README.md

sock-serve

An HTTP server implementation in C++, using sockets.

See example.cpp for a demonstration on basic usage of the API.

To use it, include the module in your code. Create a new SockServer object:

SockServer *myServer = new SockServer(); 

Initialize the server object with a string representation of the port you wish to run the server on:

myServer->initialize("8080");

Now, you can handle HTTP GET requests at certain routes by using callback functions:

void testCallback(int socketfd, Response res) {
  std::cout << "In the callback!" << std::endl;
  return;
}

main() {
  SockServer *myServer = new SockServer(); 
  myServer->initialize("8080");
  myServer->httpGet("/", testCallback);
}

In the above example, whenever a client navigates to the root path /, the server will log "In the callback!".

All callback functions must take two parameters: int socketfd and Response res. The socketfd is the UNIX file descriptor of the socket and must be passed into methods that res calls. Retreiving it is done without any work on the client side.

The Response object can call methods to respond to the client with either a string or a file:

res.sendString(socketfd, "SockServer is functional!"); // takes the socket file descriptor and the string you want to send
res.sendFile(socketfd, "text/html", "./index.html"); // takes the socket file descriptor, a string describing the file type (like 'text/plain', 'text/html', 'application/json', etc.), and a string giving the path of the file on the local machine

To start the server, simply call the runServer function of your server object:

myServer->runServer();

The above code will start listening on the port you initialized the server with, and requests will be handled via callback functions.