MeowMeow webserver (formerly Ghost WebServer)

Abstract

This is simple web server written in plain erlang.

Erlang version

Erlang/OTP 23 is required to run this server. Erlang/OTP 24 is reccommended.

Running

Debug mode

The best way to debug the program is just to do as following:

$ cd src/
$ erlc *.erl && erl; rm -rf ./*.beam # This will rebuild everything from scratch, so there would be no problems with cached files
...
Eshell V11.2  (abort with ^G)
1> server:start().

Before using this approach don't forget to create configuration files:

$ cp -r configs/ /etc/MeowMeow/ # Porbably you will need root(i.e. sudo)

Production mode

Compile using rebar3:

$ rebar3 as prod release

Then you need to create configs in /etc/MeowMeow/. After this you can run server:

$ ./_build/prod/rel/MeowMeow/bin/MeowMeow <desired mode of running>

If you need help on modes of running just execute script with no arguments to get help.

Using

Put your files in /var/www/ directory they will be served statically. Currently FastCGI support available for serving files wich are not static.

Configuring

IMPORTANT NOTICE: In current version syntax errors in config are NOT checked, so misconfiguration may lead to fatal errors.

Server

Server configuration is stored in /etc/MeowMeow/meow.conf. The syntax is as follows:

Directive1 Args
Directive2 Args

Current version support following directives:

• LogLevel <<LEVEL>> set logging level from 0 to 4(0 -- log nothing,4 -- log everything)
• KeepAlive <<MS>> default connection keep-alive time in milliseconds
• ListenPort <<PORT>> port where to listen for connections
• ListenHost <<HOSTNAME/IP>> hostname to listen on
• DocDir <<DIRECTORY>> directory with files to serve

Routes

To configure routes you need to edit /etc/MeowMeow/routes.conf. The syntax is as follows:

Route <wildcard pattern> 
 Directive1 Args 
 Directive2 Args
 Host <wildcard pattern>
  Directive3 Args
 End
End

Route defines pattern of request paths for which directives would be applied. Additionally directives can be applied by Host header(as in an example above). Directives are applied in order as they added in the config file. The directives currently supported by server:

• Abort <<CODE>> - stop processing request and send HTTP/1.1 status code <<CODE>> to client
• No-Content - sends HTTP/1.1 204 No Content to client
• Disallow - sends HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden to client
• Set-Header <<HEADER>> <<VALUE>> - sets response header <<HEADER>> to <<VALUE>>
• ExecFCGI <<FILE>> <<FCGI_HOST>> <<FCGI_PORT>> <<FCGI_TIMEOUT>> - asks FastCGI running on <<FCGI_HOST>>:<<FCGI_PORT>> to execute <<FILE>> with timeout of <<FCGI_TIMEOUT>> ms
• Set-Code <<CODE>> sets status code for a response.
• Send-File <<PATH>> sends file as a response.

You can see an example of routing rules configuration here

Credits

• erl_fastcgi - Copyright 2017, Marcelo Gornstein marcelog@gmail.com (Apache-2.0 license).
  Changes introduced(file: src/erl_fastcgi.erl):
  • Added logging integrated with MeowMeow webserver
  • Added handling of errors when FastCGI server is down

Code copyrighting

The code copyrightings defined in some of the files in src/ directory are not legal advice and purposed for internal use only. All code, except mentioned in Credits section, is licensed under MIT license(See LICENSE for more information)