Webserv - A Lightweight HTTP/1.1 Server in C++

A non-blocking HTTP/1.1 server written in C++, inspired by NGINX.

🚀 Introduction

Webserv is a lightweight, event-driven HTTP server built using C++ and epoll(). It is designed to handle multiple requests efficiently while remaining non-blocking. It supports GET, POST, and DELETE methods and can execute Python scripts via CGI.

👥 Contributors

• @Welhox – Developed and implemented full HTTP response handling, including the core functionalities of GET, POST, and DELETE methods on the server side.
• @tcampbel22 – Configuration file parsing, Logger
• @codinggolfer – Request parsing

🛠 Collaborative Work

• CGI support & main server loop developed together

✨ Features

✅ Non-blocking I/O (using epoll())
✅ CGI support for executing Python scripts
✅ Custom error pages at different levels: location block, server level, and default error handler
✅ Directory listing with resource links
✅ Multiple server instances
✅ Basic file upload support
✅ Configuration-based setup (similar to NGINX)

🛠 Installation

Requirements:

• A Linux environment (due to epoll() usage)
• make and g++ are required to compile the project. If they are not installed, you can install them using:

  sudo apt update && sudo apt install build-essential

🔧 Build Instructions

git clone https://github.com/Welhox/webserv.git
cd webserv
make

▶️ Usage

To start the server, provide a configuration file:

./webserv config/server.conf

Default Address: 127.0.0.1:8081

⚙️ Configuration

Webserv reads configurations from a file (similar to NGINX). Example configuration files can be found in the config/ directory.

Example server.conf:

server {
    host 127.0.0.1
    port 8081;
    server_name myserver;

    error_page 404 /errors/404.html;
    
    location / {
        root /root/var/html;
        index index.html;
        methods GET;
    }
    
    location /cgi-bin/ {
    	cgi_path /root/bin/cgi/;
    	cgi_script cgitester.py;
    }

}

📸 Examples

Custom 404 Error Page

Directory Listing

File Upload Support

Homepage