M Web Server

This source tree represents a web (HTTP) server implemented in the M language.

Purpose

The M Web Server (MWS) provides for a way to serve web services from the M Databases. It does that by mapping URLs to M procedures that retrieve or save the data depending on the request. The mapping is dynamic and depends on a developer provided file.

MWS provides the following features:

• It is completely stateless.
• It runs plain RESTful web services rather than implementing a custom protocol.
• It does not introduce any new data structures.
• It fully supports JSON out of the box, automatically encoding and decoding JSON requests.
• It is simple to deploy.
• The software can also serve file-system based resources that can take advantage of the web services.
• Optional gzip compression

Installation instructions

Dependencies

• YottaDB must be installed
• Operational: libsodium (supplied by libsodium-dev[el] package)(optional), gzip (optional), date.
• Installer only: cmake, pkg-config, ld.gold.

Installation

Download this repository (git or download zip and unzip)

Create a build directory in the root of the repository:

mkdir build
cd build

Run cmake to generate the Makefiles

cmake ..

Install the plugin

[sudo] make install

Uninstalling

Run the following in the same build directory:

[sudo] xargs rm < install_manifest.txt

Starting and Stopping the Server

To start the server, run $ydb_dist/yottadb -run start^%ydbwebreq (with --port ). If you don't specify a port, it will start at port number 9080.

You can stop the server using $ydb_dist/yottadb -run stop^%ydbwebreq [--port <nnnn>].

A full list of the options accepted is as follows:

• --auth-stdin Start server asking for users and save to file users.json. Requires that libsodium is installed.
• --auth-file /x/y/z Start server using in /x/y/z. Requires that libsodium is installed.
• --debug Start server in non-forking mode with $ETRAP set to BREAK. Server will only handle a single request before terminating. Use this to debug problems with the web server.
• --directory /x/y/z Serve static files from directory /x/y/z.
• --gzip Enable gzipping from the server side. The default is to not gzip. Gzipping used the /dev/shm file system for temporary files; if the space is limited (e.g. in docker images), you may face problems with gzipping.
• --log n A logging level. By default the level is 0. It can be 0-3, with 3 being most verbose.
• --port nnn port to listen on.
• --tlsconfig tls-config-name A TLS configuration with a name in the ydb_crypt_config file. TLS set-up is somewhat complex. See https://docs.yottadb.com/ProgrammersGuide/ioproc.html#tls-on-yottadb for instructions, and Dockerfile and docker-startup.sh for its implementation. Note that due to the design of the YottaDB TLS plug-in code, you need to specify different values for --tlsconfig: to start look for a server entry, and stop look for a client entry.
• --token-timeout n Time out tokens (when using either of the auth options) even n seconds. If n is 0, then tokens are not timed out.
• --readwrite An application level flag to indicate that an application is readwrite. The flag does not change any of the behavior of the web server itself. Available in variable httpreadwrite.
• --ws-port nnnnn An application level flag to tell the application where a web socket server will be located. This server itself does not implement web sockets. Available in variable httpoptions("ws-port").
• --client-config /x/y/z An application level flag to tell the application where a client configuration file is located on the file system. The server itself does not use this. Available in variable httpoptions("client-config").

Full documentation is located here.