nixCraft Poll

• Your Favorite Open Source CMS

  • Typo
  • MediaWiki
  • Drupal
  • eZ Publish
  • Joomla
  • Mambo
  • PHP-Nuke
  • Plone
  • WordPress
  • Other

  View Results

   Loading ...

• Polls Archive

• nixCraft welcomes readers' articles and guest blogging posts. We're interested in articles on programming, security, database, Linux and anything else related to technology.

Topics

• Beyond nixCraft
• C Programming
• Howto
• News
• UNIX
• See all topics...

How a Web server actually works ~ with C source code

Do you wonder how to write a program that accepts incoming messages with a network socket? Have you ever just wanted your own Web server to experiment and learn with?

Have you ever wondered how a Web server actually works? Experiment with nweb -- a simple Web server with only 200 lines of C source code. In this article, Nigel Griffiths provides a copy of this Web server and includes the source code as well. You can see exactly what it can and can't do.

Well, look no further -- nweb is what you need. This is a simple Web server that has only 200 lines of C source code. It runs as a regular user and can't run any server-side scripts or programs, so it can't open up any special privileges or security holes.

This article covers:

• What the nweb server program offers
• Summary of C functions features in the program
• Pseudo code to aid understanding of the flow of the code
• Network socket system calls used and other system calls
• How the client side operates
• C source code

nweb only transmits the following types of files to the browser :

• Static Web pages with extensions .html or .htm
• Graphical images such as .gif, .png, .jgp, or .jpeg
• Compressed binary files and archives such as .zip, .gz, and .tar
• If your favorite static file type is not in this list, you can simply add it in the source code and recompile to allow it.

Read more at IBM developerworks...

Want to stay up to date with the latest Linux tips, news and announcements? Subscribe to our free e-mail newsletter or RSS feed to get all updates. You can Email this page to a friend.

• Security breach: Facebook index.php source code leaked
• Red Hat RPM Dependency problem
• A List of 400+ Open Source Software
• FreeBSD >Sending a Message to All Users on a Remote UNIX/Linux/FreeBSD System
• Linux Cutting the tcp/ip network connection with cutter command

Leave a Reply

We encourage your comments, and suggestions. But please stay on topic, be polite, and avoid spam. Thank you very much for stopping by our site!

Tags: c functions, c source code, graphical images, gz, ibm developerworks, incoming messages, jgp, network socket, nweb, png, privileges, pseudo code, security holes, server program, server side scripts, simple web server, socket system, static file, static web, web pages

Search

Advertisements

Would you like to...

• Print this page
• Email this page

more ~/options

• About us
• Testimonials
• Contact us

Archives

• Select Month July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004

nixCraft RSS Feeds

Copyright © 2004-2008 nixCraft. All rights reserved - TOS/Disclaimer - Privacy policy - Sitemap - Powered by Open source software.