NAME

kcgi — minimal CGI and FastCGI library in C

LIBRARY

library “libkcgi”

SYNOPSIS

#include <sys/types.h>
#include <stdarg.h>
#include <stdint.h>
#include <kcgi.h>

#define KCGI_VMAJOR x
#define KCGI_VMINOR y
#define KCGI_VBUILD z
#define KCGI_VERSION x.y.z
#define KCGI_VSTAMP xxxyyyzzz

DESCRIPTION

The kcgi library handles the CGI or FastCGI environment for C web applications. Interfacing applications generally work as follows:

1. Call khttp_parse(3) as early as possible. This will parse and validate input fields and cookies with the kvalid_string(3) family of functions or those provided by the calling application. It will do so in memory, so enormous requests (e.g., files) will occur entirely in memory! It also sets up the HTTP environment: compression, paths, MIME types, and so on.
2. Process input fields by examining the struct kpair elements.
3. Emit HTTP headers with khttp_head(3), followed by khttp_body(3) to begin the HTTP body.
4. Emit HTTP body output using the khttp_template(3) templating system, the khttp_write(3) family for general HTTP content, and/or an external library such as kcgihtml(3). Do not use printf(3) or other functions to append to standard output: kcgi will automatically compress output if requested by the client, and overriding the output stream will circumvent this behaviour and might mix compressed and uncompressed data.
5. Call khttp_free(3) to clean up.

It can also accept FastCGI connections in a manner similar to the above, except that the parse routine is run within a loop.

1. Call khttp_fcgi_init(3) as early as possible.
2. Iterate over khttp_fcgi_parse(3) for as many connections as desired, performing any processing on the created request. Each successful parse must be matched with khttp_free(3).
3. Call khttp_fcgi_free(3) when all processing is complete.

To compile applications with kcgi, include the kcgi.h as follows:

#include <sys/types.h> /* size_t, ssize_t */
#include <stdarg.h> /* va_list */
#include <stdint.h> /* int64_t */
#include <kcgi.h>

To compile and link, use pkg-config(1):

% cc `pkg-config --cflags kcgi` -c -o sample.o sample.c
% cc -o sample sample.o `pkg-config --libs kcgi`

If the library will be statically linked (e.g., for running within a chroot(2)), link as follows:

% cc `pkg-config --static --cflags kcgi` -c -o sample.o sample.c
% cc -static -o sample sample.o `pkg-config --static --libs kcgi`

The current version of the library is defined in KCGI_VERSION as a string of major number, minor number, and build. These values are available seperately as KCGI_VMAJOR, KCGI_VMINOR, and KCGI_VBUILD, respectively. A numeric concatenation of the version is defined as KCGI_VSTAMP, which may be used to test for version number applicability.

EXAMPLES

The following simple example assumes that kcgi.h is in the compiler's include path. None of them perform error checking: each call into the kcgi library should have its error code checked!

The following does nothing but emit “Hello, world!” to the output.

#include <sys/types.h> /* size_t, ssize_t */
#include <stdarg.h> /* va_list */
#include <stddef.h> /* NULL */
#include <stdint.h> /* int64_t */
#include <kcgi.h>

int main(void) {
  struct kreq r;
  const char *page = "index";

  if (khttp_parse(&r, NULL, 0, &page, 1, 0) != KCGI_OK)
      return 1;

  khttp_head(&r, kresps[KRESP_STATUS],
      "%s", khttps[KHTTP_200]);
  khttp_head(&r, kresps[KRESP_CONTENT_TYPE],
      "%s", kmimetypes[r.mime]);
  khttp_body(&r);
  khttp_puts(&r, "Hello, world!");

  khttp_free(&r);
  return 0;
}

This can be extended to work with the FastCGI interface by allowing the request parser to operate within a loop.

#include <sys/types.h> /* size_t, ssize_t */
#include <stdarg.h> /* va_list */
#include <stddef.h> /* NULL */
#include <stdint.h> /* int64_t */
#include <kcgi.h>

int main(void) {
  struct kreq r;
  struct kfcgi *fcgi;
  const char *page = "index";

  if (khttp_fcgi_init(&fcgi, NULL, 0, &page, 1, 0) != KCGI_OK)
      return 1;

  while (khttp_fcgi_parse(fcgi, &r) == KCGI_OK) {
    khttp_head(&r, kresps[KRESP_STATUS],
        "%s", khttps[KHTTP_200]);
    khttp_head(&r, kresps[KRESP_CONTENT_TYPE],
        "%s", kmimetypes[r.mime]);
    khttp_body(&r);
    khttp_puts(&r, "Hello, world!");
    khttp_free(&r);
  }

  khttp_fcgi_free(fcgi);
  return 0;
}

In a more complicated example, kcgi accepts a single parameter “string” to validate and display. This might be provided as part of an HTML form or directly as part of the URL query string.

#include <sys/types.h> /* size_t, ssize_t */
#include <stdarg.h> /* va_list */
#include <stdint.h> /* int64_t */
#include <kcgi.h>

int main(void) {
  struct kreq r;
  struct kpair *p;
  const char *page = "index";
  struct kvalid key = { kvalid_stringne, "string" };

  if (khttp_parse(&r, &key, 1, &page, 1, 0) != KCGI_OK)
      return 1;

  khttp_head(&r, kresps[KRESP_STATUS],
      "%s", khttps[KHTTP_200]);
  khttp_head(&r, kresps[KRESP_CONTENT_TYPE],
      "%s", kmimetypes[r.mime]);
  khttp_body(&r);
  khttp_puts(&r, "Result: ");
  if ((p = r.fieldmap[0]))
      khttp_puts(&r, p->parsed.s);
  else if (r.fieldnmap[0])
      khttp_puts(&r, "bad parse");
  else
      khttp_puts(&r, "no value");

  khttp_free(&r);
  return 0;
}

Applications will usually specify an array of key-value pairs to validate; or in the event of web services, a default validator (empty string) for the full HTTP message body.

SEE ALSO

kcgi_buf_printf(3), kcgi_buf_putc(3), kcgi_buf_puts(3), kcgi_buf_write(3), kcgi_strerror(3), kcgi_writer_disable(3), kcgi_writer_free(3), kcgi_writer_get(3), kcgi_writer_putc(3), kcgi_writer_puts(3), kcgi_writer_write(3), kcgihtml(3), kcgijson(3), kcgiregress(3), kcgixml(3), khttp_body(3), khttp_epoch2str(3), khttp_fcgi_free(3), khttp_fcgi_getfd(3), khttp_fcgi_init(3), khttp_fcgi_parse(3), khttp_fcgi_test(3), khttp_free(3), khttp_head(3), khttp_parse(3), khttp_printf(3), khttp_putc(3), khttp_puts(3), khttp_template(3), khttp_templatex(3), khttp_urlencode(3), khttp_write(3), khttpbasic_validate(3), khttpdigest_validate(3), kmalloc(3), kutil_invalidate(3), kutil_log(3), kutil_openlog(3), kvalid_string(3), kfcgi(8)

STANDARDS

Many standards are involved in the kcgi library, most significantly being draft RFC 3875, “The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) Version 1.1”, and the “FastCGI Specification”, version 1.0, published 29 April 1996.

• Cookies are parsed according to “HTTP State Management Mechanism”, RFC 6265. However, quoted cookies are not supported.
• The “Authentication” header is parsed for digest or basic tokens as defined by RFC 2617, “HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication”, and RFC 6750, “The OAuth 2.0 Authorization Framework: Bearer Token Usage”.
• The partial multipart form data support is defined by RFC 2388, “Returning Values from Forms: multipart/form-data”, which is further defined by RFCs 2045 and 2046, “Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions”.
• MIME type names are registered with IANA.
• URLs are formatted according to RFC 1630, “Universal Resource Identifiers in WWW”.
• HTTP response headers are standardised in RFC 2616, “HTTP/1.1” and further in RFC 4229, “HTTP Header Field Registrations”.
• Permanent URI schemes are registered with IANA.
• The FastCGI Extensions for Management Control.
• HTTP dates (logging and date-time management) are specified by “RFC 822”.
• URL encoding and decoding is defined by RFC 3986, “Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax”.

Additional HTTP methods are defined by RFC 4918, “HTTP Extensions for Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning”; and RFC 4791 , “Calendaring Extensions to WebDAV”.

AUTHORS

The kcgi library was written by Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps@bsd.lv>.