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…