some.host/a/b/c.yaws/d/e
                          %%  equiv of cgi PATH_INFO
         }).


-record(http_request, {method,
                       path,
                       version}).


-record(headers, {
          connection,
          accept,
          host,
          if_modified_since,
          if_match,
          if_none_match,
          if_range,
          if_unmodified_since,
          range,
          referer,
          user_agent,
          accept_ranges,
          cookie = [],
          keep_alive,
          location,
          content_length,
          content_type,
          content_encoding,
          authorization,
          transfer_encoding,
          x_forwarded_for,
          other = []   %% misc other headers
         }).

\end{verbatim}


There are a number of \textit{advanced} fields in the \verb+#arg+
record such as \verb+appmod+ and \verb+opaque+ that will be discussed
in later chapters.

Now, we show some code which displays the content of the \verb+Arg+
\verb+#arg+ record.  The code is available in \verb+yaws/www/arg.yaws+
and after a \verb+local_install+ a request to
\url{http://localhost:8000/arg.yaws} will run the code.

\begin{verbatim}

<html>

<h2> The Arg </h2>

<p>This page displays the Arg #argument structure
supplied to the out/1 function.

<erl>


out(A) ->
    Req = A#arg.req,
    H = yaws_api:reformat_header(A#arg.headers),
    {ehtml,
     [{h4,[], "The headers passed to us were:"},
      {hr},
      {ol, [],lists:map(fun(S) -> {li,[], {p,[],S}} end,H)},

      {h4, [], "The request"},
      {ul,[],
       [{li,[], f("method: ~s",  [Req#http_request.method])},
        {li,[], f("path: ~p",    [Req#http_request.path])},
        {li,[], f("version: ~p", [Req#http_request.version])}]},

      {hr},
      {h4, [], "Other items"},
      {ul,[],
       [{li,[], f("clisock from: ~p", [inet:peername(A#arg.clisock)])},
        {li,[], f("docroot: ~s",      [A#arg.docroot])},
        {li,[], f("fullpath: ~s",     [A#arg.fullpath])}]},
      {hr},
      {h4, [], "Parsed query data"},
      {pre,[], f("~p", [yaws_api:parse_query(A)])},
      {hr},
      {h4,[], "Parsed POST data "},
      {pre,[],  f("~p", [yaws_api:parse_post(A)])}]}.

</erl>

</html>

\end{verbatim}

The code utilizes four functions from the \verb+yaws_api+ module.  The
\verb+yaws_api+ module is a general purpose www API module that
contains various functions that are handy while developing
\Yaws\ code. We will see many more of those functions during the
examples in the following chapters.

The functions used are:

\begin{itemize}
\item \verb+yaws_api:f/2+ --- alias for \verb+io_lib:format/2+. The
  \verb+f/2+ function is automatically \verb+-included+ in all
  \Yaws\ code.
\item \verb+yaws_api:reformat_header/1+ --- This function takes the
  \#headers record and unparses it, that is reproduces regular text.
\item \verb+yaws_api:parse_query/1+ --- The topic of the next section.
\item \verb+yaws_api:parse_post/1+ --- Ditto.
\end{itemize}


\section{POSTs}

\subsection{Queries}

The user can supply data to the server in many ways. The most
common is to give the data in the actual URL.
If we invoke:

\verb+GET http://localhost:8000/arg.yaws?kalle=duck&goofy=unknown+

we pass two parameters to the \verb+arg.yaws+ page.  That data is
URL-encoded by the browser and the server can retrieve the data by
looking at the remainder of the URL following the '?' character.  If
we invoke the \verb+arg.yaws+ page with the above mentioned URL we get
as the result of \verb+yaws_parse_query/1+:

$kalle = duck$

$goofy = unknown$

In \Erlang\  terminology, the call \verb+yaws_api:parse_query(Arg)+ returns
the list:
\begin{verbatim}
[{kalle, "duck"}, {goofy, "unknown"}]
\end{verbatim}

Note that the first element is transformed into an atom, whereas the
value is still a string. Hence, a web page can contain URLs with a
query and thus pass data to the web server. This scheme works both
with \verb+GET+ and \verb+POST+ requests.  It is the easiest way to
pass data to the Web server since no form is required in the web page.


\subsection{Forms}

In order to \verb+POST+ data a form is required. Say that we have a
page called \verb+form.yaws+ that contain the following code:

\begin{verbatim}
<html>
<form action="/post_form.yaws"
      method="post"

<p> A Input field
<input name="xyz" type="text">
<input type="submit">
</form>
</html>
\end{verbatim}

This will produce a page with a simple input field and a submit button.

\begin{figure}[h]
\begin{center}

 \includegraphics[scale=0.6] {a}

\end{center}
\end{figure}


If we enter something---say, ``Hello there''---in the input field and
click the submit button the client will request the page indicated in
the ``action'' attribute, namely \verb+post_form.yaws+.

If that \Yaws\  page has the following code:

\begin{verbatim}
out(A) ->
   L = yaws_api:parse_post(A),
   {html, f("~p", [L])}
\end{verbatim}

The user will see the output

\begin{verbatim}
[{xyz, "Hello there"}]
\end{verbatim}

The differences between using the query part of the URL
and a form are the following:

\begin{itemize}
\item Using the query arg only works in a \verb+GET+ request. We parse
  the query argument with the function
  \verb+yaws_api:parse_query(Arg)+

\item If we use a form and \verb+POST+ the user data the client will
  transmit the user data in the body of the request.  That is, the
  client sends a request to get the page using the \verb+POST+ method
  and it then attaches the user data---encoded---into the body of the
  request.

A \verb+POST+ request can have a query part in its URL as well as user
data in the body.
\end{itemize}


\section{POSTing files}

It is possible to upload files from the client to the server by means
of \verb+POST+. We indicate this in the form by telling the browser
that we want a different encoding. Here is an example form that does
this:
\begin{verbatim}

out(A) ->
    Form =
        {form, [{enctype, "multipart/form-data"},
                {method, post},
                {action, "file_upload_form.yaws"}],
                [{input, [{type, submit}, {value, "Upload"}]},
                 {input, [{type,file}, {width, "50"}, {name, foo}]}]},
    {ehtml, {html,[], [{h2,[], "A simple file upload page"},
                      Form]}}.

\end{verbatim}

As shown in the figure, the page delivers the entire HTML page with
enclosing \verb+html+ markers.


\begin{figure}[h]
\begin{center}

 \includegraphics[scale=0.6] {b}

\end{center}
\end{figure}

The user gets an option to browse the local host for a file
or the user can explicitly fill in the file name in the input
field. The file browsing part is automatically taken care of by the
browser.

The action field in the form states that the client shall POST to a
page called \verb+file_upload_form.yaws+. This page will get the
contents of the file in the body of the \verb+POST+ message. To read
it, we use the \verb+yaws_multipart+ module, which provides the
following capabilities:

\begin{enumerate}
\item It reads all parameters --- files uploaded and other simple
  parameters.
\item It takes a few options to help file uploads. Specifically:
\begin{enumerate}
\item \verb+{max_file_size, MaxBytes}+: if the file size in bytes
  exceeds \verb+MaxBytes+, return an error
\item \verb+no_temp_file+: read the uploaded file into memory without
  any temp files
\item \verb+{temp_file,FullFilePath}+: specify \verb+FullFilePath+ for
  the temp file; if not given, a unique file name is generated
\item \verb+{temp_dir, TempDir}+: specify \verb+TempDir+ as the
  directory to store the uploaded temp file; if this option is not
  provided, then by default an OS-specific temp directory such as
  \verb+/tmp+ is used
\item \verb+list+: return file data in list form; this is the default
\item \verb+binary+: return file data in binary form
\end{enumerate}
\end{enumerate}

Note that the \verb+list+ and \verb+binary+ options affect only file
data, not filenames, headers, or other parameters associated with each
file. These are always returned as strings.

Just call \verb+yaws_multipart:read_multipart_form+ from your
\verb+out/1+ function and it'll return a tuple with the first element
set to one of these three atoms:

\begin{itemize}
\item \verb+get_more+: more data needs to be read; return this tuple
  directly to \Yaws\ from your \verb+out/1+ function and it will call
  your \verb+out/1+ function again when it has read more \verb+POST+
  data, at which point you must call \verb+read_multipart_form+ again
\item \verb+done+: multipart form reading is complete; a
  \verb+dict+ full of parameters is returned
\item \verb+error+: an error occurred
\end{itemize}

The \verb+dict+ returned with \verb+done+ allows you to query it for
parameters by name. For file upload parameters, it returns one of the
following lists:

\begin{verbatim}
[{filename, "name of the uploaded file as entered on the form"},
 {value, Contents_of_the_file_all_in_memory} | _T]
\end{verbatim}

or:

\begin{verbatim}
[{filename, "name of the uploaded file as entered on the form"},
 {temp_file, "full pathname of the temp file"} | _T]
\end{verbatim}

Some multipart/form messages also headers such as \verb+Content-Type+
and \verb+Content-Transfer-Encoding+ for different subparts of the
message. If these headers are present in any subpart of a
multipart/form message, they're also included in that subpart's
parameter list, like this:

\begin{verbatim}
[{filename, "name of the uploaded file as entered on the form"},
 {value, Contents_of_the_file_all_in_memory},
 {content_type, "image/png"} | _T]
\end{verbatim}

Note that for the temporary file case, it's your responsibility to
delete the file when you're done with it.

Here's an example:

\begin{verbatim}
-module(my_yaws_controller).
-export([out/1]).

out(Arg) ->
    Options = [no_temp_file],
    case yaws_multipart:read_multipart_form(Arg, Options) of
        {done, Params} ->
            io:format("Params : ~p~n", [Params]),
            {ok, [{filename, FileName},{value,FileContent}|_]} =
                dict:find("my_file", Params),
            AnotherParam = dict:find("another_param", Params);
        %% do something with FileName, FileContent and AnotherParam
        {error, Reason} ->
            io:format("Error reading multipart form: ~s~n", [Reason]);
        Other -> Other
    end.
\end{verbatim}

Here, \verb+my_yaws_controller+ is a user-defined module compiled as
usual with \verb+erlc+ with the resulting \verb+.beam+ file placed in
the \Yaws\ load path. The module is then registered with \Yaws\ as an
\emph{appmod} to allow it to receive and process requests---see
section \ref{appmods} for more details.

\chapter{Mode of operation}

\section{On-the-fly compilation}
When the client requests a \Yaws\ page, \Yaws\ will look in its caches
(there is one cache per virtual server) to see if it finds the
requested page in the cache. If \Yaws\ doesn't find the page in the
cache, it will compile the page. This only happens the first time a
page is requested.  Say that the page is 400 bytes big and has the
following layout:


\begin{figure}[h]
\begin{center}

 \includegraphics[scale=0.4] {layout}

\end{center}
\end{figure}

The \Yaws\ server will then parse the file and produce a structure
which makes it possible to readily deliver the page without parsing
the next time the same page is requested.

When shipping the page it will
\begin{enumerate}
\item Ship the first 100 bytes from the file
\item Evaluate the first \Erlang\  chunk in the file and ship the output
from the \verb+out/1+ function in that chunk. It will also jump ahead
in the file and skip 120 bytes.
\item Ship 80 bytes of HTML code
\item Again evaluate an \Erlang\  chunk, this time the second and jump
ahead 60 bytes in the file.
\item And finally ship 140 bytes of HTML code to the client
\end{enumerate}

\Yaws\ writes the source output of the compilation into a directory
\verb+/tmp/yaws/$UID+. The beam files are never written to a file.
Sometimes it can be useful to look at the generated source code files,
for example if the \Yaws{}\slash \Erlang\ code contains a compilation
error which is hard to understand.


\section{Evaluating the Yaws Code}

All client requests will execute in their own \Erlang\  process.
For each group of virtual hosts on the same IP:PORT pair
one \Erlang\  process listens for incoming requests.

This process spawns acceptor processes for each incoming request.
Each acceptor process reads and parses all the HTTP headers from the
client. It then looks at the \verb+Host:+ header to figure out which
virtual server to use, i.e. which docroot to use for this particular
request. If the \verb+Host:+ header doesn't match any server from
\textit{yaws.conf} with that IP:PORT pair, the first one from
\textit{yaws.conf} is chosen.

By default \Yaws\  will not ship any data at all to the client
while evaluating a \Yaws\  page. The headers as well as the generated
content are accumulated and not shipped to the client until the
entire page has been processed.


\chapter{SSL}

Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is a protocol used on the Web for delivering
encrypted pages to the WWW client. SSL is widely deployed on the
Internet and virtually all bank transactions as well as all online
shopping today is done with SSL encryption. There are many good
sources on the net that describe SSL in detail, so we will not try to
do that here.  See for example
\url{http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/SSL-Certificates-HOWTO/}, which
describes how to manage certificates and keys.

In order to run an SSL server we must have a certificate. Either we
can create a so-called self-signed certificate ourselves or buy a
certificate from one of the many CA's (Certificate Authorities) on the
net. \Yaws\  uses the OTP interface to OpenSSL.

To setup a \Yaws\ server with SSL we could have a \textit{yaws.conf}
file that looks like:

\begin{verbatim}

 logdir = /var/log/yaws

<server www.funky.org>
               port = 443
               listen = 192.168.128.32
               docroot = /var/yaws/www.funky.org
               <ssl>
                  keyfile = /etc/funky.key
                  certfile = /etc/funky.cert
                  password = gazonk
               </ssl>
       </server>
\end{verbatim}

This is the easiest possible SSL configuration. The configuration
refers to a certificate file and a key file. The certificate file
must contain the name "www.funky.org" as it "Common Name".

The keyfile is the private key file and it is encrypted using
the password "gazonk".


\chapter{Applications}

\Yaws\  is well suited for Web applications. In this chapter we will
describe a number of application templates. Code and strategies that
can be used to build Web applications.

There are several ways of starting applications from \Yaws{}.

\begin{itemize}
\item The first and most easy variant is to specify the
  \verb+-r Module+ flag to the \Yaws\ startup script.  This will
  \verb+apply(Module,start,[])+

\item We can also specify \verb+runmods+ in the \textit{yaws.conf}
  file.  It is possible to have several modules specified if want the
  same \Yaws\ server to run several different applications.

\begin{verbatim}

runmod = myapp
runmod = app_number2

\end{verbatim}

\item It is also possible to do it the other way around, let the main
  application start \Yaws{}. We call this embedded mode, which we will
  discuss in chapter \ref{embedded}.

\end{itemize}


\section{Login scenarios}

Many Web applications require the user to login. Once the user has
logged in the server sets a cookie and then the user will be
identified by help of the cookie in subsequent requests.

\subsection{The session server}
The cookie is passed in the headers and is available to the
\Yaws\ programmer in the \verb+Arg+ \verb+#arg+ record. The
\Yaws\ session server can help us to maintain a state for a user while
the user is logged in to the application. The session server has the
following 5 API functions to aid us:

\begin{enumerate}
\item \verb+yaws_api:new_cookie_session(Opaque)+ --- This function
  initiates a new cookie-based session. The \verb+Opaque+ data is
  typically some application-specific structure which makes it
  possible for the application to read a user state, or it can be the
  actual user state itself.

\item \verb+yaws_api:cookieval_to_opaque(Cookie)+ --- This function
  maps a cookie to a session.

\item \verb+yaws_api:replace_cookie_session(Cookie, NewOpaque)+ ---
  Replace the opaque user state in the session server with
  \verb+NewOpaque+.

\item \verb+yaws_api:delete_cookie_session(Cookie)+ --- This function
  should typically be called when the user logs out or when our web
  application decides to automatically logout the user.

\end{enumerate}

All cookie-based applications are different but they have some things
in common. In the following examples we assume the existence of a
function \verb+myapp:auth(UserName, Passwd)+ and it returns \verb+ok+
or \verb+{error, Reason}+.

Let's assume the following record:

\begin{verbatim}

-record(session, {user,
                  passwd,
                  udata = []}).

\end{verbatim}

The following function is a good template function to check the
cookie.

\begin{verbatim}

get_cookie_val(CookieName, Arg) ->
    H = Arg#arg.headers,
    yaws_api:find_cookie_val(CookieName, H#headers.cookie).


check_cookie(A, CookieName) ->
    case get_cookie_val(CookieName, A) of
        []  ->
            {error, "not logged in"};
        Cookie ->
            yaws_api:cookieval_to_opaque(Cookie)
    end.

\end{verbatim}

We need to check all requests and make sure the session\_server has
our cookie registered as an active session. Also, if a request comes
in without a working cookie we want to present a login page instead of
the page the user requested. Another quirky issue is that the pages
necessary for display of the login page must be shipped without
checking the cookie. The next sections explain how these needs can be
met.

\subsection{Arg rewrite}

In this section we describe a feature whereby the user is allowed to
rewrite the \verb+Arg+ at an early stage in the \Yaws\ server.  We do
that by specifying an \verb+arg_rewrite_mod+ in the \textit{yaws.conf}
file.

\begin{verbatim}
arg_rewrite_mod = myapp
\end{verbatim}


Then in the \verb+myapp+ module we have:

\begin{verbatim}
arg_rewrite(Arg) ->
    OurCookieName = "myapp_sid"
    case check_cookie(A, OurCookieName) of
        {error, _} ->
            do_rewrite(Arg);
        {ok, _Session} ->
            %return Arg untouched
            Arg
    end.

%% these pages must be shippable without a good cookie
login_pages() ->
    ["/banner.gif", "/login.yaws", "/post_login.yaws"].

do_rewrite(Arg) ->
    Req = Arg#arg.req,
    {abs_path, Path} = Req#http_request.path,
    case lists:member(Path, login_pages()) of
        true ->
            Arg;
        false ->
            Arg#arg{req = Req#http_request{path = {abs_path, "/login.yaws"}},
                    state =  {abs_path, Path}}
    end.

\end{verbatim}

Our arg rewrite function lets all \verb+Arg+s go through untouched
that either have a good cookie or belong to a set of predefined pages
that are acceptable to get without being logged in.  If we decide that
the user must log in, we change the path of the request, thereby
making the \Yaws\ server ship a login page instead of the page the
user requested. We also set the original path in the \verb+Arg+ state
argument so that the login page can redirect the user to the original
page once the login procedure is finished.

\subsection{Authenticating}

Now we're approaching the \verb+login.yaws+ page, the page that
displays the login prompt to the user. The login page consists of two
parts: one part that displays the login data as a form, and one form
processing page that reads the data the user entered in the login
fields and performs the actual authentication.

The login page performs a tiny well-known Web trick where it passes
the original URL request in a hidden field in the login page and
thereby passing that information to the form processing page.

The page \verb+login.yaws+:

\begin{verbatim}
<erl>

out(A) ->
    {ehtml,
     {html,[],
      [{h2, [], "Login page"},
       {hr},
       {form, [{action,"/login_post.yaws"},
               {method,post}],

        [{p,[], "Username"}, {input, [{type,text},{name,uname}]},
         {p,[],"Password"},  {input, [{type,password},{name,passwd}]},
         {input, [{type,submit},{value,"Login"}]},
         {input, [{type,hidden},{name,url},
                  {value, A#arg.state}]}]}]}}.

</erl>
\end{verbatim}


The form processing page which gets the \verb+POST+ data from the code
above:

\begin{verbatim}


<erl>

-include("myapp.hrl").
%% we have the session record there
%% we must set the include_path in the yaws.conf file
%% in order for the compiler to find that file

kv(K,L) ->
    {value, {K, V}} = lists:keysearch(K,1,L),
    V.

out(A) ->
    L = yaws_api:parse_post(A),
    User = kv(user, L),
    Pwd =  kv(passwd, L),
    case myapp:auth(User, Pwd) of
        ok ->
            S = #session{user = User,
                         passwd = Pwd,
                         udata = []},
            %% Now register the session to the session server
            Cookie = yaws_api:new_cookie_session(S),
            [{redirect_local, kv(url, L)},
              yaws_api:setcookie("myapp_sid",Cookie)]
        Err ->
            {ehtml,
             {html, [],
              {p, [], f("Bad login: ~p",[Err])}}}
    end.

</erl>


\end{verbatim}

The function returns a list of two new (not previously discussed)
return values: instead of returning HTML output as in
\verb+{html, Str}+ or \verb+{ehtml,Term}+ we return a list of two new
values. (There are many different possible return values from the
\verb+out/1+ function and they will all be described later.) The two
new values are:

\begin{enumerate}

\item The tuple \verb+{redirect_local, Path}+ makes the \Yaws\ web
  server return a 302 redirect to the specified \verb+Path+.
  Optionally a different status code can be supplied which will be
  used in place of 302, e.g.  \verb+{redirect_local, Path, 307}+.

\item \verb+yaws_api:setcookie("myapp_sid",Cookie)+ generates a
  \verb+Set-Cookie+ header.
\end{enumerate}

Now if we put all this together we have a full-blown cookie-based
login system. The last thing we did in the form processing code was
to register the session with the session server thereby letting any
future requests go straight through the \verb+Arg+ rewriter.

This way both \Yaws\  pages as well as all or some static content
is protected by the cookie login code.

\subsection{Database driven applications}

We can use code similar to the code in the previous section to associate
a user session to entries in a database. Mnesia fits perfectly
together with \Yaws\  and keeping user persistent state in Mnesia is
both easy and convenient.

Once the user has logged in we can typically use the user name as key
into the database. We can mix \verb+ram_tables+ and \verb+disc_tables+
to our liking. The Mnesia database must be initialized via
\verb+create_table/2+ before it can be used. This is typically done
while installing the web application on a machine.

Another option is to let the application check that Mnesia
is initialized whenever the application starts.

If we don't want or need to use Mnesia, it's of course possible
to use a simple \verb+dets+ file or a text file as well.

\section{Appmods}
\label{appmods}

Appmods is mechanism to invoke different applications based upon the
URL. A URL---as presented to the web server in a request---has a path
part and a query part.

It is possible to install several appmods in the \textit{yaws.conf}
file as shown below:

\begin{verbatim}

appmods = foo myapp

\end{verbatim}

Now, if the user requests a URL where any component in the
directory path is an appmod, the parsing of the URL will terminate
there and instead of reading the actual file from the disk, \Yaws\  will
invoke the appmod with the remainder of the path inserted into
\verb+Arg#arg.appmoddata+.

Say the user requests the URL
\url{http://www.funky.org/myapp/xx/bar.html}.  \Yaws\ will not ship
the file \verb+bar.html+ to the client, instead it will invoke
\verb+myapp:out(Arg)+ with \verb+Arg#arg.appmoddata+ set to the string
\verb+xx/bar.html+. Any optional query data---that is, data that
follows the first '?' character in the URL---is removed from the path
and passed as \verb+Arg#arg.querydata+.

Appmods can be used to run applications on a server. All requests
to the server that has an appmod in the URL will be handled by that
application. If the application decides that it want to
ship a page from the disk to the client, it can return the
tuple \verb+{page, Path}+. This return value will make \Yaws\  read
the page from the disk, possibly add the page to its cache of
commonly accessed pages and ship it back to the client.

The \verb+{page, Path}+ return value is equivalent to a
redirect, but it removes an extra round trip, and is thus faster.

Appmods can also be used to fake entire directory hierarchies
that don't exist on disk.


\section{The opaque data}

Sometimes an application needs application-specific data such as the
location of its data files. There exists a mechanism to pass
application-specific configuration data from the \Yaws\ server to the
application.

When configuring a server we have an opaque field in the configuration
file that can be used for this purpose.  Say we have the following
fields in the config file:

\begin{verbatim}

<server foo>
    listen = 192.168.128.44
    <opaque>
        foo = bar
        somefile = /var/myapp/db
        myname = hyber
    </opaque>
</server>
\end{verbatim}

This will create a normal server that listens to the specified IP address.
An application has access to the opaque data that was specified
in that particular server through \verb+Arg#arg.opaque+.

If we have the opaque data specified above, the \verb+Arg+ opaque
field will have the value:

\begin{verbatim}

[{foo, "bar"},
 {somefile, "/var/myapp/db"},
 {myname, "hyber"}
]

\end{verbatim}


\section{Customizations}

When actually deploying an application at a live site, some of the
standard \Yaws\ behaviors are not acceptable. Many sites want to
customize the web server behavior when a client requests a page that
doesn't exist on the web server. The standard \Yaws\ behavior is to
reply with status code 404 and a message explaining that the page
doesn't exist.

Similarly, when \Yaws\  code crashes, the reason for the crash is
displayed in the Web browser. This is very convenient while
developing a site but not acceptable in production.


\subsection{404 File not found}

We can install a special handler for 404 messages. We do that by
specifying a \verb+errormod_404+ in the \textit{yaws.conf} file.

If we have:

\begin{verbatim}
<server foo>
  ..
  ..
  ..
  errormod_404 = myapp

</server>

\end{verbatim}

When \Yaws\ gets a request for a file that doesn't exist, it invokes
the \verb+errormod_404+ module to generate both the status code as
well as the content of the message.

If \verb+Module+ is specified as the \verb+errormod_404+ module,
\Yaws\ will invoke \verb+Module:out404(Arg, GC, SC)+, passing the
arguments as described below:

\begin{itemize}
\item \verb+Arg+ is an \verb+#arg{}+ record

\item \verb+GC+ is a \verb+#gconf{}+ record (defined in \verb+yaws.hrl+)

\item \verb+SC+ is a \verb+#sconf{}+ record (defined in
  \verb+yaws.hrl+)
\end{itemize}

The function can and must do the same things that a normal
\verb+out/1+ function does.


\subsection{Crash messages}

We use a similar technique for generating the crash messages: we
install a module in the \textit{yaws.conf} file and let that module
generate the crash message.  We have:

\begin{verbatim}
errormod_crash = Module
\end{verbatim}

The default is to display the entire formatted crash message in the
browser.  This is good for debugging but not good for production.

If \verb+Module+ is specified as the \verb+errormod_crash+ module, the
function \verb+Module:crashmsg(Arg, SC, Str)+ will be called.  The
\verb+Str+ argument is the real crash message formatted as a string.

\section{Stream content}

If the \verb+out/1+ function returns the tuple
\verb+{content, MimeType, Content}+ \Yaws\ will ship that data to the
Client. This way we can deliver dynamically generated content to the
client which is of a different MIME type than "text/html".

If the generated response is very large and it not possible or
practical to generate the whole thing, we can return the value:

\begin{verbatim}
{streamcontent, MimeType, FirstChunk}
\end{verbatim}

\noindent which delivers data back to the client using HTTP chunked
transfer (see RFC 2616 section 3.6.1) and then from a different
\Erlang\ process deliver the remaining chunks by using the functions
described below:

\begin{enumerate}
\item \verb+yaws_api:stream_chunk_deliver(YawsPid, Data)+ where the
  \verb+YawsPid+ is the process id of the \Yaws\ worker process. That
  pid is available in \verb+Arg#arg.pid+.

\item \verb+stream_chunk_end(YawsPid)+ which must be called to
  indicate the end of the stream.
\end{enumerate}

A streaming alternative is also available for applications that need a
more direct way to deliver data to clients, such as those dealing with
data too large to buffer in memory but not wishing to use chunked
transfer, or applications that use long-polling (Comet) techniques
that require them to hold client connections open for extended
periods. For these situations we can return the value:

\begin{verbatim}
{streamcontent_from_pid, MimeType, Pid}
\end{verbatim}

\noindent to tell \Yaws\ we wish to deliver data of mime type
\verb+MimeType+ to the client from process \verb+Pid+. In this case,
\Yaws\ will prepare the socket for delivery from \verb+Pid+ and then
send one of the following messages to \verb+Pid+:
\begin{itemize}
\item \verb+{ok, YawsPid}+ tells \verb+Pid+ that it is now OK to
  proceed with sending data back to the client using the socket. The
  socket is accessible as \verb+Arg#arg.clisock+.

\item \verb+{discard, YawsPid}+ informs \verb+Pid+ that it should not
  attempt to use the socket, typically because the requested HTTP
  method requires no response body.
\end{itemize}

We call one of the following functions to send data:
\begin{itemize}
\item \verb+yaws_api:stream_process_deliver(Socket, IoList)+ sends
  data \verb+IoList+ using socket \verb+Socket+ without chunking the
  data.

\item \verb+yaws_api:stream_process_deliver_chunk(Socket, IoList)+
  sends data \verb+IoList+ using socket \verb+Socket+ but converts
  the data into chunked transfer form before sending it.
\end{itemize}

Pids using chunked transfer must indicate the end of their transfer by
calling the following function:
\begin{itemize}
\item \verb+yaws_api:stream_process_deliver_final_chunk(Socket, IoList)+
\end{itemize}

which delivers a special HTTP chunk to mark the end of the data
transfer to the client.

Finally, \verb+Pid+ must always call
\verb+yaws_api:stream_process_end(Socket, YawsPid)+ when it finishes
sending data or when it receives the \verb+{discard, YawsPid}+ message
from \Yaws\ --- this is required to inform \Yaws\ that \verb+Pid+ has
finished with the socket and will not use it directly anymore. If the
application has to close the socket while it's in control of it,
though, it must pass the atom \verb+closed+ as the first argument to
\verb+yaws_api:stream_process_end+ in place of the socket to inform
\Yaws\ that the socket has been closed and it should no longer attempt
to use it.

App\-li\-ca\-tions that use the \verb+streamcontent_from_pid+
directive that also want to a\-void chunked transfer encoding for
their streams should be sure to include a set\-ting for the
\verb+Content-Length+ header in their \verb+out/1+ return
value. \Yaws\ au\-to\-mat\-i\-cal\-ly sets the
\verb+Transfer-Encoding+ head\-er to \verb+chunked+ if it does not
detect a \verb+Content-Length+ header.

\section{All out/1 return values}

\begin{itemize}


\item \verb+{html, DeepList}+ This assumes that \verb+DeepList+ is
  formatted HTML code.  The code will be inserted in the page.

\item \verb+{ehtml, Term}+ This will transform the \Erlang\ term
  \verb+Term+ into a stream of HTML content.

\item \verb+{content, MimeType, Content}+ This function will make the
  web server generate different content than HTML. This return value
  is only allowed in a \Yaws\ file which has only one
  \verb+<erl> </erl>+ part and no html parts at all.

\item \verb+{streamcontent, MimeType, FirstChunk}+ This return value
  plays the same role as the \verb+content+ return value above.
  However it makes it possible to stream data to the client using HTTP
  chunked transfer if the \Yaws\ code doesn't have access to all the
  data in one go. (Typically if a file is very large or if data
  arrives from back end servers on the network.)

\item
  \verb+{streamcontent_with_timeout, MimeType, FirstChunk, Timeout}+
  Similar to above, but with an explicit timeout. The default timeout
  is 30 secs, i.e. if the application fails to deliver data to the
  \Yaws\ process, the streaming will stop. This is often not the
  desired behaviour in Comet/Ajax applications. It's possible to
  provide 'infinity' as timeout.

\item \verb+{streamcontent_from_pid, MimeType, Pid}+ This return value
  is similar to the \verb+streamcontent+ return value above.  However
  it makes it possible to stream data to the client directly from an
  application process to the socket. This approach can be useful for
  applications that employ long-polling (Comet) techniques, for
  example, and for applications wanting to avoid buffering data or
  avoid HTTP chunked mode transfer for streamed data.

\item \verb+{streamcontent_with_size, Sz, MimeType, Pid}+ This return value is
  similar to the \verb+streamcontent+ return value above. However it makes it
  possible to stream data to the client by setting the content length of the
  response. As the opposite of other ways to stream data, in this case, the
  response is not chunked encoded.


\item \verb+{header, H}+ Accumulates a HTTP header. Used by for
  example the \verb+yaws_api:setcookie/2-6+ function.

\item \verb+{allheaders, HeaderList}+ Will clear all previously
  accumulated headers and replace them.

\item \verb+{status, Code}+ Sets the response HTTP status code to
  \verb+Code+.

\item \verb+break+ Will stop processing of any consecutive chunks of
  erl or HTML code in the \Yaws\ file.

\item \verb+ok+ Do nothing.

\item \verb+{redirect, Url}+ Erase all previous headers and accumulate
  a single HTTP \verb+Location+ header. Set the status code to 302.

\item \verb+{redirect, Url, Status}+ Same as redirect above with the
  additional option of supplying the status code. The default for a
  redirect is 302 but 301, 303 and 307 are also valid redirect status
  codes.

\item \verb+{redirect_local, Path}+ Does a redirect to the same
  \url{Scheme://Host:Port/Path} in which we are currently
  executing. \verb+Path+ can be either be the path directly
  (equivalent to \verb+abs_path+), or one of \verb+{{abs_path, Path}+
  or \verb+{{rel_path, RelativePath}}+

\item \verb+{redirect_local, Path, Status}+ Same as
  \verb+redirect_local+ above with the additional option of supplying
  the status code. The default for a redirect is 302 but 301, 303 and
  307 are also valid redirect status codes.

\item \verb+{get_more, Cont, State}+ When we are receiving large
  \verb+POST+s we can return this value and be invoked again when more
  data arrives.

\item \verb+{page, Page}+ Make \Yaws\ return a different local page
  than the one being requested.

\item \verb+{page, {Options, Page}}+ Like the above, but supplying an
  additional deep list of options.  For now, the only type of option
  is \verb+{header, H}+ with the effect of accumulating the HTTP
  header \verb+H+ for page \verb+Page+.

\item \verb+{websocket, CallbackModule, Options}+ Tell \Yaws\  to use
  \verb+CallbackModule+ as a WebSockets Protocol handler for traffic
  on the client socket. See chapter \ref{websockets} for more details.

\item \verb+[ListOfValues]+ It is possible to return a list of the above defined
  return values. Any occurrence of \verb+streamcontent+,
  \verb+streamcontent_with_timeout+, \verb+streamcontent_with_size+,
  \verb+streamcontent_from_pid+, \verb+get_more+, \verb+page+ or \verb+break+ in
  this list is legal only if it is the last position of the list. If not,
  remaining values in the list are ignored.

\end{itemize}


\chapter{Debugging and Development}

\Yaws\ has excellent debugging capabilities. First and foremost we
have the ability to run the web server in interactive mode by means of
the command line switch \verb+-i+, which gives us a regular
\Erlang\ command line prompt we can use to compile helper code or
reload helper code. Furthermore all error messages are displayed
there.  If a \verb+.yaws+ page producees any regular \Erlang\ I\slash
O, that output will be displayed at the \Erlang\ prompt, assuming we
are running in interactive mode.

If we give the command line switch \verb+-d+ we get some additional
error messages. Also \Yaws\ does some additional checking of user
supplied data such as headers.

\section{Logs}
\Yaws\ produces various logs. All log files are written into the
\Yaws\ logdir directory. This directory is specified in the config
file.

We have the following log files:

\begin{itemize}
\item The access log. Access logging is turned on or off per server in
  the \textit{yaws.conf} file. If access\_log is turned on for a
  server, \Yaws\ will produce a log in Common Access Log Format called
  \textit{HostName:PortNumber.access}

\item The auth log. Auth logging is turned on or off per server in the
  \textit{yaws.conf} file. If auth\_log is turned on for a server,
  \Yaws\ will produce a log called \textit{HostName:PortNumber.auth}
  which contains all HTTP auth-related messages.

\item \textit{report.log} This file contains all error and crash
  messages for all virtual servers in the same file.

\item Trace files. The two command line flags \verb+-t+ and \verb+-T+ tells
\Yaws\ to trace all traffic or just all HTTP messages and write them to files.
\end{itemize}


\chapter{External scripts via CGI}

\Yaws\  can also interface to external programs generating dynamic
content via the Common Gateway Interface (CGI).  This has to be
explicitly enabled for a virtual host by listing \verb+cgi+ in the
\verb+allowed_scripts+ line in the configuration file.  Any request
for a page ending in \verb+.cgi+ (or \verb+.CGI+) will then result in
trying to execute the corresponding file.

If you have a PHP executable compiled for using CGI in the \verb+PATH+
of the \Yaws\  server, you can enable PHP support by adding \verb+php+ to
\verb+allowed_scripts+.  Requests for pages ending in \verb+.php+ will
then result in \Yaws\  executing \verb+php+ (configurable via
\verb+php_handler+) and passing the name of the corresponding file to
it via the appropriate environment variable.

These ways of calling CGI scripts are also available to \verb+.yaws+
scripts and appmods via the functions \verb+yaws_api:call_cgi/2+ and
\verb+yaws_api:call_cgi/3+.  This makes it possible to write wrappers
for CGI programs, irrespective of the value of \verb+allowed_scripts+.

The author of this \Yaws\  feature uses it for self-written CGI programs
as well as for using a standard CGI package.  You should not be
surprised however, should some scripts not work as expected due to an
incomplete or incorrect implementation of certain CGI meta-variables.
The author of this feature is interested in hearing about your
experiences with it.  He can be contacted at \verb+carsten@codimi.de+.

\chapter{FastCGI}

\Yaws\  supports the responder role and the authorizer role of the
FastCGI protocol. See \verb+www.fastcgi.com+ for details on the
FastCGI protocol.

The benefits of using FastCGI include:
\begin{enumerate}
\item Unlike CGI, it is not necessary to spawn a new process for
every request; the application server can handle multiple requests
in a single process.
\item The fact that the application server can run on a different
computer benefits scalability and security.
\item The application server can be written in any language for
which a FastCGI library is available. Existing applications
which have been written for other web servers can be used with
\Yaws{}.
\item FastCGI can also be used to implement external authentication
servers (in addition to generating dynamic content).
\end{enumerate}

Support for FastCGI was added to \Yaws\  by Bruno Rijsman
(\verb+brunorijsman@hotmail.com+).

\section{The FastCGI Responder Role}

The FastCGI responder role allows \Yaws\  to communicate with an
application server running on a different (or on the same) computer
to generate dynamic content.

The FastCGI protocol (which runs over TCP) is used to send the request
information from \Yaws\  to the application server and to send the
response information (e.g. the generated dynamic content) from
the application server back to \Yaws{}.

FastCGI responders can be invoked in two ways:

\begin{enumerate}

\item
By including \verb+fcgi+ in the \verb+allowed_scripts+ line
in the configuration file (note that the default value for
\verb+allowed_scripts+ includes \verb+fcgi+).

In this case a request for any resource with the \verb+.fcgi+
extension will result in a FastCGI call to the application server to
dynamically generate the content.

Note: the \Yaws\  server will only call the application server if a file
corresponding to the resource name (i.e. a file with the \verb+.fcgi+
extension) exists locally on the \Yaws\  server. The contents of that
file are not relevant.

\item
By creating an appmod which calls \verb+yaws_api:call_fcgi_responder+.
See the \verb+yaws_api(5)+ man page for details.

\end{enumerate}

\section{The FastCGI Authorizer Role}

The FastCGI authorizer role allows \Yaws\  to communicate with an
authentication server to authenticate requests.

The FastCGI protocol is used to send the request information from
\Yaws\ to the authentication server and the authentication response
back from the authentication server to \Yaws{}.

If access is allowed, \Yaws\ proceeds to process the request normally.

If access is denied, the authentication server provides the
response which is sent back to the client. This is typically
a ``not authorized'' response or a redirect to a login page.

FastCGI authorizers are invoked by creating an appmod which
calls \verb+yaws_api:call_fcgi_authorizer+.
See the \verb+yaws_api(5)+ man page for details.

\section{The FastCGI Filter Role}

FastCGI defines a third role, the filter role, which
\Yaws\  does not currently support.


\section{FastCGI Configuration}

The following commands in the \textit{yaws.conf} file control the
operation of FastCGI.

If you use FastCGI, you \emph{must} include the \verb+fcgi_app_server+
setting in the configuration file to specify the host name (or IP address)
and TCP port of the FastCGI application server.

You may include the \verb+fcgi_trace_protocol+ setting to enable or disable
tracing of FastCGI protocol messages. This is useful for debugging.

You may include the \verb+fcgi_log_app_error+ setting to enable or disable
logging application errors (any output to stderr and non-zero exit codes).

You may include the \verb+extra_cgi_vars+ command to pass additional
environment variables to the application.


\chapter{Security}

\Yaws\  is of course susceptible to intrusions. \Yaws\  has the
ability to run under a different user than root, even if we need
to listen to privileged port numbers. Running as root is generally a
bad idea.

Intrusions can happen basically at all places in \Yaws\ code where the
\Yaws\ code calls either the BIF \verb+open_port+ or when \Yaws\ code
calls \verb+os:cmd/1+. Both \verb+open_port+ and \verb+os:cmd/1+
invoke the \verb+/bin/sh+ interpreter to execute its commands. If the
commands are nastily crafted bad things can easily happen.

All data that is passed to these two function must be carefully
checked.

Since \Yaws\  is written in \Erlang\  a large class of cracks are
eliminated since it is not possible to perform any buffer overrun
cracks on a \Yaws\  server. This is very good.


Another possible point of entry to the system is by providing a URL
which takes the client out from the docroot. This should not be
possible -- and the impossibility relies on the correctness of the URL
parsing code in \Yaws{}.

\section{WWW-Authenticate}
\Yaws\  has support for WWW-Authentication.   WWW-Authenticate is a
standard HTTP scheme for the basic protection of files with a username
and password.  When a client browser wants a protected file, it must send a
\verb+Authenticate: username:password+ header in the request.  Note that
this is plain text.   If there is no such header or the username and
password is invalid the server will respond with status code 401 and
the realm.  Browsers will then tell the user that a username and
password is needed for ``realm'',  and will resend the request after
the user enters the information.

WWW-Authentication is configured in the \textit{yaws.conf} file, in as
many \textit{<auth>} directives as you desire:

\begin{verbatim}
<server foo>
  docroot = /var/yaws/www/

..
..

  <auth>
    realm = secretpage
    dir   = /protected
    dir   = /anotherdir
    user  = klacke:gazonk
    user  = jonny:xyz
    user  = ronny:12r8uyp09jksfdge4
  </auth>
</server>
\end{verbatim}


\Yaws\  will require one of the given username:password pairs for all
files in the \textit{/protected} and \textit{/anotherdir} directories.
Note that these directories are specified as a server path,  that is,
the filesystem path that is actually protected here is
\textit{/var/yaws/www/protected} .


\chapter {Embedded mode}
\label{embedded}

\Yaws\  is a normal OTP application. It is possible to integrate \Yaws\
into another larger application. The \Yaws\  source tree must be
integrated into the larger application's build environment. \Yaws\  is
then simply started by \verb+application:start()+ from the larger
application's boot script, or the \Yaws\  components needed for the
larger application can be started individually under the application's
supervisor(s).

By default \Yaws\ reads its configuration data from a config file, the
default is \textit{/usr/local/etc/yaws/yaws.conf} . If \Yaws\ is integrated
into a larger application, however, that application typically has its
configuration data kept at some other centralized place. Sometimes we
may not even have a file system to read the configuration from if we
run a small embedded system.

\Yaws\  reads its application environment. If the environment key
\verb+embedded+ is set to \verb+true+, \Yaws\  starts in embedded mode.
Once started it must be fed a configuration, and that can be done
after \Yaws\  has started by means of the function
\verb+yaws_api:setconf/2+.

It is possible to call \verb+setconf/2+ several times to force \Yaws\  to
reread the configuration.

\section{Creating Global and Server Configurations}

The \verb+yaws_api:setconf/2+ function mentioned in the previous
section takes two arguments:

\begin{itemize}

\item a \verb+#gconf+ record instance, specifying global
  \Yaws\ configuration

\item a list of lists of \verb+#sconf+ record instances, each
  specifying configuration for a particular server instance

\end{itemize}

These record types are specified in \verb+yaws.hrl+, which is not
normally intended for inclusion by applications. Instead,
\Yaws\  provides the \verb+yaws_api:embedded_start_conf/1,2,3,4+
functions that allow embedded mode applications to specify
configuration data using property lists (lists of
\verb+{key, value}+ pairs).

The \verb+yaws_api:embedded_start_conf+ functions all return a tuple
containing the following four items:

\begin{itemize}

\item the atom \verb+ok+.

\item a list of lists of \verb+#sconf+ record instances. This variable
  is intended to be passed directly to\\* \verb+yaws_api:setconf/2+ as
  its second argument.

\item a \verb+#gconf+ record instance. This variable is intended to
  be passed directly to \verb+yaws_api:setconf/2+ as its first
  argument.

\item a list of supervisor child specification for the
  \Yaws\  components the embedded mode application's configuration
  specified should be started. This allows embedded mode applications
  to start \Yaws\  under its own supervisors.

\end{itemize}

Note that \verb+yaws_api:embedded_start_conf+ does not actually start
any servers, but rather it only returns the configuration information
and child specifications needed for the embedded mode application to
start and configure \Yaws\  itself.

\section{Starting Yaws in Embedded Mode}

An embedded mode application can start \Yaws\  in one of two ways:

\begin{itemize}

\item It can call \verb+yaws_api:embedded_start_conf+ to obtain
  configuration and \Yaws\  startup information as described in the
  previous section, start \Yaws\  under its own supervisors, and then
  pass the global and server configuration settings to
  \verb+yaws_api:setconf/2+.

\item It can call \verb+yaws:start_embedded/1,2,3,4+, each of which
  takes exactly the same arguments as the corresponding
  \verb+yaws_api:embedded_start_conf/1,2,3,4+ function. Instead of just
  returning start and configuration information, however,
  \verb+yaws:start_embedded+ also starts and configures \Yaws{}, which
  can be more convenient but does not allow the embedded mode
  application any supervision control over \Yaws{}.

\end{itemize}

Both of these functions take care of setting the environment key
\verb+embedded+ to \verb+true+. Neither approach requires any special
settings in the embedded mode application's \textit{.app} file nor any
special command-line switches to the \Erlang\  runtime.

For an example of how to use \verb+yaws_api:embedded_start_conf+ along
with \verb+yaws_api:setconf+, please see the files
\verb+www/ybed_sup.erl+ and \verb+www/ybed.erl+ in the
\Yaws\  distribution.

\chapter{The config file - yaws.conf}

In this section we provide a complete listing of all possible
configuration file options.  The configuration contains two distinct
parts: a global part which affects all the virtual hosts and a server
part where options for each virtual host is supplied.

\section{Global Part}

\begin{itemize}


\item       \verb+logdir = Directory+ ---
              All \Yaws\  logs will be  written  to  files  in  this
              directory.  There  are  several different log files
              written by \Yaws{}.

              \begin{itemize}
              \item \verb+report.log+ --- this is a text file that contains  all
              error logger printouts from \Yaws{}.
              \item \verb+<Host>.access+ --- for each virtual host
                served by \Yaws{}, a file \verb+<Host>.access+ will be
                written which contains an access log in Common Log
                Format.
              \item \verb+<Host>.auth+ --- for each virtual host served by
              \Yaws{}, a file \verb+<Host>.auth+ will be written which
              contains all HTTP auth related messages.
              \item \verb+trace_<YYYYMMDD_hhmmss>+ - Trace files are written in
              this subdirectory, suffixed by the creation date.
              \begin{itemize}
              \item \verb+trace.<Pid>.http+ - this file contains the HTTP
              trace if that is enabled, where \verb+Pid+ is the process id
              handling the TCP connection.
              \item \verb+trace.<Pid>.traffic+ - this file contains the
              traffic trace if that is enabled, where \verb+Pid+ is the
              process id handling the TCP connection.
              \end{itemize}
              \end{itemize}

              Note that \verb+<Host>.access+ and \verb+<Host>.auth+ files will
              be used only if the directive \verb+logger_mod+ is not set or set
              to \verb+yaws_log+.

              The default value for logdir is "."

\item        \verb+server_signature = String+ ---
              This directive sets the "Server: " output header to the custom
              value. The default value is "yaws/VSN, Yet Another Web Server".

\item        \verb+ebin_dir = Directory+ ---
              This  directive adds Directory to the \Erlang\  search
              path. It is possible to have several of these  command
              in the configuration file.

\item        \verb+include_dir = Directory+ ---
              This directive adds Directory to the path of directories
               where  the  \Erlang\   compiler  searches  for
              include  files.  We  need to use this if we want to
              include \textit{.hrl} files in our \Yaws\  \Erlang\  code.

\item        \verb+max_num_cached_files = Integer+ ---
              \Yaws\   will  cache  small  files  such  as  commonly
              accessed  GIF images in RAM.  This directive sets a
              maximum number on the number of cached files.   The
              default value is 400.

\item        \verb+max_num_cached_bytes = Integer+ ---
              This  directive  controls  the  total amount of RAM
              which can maximally be used for cached  RAM  files.
              The default value is 1000000, 1 megabyte.

\item        \verb+max_size_cached_file = Integer+ ---
              This  directive  sets  a  maximum size on the files
              that are RAM cached by \Yaws{}.  The default value is
              8000 bytes.

\item        \verb+cache_refresh_secs = Integer+ ---
              The  RAM  cache  is used to serve pages that sit in
              the  cache.  An  entry  sits  in  cache   at   most
              cache\_refresh\_secs  number  of seconds. The default
              is 30. This means that when the content is  updated
              under  the  docroot, that change doesn't show until
              30 seconds have passed.  While  developing  a  \Yaws\
              site,  it may be convenient to set this value to 0.
              If the debug flag (\textit{-d}) is passed to the
              \Yaws\   start script, this value is automatically set
              to 0.

\item        \verb+max_connections = nolimit | Integer+ ---
              This value controls the maximum number of connections
              from HTTP clients into the server. This is implemented
              by closing the last socket if the threshold is reached.

\item        \verb+keepalive_maxuses = nolimit | Integer+ ---
              Normally, \Yaws\ does not restrict the number of times a
              connection is kept alive using keepalive. Setting this
              parameter to an integer \verb+X+ will ensure that
              connections are closed once they have been used \verb+X+
              times.  This can be a useful to guard against
              long-running connections collecting too much garbage in
              the \Erlang\ VM.

\item        \verb+keepalive_timeout = Integer | infinity+ ---
              If the HTTP session will be kept alive (i.e., not
              immediately closed) it will close after the specified
              number of milliseconds unless a new request is received
              in that time. The default value is 30000. The value
              \verb+infinity+ is legal but not recommended.

\item        \verb+trace  = traffic | http+ ---
              This  enables  traffic  or HTTP tracing. Tracing is
              also possible to enable with a command line flag to
              \Yaws{}.

\item        \verb+subconfig = File+ ---
             Load specified config file.

\item        \verb+subconfigdir = Directory+ ---
             Load all config files in specified directory.

\item        \verb+process_options = undefined | Proplist+ ---
              Set process spawn options for client acceptor processes.
              Options must be specified as a quoted string of either
              the atom \verb+undefined+ or as a proplist of valid
              process options. The supported options are
              \verb+fullsweep_after+, \verb+min_heap_size+, and
              \verb+min_bin_vheap_size+, each taking an associated
              integer value. Other process options are ignored. The
              proplist may also be empty. See
              \verb+erlang:spawn_opt/4+ for details on these options.

\item        \verb+acceptor_pool_size = Integer+
              Set the size of the pool of cached acceptor
              processes. The specified value must be greater than or
              equal to 0. The default value is 8. Specifying a value
              of 0 effectively disables the process pool.

\end{itemize}


\section{Server Part}

\Yaws\ can virthost several web servers on the same IP address as well
as several web servers on different IP addresses.  The only limitation
here is that there can be only one server with SSL enabled per each
individual IP address.  Each virtual host is defined within a matching
pair of \verb+<server ServerName>+ and \verb+</server>+.  The
\verb+ServerName+ will be the name of the web server.

The following directives are allowed inside a server definition.

\begin{itemize}

\item       \verb+port = Port+ ---
              This makes the server listen on Port.

\item        \verb+listen = IpAddress+ ---
              This makes the  server  listen  on  \verb+IpAddress+  when
              virthosting  several  servers  on  the same IP/port
              address, if the browser doesn't send a \verb+Host:+ field,
              \Yaws\   will  pick  the first server specified in the
              config file. Multiple \verb+listen+ directives may be
              used to specify several addresses to listen on.

\item        \verb+listen_backlog = Integer+ ---
              This sets the TCP listen backlog for the server to
              define the maximum length the queue of pending
              connections may grow to. The default is the same as
              the default provided by \verb+gen_tcp:listen/2+, which
              is 5.

\item        \verb+server_signature = String+ ---
              This directive sets the "Server: " output header to the custom
              value and overloads the global one for this virtual server.

\item       \verb+rport = Port+ ---
              This forces  all  local  redirects  issued  by  the
              server  to  go  to  Port.  This is useful when \Yaws\
              listens to a port which is different from the  port
              that  the  user  connects  to. For example, running
              \Yaws\  as a non-privileged user makes  it  impossible
              to  listen  to port 80, since that port can only be
              opened by a privileged user. Instead  \Yaws\   listens
              to  a high port number port, 8000, and iptables are
              used to redirect traffic to port 80  to  port  8000
              (most NAT:ing firewalls will also do this for you).

\item       \verb+rscheme = http | https+ ---
              This forces  all  local  redirects  issued  by  the
              server  to  use this method. This is useful when an
              SSL off-loader, or stunnel, is  used  in  front  of
              \Yaws{}.

\item       \verb+auth_log = true | false+ ---
              Enable or disable the auth log for this virtual server.
              Default is true.

\item       \verb+access_log = true | false+ ---
              Setting  this  directive  to  false turns off
              traffic logging for this virtual server. The
              default value is true.

\item       \verb+logger_mod = Module+ ---
              It is possible to set a special module that handles access and
              auth logging. The default is to log all web server traffic to
              \verb+<Host>.access+ and \verb+<Host>.auth+ files in the
              configured or default \verb+logdir+.

              This module must implement the behaviour
              \verb+yaws_logger+. Default value is \verb+yaws_log+.

              The following functions should be exported:

              \begin{itemize}

              \item \verb+Module:open_log(ServerName, Type, LogDir)+ --- When
                \Yaws\ is started, this function is called for this virtual
                server. If the initialization is successful, the function must
                return \verb+{true, State}+ and if an error occurred, it must
                return \verb+false+.

              \item \verb+Module:close_log(ServerName, Type)+ -- This
                function is called for this virtual server when
                \Yaws\ is stopped.

              \item \verb+Module:wrap_log(ServerName, Type, State, LogWrapSize)+
                --- This function is used to rotate log files. It is regularly
                called by \Yaws\ and must return the possibly updated internal
                \verb+NewState+.

              \item \verb+Module:write_log(ServerName, Type, State, Infos)+ --
                When it needs to log a message, \Yaws\ will call this
                function. The parameter \verb+Infos+ is
                \verb+{Ip, Req, InHdrs, OutHdrs, Time}+ for an access log and
                \verb+{Ip, Path, Item}+ for an auth log, where:

                        \begin{itemize}

                        \item \verb+Ip+ --- IP address of the
                          accessing client (as a tuple).

                        \item \verb+Req+ - the HTTP me\-thod, URI
                          path, and HTTP ver\-sion of the\\*request
                          (as a \verb+#http_request{}+ record).

                        \item \verb+InHdrs+ --- the HTTP headers which
                          were sent from the WWW client (as a
                          \verb+#headers{}+ record).

                        \item \verb+OutHdrs+ --- the HTTP headers sent
                          to the WWW client (as a \verb+#outh{}+
                          record).

                        \item \verb+Path+ --- the URI path of the
                          request (as a string).

                        \item \verb+Item+ -- the result of an
                          authentication request. May be
                          \verb+{ok, User}+, \verb+403+ or
                          \verb+{401, Realm}+.

                        \item \verb+Time+ --- The time taken to serve
                          the request, in microseconds.

                        \end{itemize}

              For all of these callbacks, \verb+ServerName+ is the virtual
              server's name, \verb+Type+ is the atom \verb+access+ or
              \verb+auth+ and \verb+State+ is the internal state of the logger.

              \end{itemize}

\item       \verb+shaper = Module+ ---
              Defines a module to control access to this virtual server.

              Access can be controlled based on the IP address of the client. It
              is also possible to throttle HTTP requests based on the client's
              download rate. This module must implement the behaviour
              \verb+yaws_shaper+.

              There is no such module configured by default.

\item       \verb+docroot  =  Directory ...+ ---
              This makes the server serve all its content from
              \verb+Directory+.

              It is possible to pass a space-separated list of directories as
              docroot. If this is the case, the various directories will be
              searched in order for the requested file. This also works with the
              ssi and yssi constructs where the full list of directories will be
              searched for files to ssi/yssi include. Multiple docroot
              directives can be used.  You need at least one valid docroot,
              other invalid docroots are skipped with their associated auth
              structures.

\item       \verb+auth_skip_docroot = true | false+ ---
              If true, the docroot will not be searched for
              \verb+.yaws_auth+ files. This is useful when the
              docroot is quite large and the time to search it is
              prohibitive when \Yaws\  starts up. Defaults to false.

\item       \verb+partial_post_size = Integer+ ---
              When a \Yaws\  file receives large  \verb+POST+s,  the
              amount  of  data  received  in each chunk is
              determined by the this parameter.  The default
              value is 10240.

\item       \verb+tilde_expand = true|false+ ---
              If  this  value  is  set  to false \Yaws\  will
              never do tilde  expansion.  Tilde expansion takes a URL
              of the form
              \verb+http://www.foo.com/+\char`\~\verb+username+ and
              changes it into a request where the docroot for that
              particular request is set to the directory
              \char`\~\verb+username/public_html/+. The default value
              is false.

\item       \verb+allowed_scripts = [ListOfSuffixes]+ ---
              The allowed script types for this server.  Recognized
              are \textit{yaws}, \textit{cgi}, \textit{php}.  Default
              is \verb+allowed_scripts = yaws+.

\item       \verb+appmods = [ListOfModuleNames]+ ---
              If any the names in \verb+ListOfModuleNames+ appear
              as components in the path for a request, the
              path request parsing will terminate and that
              module will be called.

              Assume  for  example  we  have  the  URL
              \url{http://www.hyber.org/myapp/foo/bar/baz?user=joe}
              while we have the module \verb+foo+ defined  as  an
              appmod,  the  function  \verb+foo:out(Arg)+ will be
              invoked instead of searching the file systems
              below the point \verb+foo+.

              The \verb+Arg+ argument will have the missing path
              part supplied in its \verb+appmoddata+ field.

\item       \verb+php_handler+ ---
              Set handler to interpret \textit{.php} files. It can be
              one of the following definitions:

              \begin{itemize}
              \item \verb+php_handler = <cgi, Filename>+ --- The name
                of (and possibly path to) the PHP executable used to
                interpret PHP scripts (if allowed).
              \item \verb+php_handler = <fcgi, Host:Port>+ --- Use the
                specified FastCGI server to interpret \textit{.php}
                files (if allowed).

                \Yaws\ does not start the PHP interpreter in FastCGI
                mode for you. To run PHP in FastCGI mode, call it with
                the \textit{-b} option. For example:
\begin{verbatim}
       php5-cgi -b '127.0.0.1:54321'
\end{verbatim}
                This starts PHP5 in FastCGI mode listening on the local
                network interface. To make use of this PHP server from
                \Yaws{}, specify:
\begin{verbatim}
       php_handler = <fcgi, 127.0.0.1:54321>
\end{verbatim}
                The PHP interpreter needs read access to the files it
                is to serve. Thus, if you run it in a different
                security context than \Yaws\ itself, make sure it has
                access to the \textit{.php} files.

                Please note that anyone who is able to connect to the PHP
                FastCGI server directly can use it to read any file to
                which it has read access. You should consider this
                when setting up a system with several mutually
                untrusted instances of PHP.

              \item \verb+php_handler = <extern, Module:Function | Node:Module:Function>+
                --- Use an external handler, possibly on another node, to
                interpret \textit{.php} files (if allowed).

                To interpret a \textit{.php} file, the function
                \verb+Module:Function(Arg)+ will be invoked (evaluated
                inside an rpc call if a \verb+Node+ is specified),
                where \verb+Arg+ is a \verb+#arg{}+ record.

                The function must do the same things that a normal
                \verb+out/1+ does.

              \end{itemize}
              Default value is \verb+<cgi, "/usr/bin/php-cgi">+.

\item       \verb+phpfcgi = HostPortSpec+ ---
              this target is deprecated. use \verb+php_handler+ target in server
              part instead.

              Use this directive is same as: \verb+php_handler = <fcgi, HostPortSpec>+.

\item       \verb+fcgi_app_server = HostPortSpec+ ---
              The hostname (or IP address) and TCP port of a
              FastCGI application server. This is separate from the
              \verb+phpfcgi+ setting and is used for normal FCGI
              applications. Because they're separate, both
              \verb+fcgi_app_server+ and \verb+phpfcgi+ can be set for
              the same server to allow it to serve both \verb+.fcgi+
              and \verb+.php+ files.

\item       \verb+fcgi_trace_protocol = true | false+ ---
              Enable or disable tracing of FastCGI protocol
              messages. This is useful for debugging.

\item       \verb+fcgi_log_app_error = true | false+ ---
              Enable or disable logging FCGI application errors (any
              output to stderr and non-zero exit codes).

\item     \verb+errormod_404 = Module+ ---
              It is possible to set a special module  that
              handles 404 Not Found messages.

              The function \verb+Module:out404(Arg, GC, SC)+ will
              be invoked. The arguments are

              \verb+Arg+ is an \verb+arg{}+ record

              \verb+GC+ is a \verb+gconf{}+ record (defined in
              \textit{yaws.hrl})

              \verb+SC+ is a \verb+sconf{}+ record (defined in
              \textit{yaws.hrl})

              The function can and must do the same things
              that a normal \verb+out/1+ does.

\item       \verb+expires = ListOfExpires+ ---
              Controls the setting of the \verb+Expires+ HTTP header and the
              \verb+max-age+ directive of the \verb+Cache-Control+ HTTP header
              in server responses for specific MIME types. The expiration date
              can set to be relative to either the time the source file was last
              modified, or to the time of the client
              access. \verb+ListOfExpires+ is defined as follows:
\begin{verbatim}
       expires = <MimeType1, access+Seconds> <MimeType2, modify+Seconds> ...
\end{verbatim}
              These HTTP headers are an instruction to the client about the
              document's validity and persistence. If cached, the document may
              be fetched from the cache rather than from the source until this
              time has passed. After that, the cache copy is considered
              "expired" and invalid, and a new copy must be obtained from the
              source.
              Here is an example:
\begin{verbatim}
       expires = <image/gif, access+2592000> <image/png, access+2592000>
       expires = <image/jpeg, access+2592000> <text/css, access+2592000>
\end{verbatim}

\item       \verb+errormod_crash = Module+ ---
              It  is possible to set a special module that
              handles the HTML generation of server  crash
              messages.  The  default  is  to  display the
              entire  formatted  crash   message   in   the
              browser.  This is good for debugging but not
              in production.

              The function \verb+Module:crashmsg(Arg,  SC,  Str)+
              will  be  called.  The \verb+Str+ is the real crash
              message formatted as a string.

\item       \verb+arg_rewrite_mod = Module+ ---
              It is possible  to  install  a  module  that
              rewrites  all  the  \verb+Arg+ \verb+arg{}+ records at an
              early stage in the \Yaws\  server.  This can be
              used to do various things such as checking a
              cookie, rewriting paths etc.

\item        \verb+<ssl>  .... </ssl>+
              This begins and ends  an  SSL  configuration
              for this server.
\begin{itemize}
\item        \verb+keyfile = File+ ---
              Specifies  which  file  contains the private
              key for the certificate.

\item        \verb+certfile = File+ ---
              Specifies which file contains  the  certificate for the server.

\item        \verb+cacertfile = File+ ---
              If  the  server  is  setup  to require
              client certificates, this file needs to contain
              all the certificates of the acceptable
              signers for the client certs.

\item        \verb+verify = 0 | 1 | 2 | verify_none | verify_peer+
              --- Specifies the level of verification the server does
              on client certs. 0 means that the server will not
              ask for a cert (\verb+verify_none+), 1 means that
              the server will ask the client for a cert but not
              fail if the client does not supply a client cert
              (\verb+verify_peer+, \verb+fail_if_no_peer_cert+
              = \verb+false+), 2 means that the server requires
              the client to supply a client cert
              (\verb+verify_peer+, \verb+fail_if_no_peer_cert+ =
              \verb+true+).

              Setting \verb+verify_none+ means that the x509
              validation will be skipped (no certificate request
              is sent to the client), \verb+verify_peer+ means
              that a certificate request is sent to the client
              (x509 validation is performed.

              You might want to use \verb+fail_if_no_peer_cert+
              in combination with \verb+verify_peer+.

\item        \verb+fail_if_no_peer_cert = true | false+ ---
              If verify is set to \verb+verify_peer+ and set
              to \verb+true+ the connection will fail if the
              client does not send a certificate (i.e. an empty
              certificate). If set to false the server will
              fail only if an invalid certificate is supplied
              (an empty certificate is considered valid).

\item        \verb+depth = Int+ ---
              Specifies the depth  of  certificate  chains
              the  server is prepared to follow when verifying
              client certs.

\item        \verb+password = String+ ---
              If the private key  is  encrypted  on
              disk,  this  password  is  the  3des  key to
              decrypt it.

\item        c\verb+ciphers = String+ ---
              This  string  specifies  the  SSL  cipher
              string.  The syntax of the SSL cipher string
              is a little horrible sub-language of its own.
              It  is  documented  in  the SSL man page for
              "ciphers".

\item        \verb+</ssl>+ ---
              Ends an SSL definition
\end{itemize}


\item       \verb+<auth> ... </auth>+ ---
              Defines an  auth  structure.  The  following
              items  are allowed within a matching pair of
              <auth> and </auth> delimiters.

\begin{itemize}

\item       \verb+dir = Dir+ ---
              Makes \verb+Dir+ to be controlled bu  WWW-authenticate
              headers.  In  order for a user to have
              access to WWW-Authenticate controlled  directory,
              the user must supply a password.

\item       \verb+realm = Realm+ ---
              In  the  directory  defined  here,  the WWW-Authenticate
              Realm is set to this value.

\item       \verb+user = User:Password+ ---
              Inside this directory,  the  user  User  has
              access  if  the  user  supplies the password
              Password in the pop up dialog presented  by
              the  browser.  We can obviously have several
              of  these  value  inside  a  single
              \verb+<auth> </auth>+ pair.

\item       \verb+</auth>+ ---
              Ends an auth definition.


\end{itemize}

\end{itemize}


\section{Configuration Examples}

       The  following  example  defines a single server on
       port 80.

\begin{verbatim}
       logdir = /var/log/yaws
       <server www.mydomain.org>
               port = 80
               listen = 192.168.128.31
               docroot = /var/yaws/www
       </server>
\end{verbatim}

       And this example shows a similar setup but two web
       servers on the same IP address:

\begin{verbatim}
       logdir = /var/log/yaws
       <server www.mydomain.org>
               port = 80
               listen = 192.168.128.31
               docroot = /var/yaws/www
       </server>

       <server www.funky.org>
               port = 80
               listen = 192.168.128.31
               docroot = /var/yaws/www_funky_org
       </server>
\end{verbatim}


When there are several virtual hosts defined for the same IP number
and port, and an HTTP request arrives with a \verb+Host+ field that
does not match any defined virtual host, then the one which defined
``first'' in the file is chosen.

An example with www-authenticate and no access logging at all.

\begin{verbatim}
       logdir = /var/log/yaws
       <server www.mydomain.org>
               port = 80
               listen = 192.168.128.31
               docroot = /var/yaws/www
               access_log = false
               <auth>
                   dir = /var/yaws/www/secret
                   realm = foobar
                   user = jonny:verysecretpwd
                   user = benny:thequestion
                   user = ronny:havinganamethatendswithy
              </auth>

       </server>
\end{verbatim}

       And  finally  a  slightly more complex example with
       two servers on the same IP, and one SSL server on a
       different IP.

       The \verb+is_default+ is used to select the funky server if
       someone types in for example url{http://192.168.128.31/} in
       his\slash her browser.


\begin{verbatim}
       logdir = /var/log/yaws
       max_num_cached_files = 8000
       max_num_cached_bytes = 6000000

       <server www.mydomain.org>
               port = 80
               listen = 192.168.128.31
               docroot = /var/yaws/www
       </server>

       <server www.funky.org>
               port = 80
               is_default = true
               listen = 192.168.128.31
               docroot = /var/yaws/www_funky_org
       </server>

       <server www.funky.org>
               port = 443
               listen = 192.168.128.32
               docroot = /var/yaws/www_funky_org
               <ssl>
                  keyfile = /etc/funky.key
                  certfile = /etc/funky.cert
                  password = gazonk
               </ssl>
       </server>
\end{verbatim}

\chapter{WebSocket Protocol Support}
\label{websockets}

\Yaws\ supports the WebSocket Protocol (RFC 6455), which enables
two-way communication between clients and web servers. \Yaws\ also
provides support for working drafts of the WebSocket protocol,
specifically drafts 10 to 17 of the hybi working group. No support for
other drafts, such as those from the hixie working group, is provided.

You can find example usage of the WebSocket Protocol in the file
\verb+www/websockets_example.yaws+. This example, intended for use
with any browser supporting RFC 6455, returns HTML and JavaScript that
allow the client to establish a WebSocket connection to the
server. These connections are handled by the code in
\verb+www/websockets_example_endpoint.yaws+, which when invoked simply
establishes \\ \verb+examples/src/basic_echo_callback.erl+ as the
WebSocket callback module for the connection.

\section{WebSocket Callback Modules}

A WebSocket callback module implements either the
\verb+handle_message/1+ callback function or the
\\ \verb+handle_message/2+ callback function, depending on whether
it's a basic or advanced callback module.

\subsection{Basic Callback Modules}

The argument passed to \verb+handle_message/1+ callback function takes
one of the following forms:

\begin{itemize}

\item \verb+{text, Text}+ --- the callback receives an unfragmented
  text message.

\item \verb+{binary, Message}+ --- the callback receives an
  unfragmented binary message.

\item \verb+{close, Status, Reason}+ --- the callback receives a
  notification that the client has closed the socket. \verb+Status+ is
  the numerical status code sent by the client or the value 1000 (as
  suggested by RFC 6455 section 7.4.1) if the client sent no status
  code. \verb+Reason+ is a binary containing any text the client sent
  to indicate the reason for closing the socket; this binary may be
  empty.

\end{itemize}

The \verb+handle_message/1+ callback function supplies one of the
following as a return value:

\begin{itemize}

\item \verb+noreply+ --- do nothing, just wait for the next message.

\item \verb+{reply, {Type, Data}}+ --- reply to the
  message. \verb+Type+ must be either \verb+text+ or \verb+binary+ to
  indicate the type of data in the reply message, and \verb+Data+ is
  the reply message itself.

\item \verb+{close, Reason}+ --- close the connection and exit the
  handling process with \verb+Reason+. For a regular non-error close,
  \verb+Reason+ should be the atom \verb+normal+. \verb+Reason+ may
  alternatively be any allowed numerical value specified for
  \verb+close+ frames in section 7.4 of RFC 6455. Callback handlers
  for \verb+close+ messages from the client must always return
  \verb+{close, Reason}+.

\end{itemize}

To inform \Yaws\ of the details of your callback module, return
\verb+{websocket, CallbackModule, Options}+ from your \verb+out/1+
function, where \verb+CallbackModule+ is the name of your callback
module and \verb+Options+ is a list of options. The following options
are available:

\begin{itemize}

\item \verb+{callback, CallbackType}+ --- supply this atom to indicate
  the type of the callback module. \\ \verb+CallbackType+ can be
  either of the following:

\begin{itemize}

\item \verb+basic+ --- specify this to indicate your callback module
  is the basic type. This is the default.

\item \verb+{advanced, InitialState}+ --- specify this to indicate
  your callback module is an advanced callback module. Here,
  \verb+InitialState+ is the callback's initial state for handling
  this client. See \ref{advanced_ws} for more details.

\end{itemize}

\item \verb+{origin, Origin}+ --- specify the \verb+Origin+ URL from
  which messages will be accepted. This is useful for protecting
  against cross-site attacks. This option defaults to \verb+any+,
  meaning calls will be accepted from any origin.

\end{itemize}

\subsection{Advanced Callback Modules}
\label{advanced_ws}

Advanced callback modules---those that want to supply their own
initial state and are prepared to handle fragmented messages
themselves---supply a \verb+handle_message/2+ callback function.

To indicate an advanced callback module, include
\verb+{callback, {advanced, InitialState}}+ in the \\ \verb+Options+
list when you return \verb+{websocket, CallbackModule, Options}+ from
your \verb+out/1+ function, as described above.

The arguments to the \verb+handle_message/2+ callback
function are as follows:

\begin{itemize}

\item \verb+#ws_frame_info+ --- this record, defined in
  \verb+include/yaws_api.hrl+, provides all details of a frame
  section. See section 5 of RFC 6455 for details.

\item \verb+State+ --- this is the callback module's current
  state. The initial state is supplied when you return
  \verb+{callback, {advanced, InitialState}}+ as part of the options
  list you returned from your \verb+out/1+ function to establish the
  WebSocket callback module.

\end{itemize}

The return values for the \verb+handle_message/2+ callback function
can be any of the following:

\begin{itemize}

\item \verb+{noreply, State}+ --- do nothing, just wait for the next
  message. \verb+State+ is the (possibly updated) state for the
  callback module.

\item \verb+{reply, Reply, State}+ --- reply to the received message
  with \verb+Reply+, which is either \\ \verb+{text, Data}+ or
  \verb+{binary, Data}+. \verb+State+ is the (possibly updated) state
  for the callback module.

\item \verb+{close, Reason}+ --- close the connection and exit the
  handling process with \verb+Reason+. For a regular non-error close,
  \verb+Reason+ should be the atom \verb+normal+. \verb+Reason+ may
  alternatively be any allowed numerical value specified for
  \verb+close+ frames in section 7.4 of RFC 6455. Callback handlers
  for \verb+close+ frames from the client must always return
  \verb+{close, Reason}+.

\end{itemize}

\end{document}