Module Webs_cgi

CGI gateway connector.

This connector serves one request via CGI.

See the Web service howto manual for instructions.

Important. Reconstructing the raw request target from the CGI PATH_INFO and QUERY_STRING variables is not really possible. Moreover PATH_INFO easily get confused by requests like "/s1/s2%2Fha/s3". To side step this issue this connector relies on the non-standard REQUEST_URI variable in which the raw, url-encoded, request target should be passed. nginx passes that by default with the value of its $request_uri variable.

References.

Connector

type t

The type for CGI connectors. Serves one request by reading headers from the process environment, reading the body from Unix.stdin and writing the response on Unix.stdout.

val create : ?extra_vars:string list -> ?log:(Webs_connector.log_msg -> unit) -> ?max_req_body_byte_size:int -> ?service_path:Webs.Http.path -> unit -> t

create () is a new CGI connector with the following parameters:

  • extra_vars c is the list of environment variables whose content is added to the request headers of requests handled by c. The header name corresponding to a variable is made by lowercasing it, mapping '_' to '-' and prefixing the result with x-cgi. For example SERVER_SOFTWARE becomes x-cgi-server-software. Defaults to []
  • log logs connector log messages. Defaults to Webs_connector.default_log with trace messages.
  • max_req_body_byte_size is the maximal request body size in bytes. FIXME not enforced.
  • service_path the path at which the root of the service of c is being served. This path is stripped from the path found in the request's target to yield the Webs.Http.Req.path of the request to serve. The connector responds with a Webs.Http.bad_request_400 if the strip fails. The value of the service path can also be found in the Webs.Http.Req.service_path of the request to serve. Defaults to [""].
val extra_vars : t -> string list

extra_vars c is the list of additional environment variables of c. See create.

val log : t -> Webs_connector.log_msg -> unit

log c is the log of c. See create.

val max_req_body_byte_size : t -> int

max_req_body_byte_size c is the maximal request body size in bytes supported by c. See create.

val service_path : t -> Webs.Http.path

service_path c is service path of c. See create.

Serving

val serve : t -> (Webs.Http.req -> Webs.Http.resp) -> (unit, string) Stdlib.result

serve c s runs service s with connector c. This blocks until the response of s for the request has been served. The error is returned in case of connector error, it's a good practice to write the message on stderr and exit with a non-zero exit code if that happens. See here to understand how the request value to serve is derived.

Request derivation

The Webs.Http.Req.t value is constructed from the environment and Unix.stdin as follows:

If the request derivation fails in some way an appropriate HTTP error response is written on Unix.stdout.