Malloy is a small, embeddable HTTP & WebSocket server & client built on top of boost.
The main use case for this library is a C++ project which needs to embedd an HTTP and/or WebSocket server and/or client.
This library is being used successfully on:
- Windows (with both MSVC and MinGW)
- Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, ...)
- MacOS
- FreeBSD
The following list provides an overview of the currently implemented features. Some of these are optional and can be enabled/disabled.
- High-level controller to setup I/O context, SSL context, worker threads and more
- URL parsing support
- HTTP
- Plain or TLS (SSL) connections
- Cookies
- Sessions
- Upgrading connections to WebSocket
- Client
- Response filters
- File downloads directly to disk
- Server
- Routing
- Simple handlers (useful for building REST APIs)
- Target matching via regex
- Capturing groups via regex
- Sub-routers (nested/chained routers)
- Redirections
- File serving locations
- Optional cache-control directives
- Preflight responses
- Access policies
- HTTP basic auth
- Custom access policies
- Websocket endpoints (with auto-upgrade from HTTP)
- Simple handlers (useful for building REST APIs)
- Connection logging
- Request filters
- Routing
- WebSocket
- Client
- Server
- Connections upgradable from HTTP
- HTML
- Forms
- Supported encoding types
application/x-www-form-urlencodedmultipart/form-datatext/plain
- Parsing
- Rendering
- Supported encoding types
- Forms
This library is BSD-3-Clause licensed. Dependencies ship with their own licensing models.
Building (and using) this library requires:
- A C++20 capable compiler
- CMake 3.23 or newer
Required:
- Boost 1.86.0 or newer (older versions may work but are no longer actively tested)
- spdlog 1.8.3 or newer
- fmt 7.1.3 or newer (must be compatible with spdlog version)
Optional:
- OpenSSL
A variety of examples can be found in the /examples directory. You should definitely check those out! What follows are snippets for a simple HTTP server and a simple HTTP client.
HTTP Server:
int main()
{
// Create malloy controller config
malloy::server::routing_context::config cfg;
cfg.interface = "127.0.0.1";
cfg.port = 8080;
cfg.doc_root = "/path/to/http/docs"
cfg.num_threads = 5;
cfg.logger = std::make_shared<spdlog::logger>();
// Create malloy controller
malloy::server::routing_context c{cfg};
// Create the router
auto& router = c.router();
{
using namespace malloy::http;
// A simple GET route handler
router.add(method::get, "/", [](const auto& req) {
response res{status::ok};
res.body() = "<html><body><h1>Hello World!</h1><p>some content...</p></body></html>";
return res;
});
// Add a route to an existing file
router.add(method::get, "/file", [](const auto& req) {
return generator::file(examples_doc_root, "index.html");
});
// Add a route to a non-existing file
router.add(method::get, "/file_nonexist", [](const auto& req) {
return generator::file(examples_doc_root, "/some_nonexisting_file.xzy");
});
// Add some redirections
router.add_redirect(status::permanent_redirect, "/redirect1", "/");
router.add_redirect(status::temporary_redirect, "/redirect2", "/");
// Add some file serving
router.add_file_serving("/files", examples_doc_root);
// Add a websocket echo endpoint
router.add_websocket("/echo", [](const auto& req, auto writer) {
std::make_shared<malloy::examples::ws::server_echo>(writer)->run(req);
});
}
// Start
start(std::move(c)).run();
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}HTTP client:
int main()
{
// Create the controller config
malloy::client::controller::config cfg;
cfg.num_threads = 1;
cfg.logger = create_example_logger();
// Create the controller
malloy::client::controller c{cfg};
// Start
[[maybe_unused]] auto session = start(c);
// Make request
auto stop_token = c.http_request(
malloy::http::method::get,
"http://www.google.com",
[](auto&& resp) mutable {
std::cout << resp << std::endl;
});
const auto ec = stop_token.get();
if (ec) {
spdlog::error("error: {}", ec.message());
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}This started off with the intention of creating a more complex, real-world example of how to use boost.beast.
This is a work in progress and should generally be perceived as unfit for any production use.
As of today, no security research has been performed on this library.
Malloy is an open-source library provided WITHOUT any WARRANTY or GUARANTEE regarding security, safety, functionality or anything else. Use at your own risk!
Available documentation sources:
- API documentation (doxygen)
The Doxygen API documentation can be generated with little hassle:
doxygen ./DoxyfileThe generated output(s) may be found under /docs/doxygen. Simply open /docs/doxygen/html/index.html in the web browser of your choosing.
Malloy is designed to be an embeddable component for other C++ applications. As this is a CMake based project there are various ways to integrate this library into another project:
- Via CMake's
FetchContent(). - Building the library locally, installing it on the system and using CMake's
find_package(). - Installing the corresponding package for your OS/environment and using CMake's
find_package().
The easiest way to integrate Malloy is via CMake's FetchContent() infrastructure:
# Change various malloy cmake options
set(MALLOY_BUILD_EXAMPLES OFF CACHE INTERNAL "")
set(MALLOY_BUILD_TESTS OFF CACHE INTERNAL "")
set(MALLOY_BUILD_SHARED ON CACHE INTERNAL "")
set(MALLOY_FEATURE_CLIENT OFF CACHE INTERNAL "")
set(MALLOY_FEATURE_SERVER ON CACHE INTERNAL "")
set(MALLOY_FEATURE_TLS ON CACHE INTERNAL "")
FetchContent_Declare(
malloy
GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/tectu/malloy
GIT_TAG main
)
FetchContent_MakeAvailable(malloy)You may replace GIT_TAG with a commit hash or a release tag such as 1.0.0.
After fetching the content, it's only a matter of linking the malloy library target(s) to the consuming application:
target_link_libraries(
my_application
PRIVATE
malloy-server # Link malloy's server components
malloy-client # Link malloy's client components
)Where my_application is your application (or library) target that should consume malloy.
Various cmake options are available to control the build:
| Option | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
MALLOY_BUILD_EXAMPLES |
ON |
Whether to build examples. |
MALLOY_BUILD_TESTS |
ON |
Whether to build the test suite(s). |
MALLOY_BUILD_SHARED |
OFF |
Whether to build shared libraries. If set to OFF, static libraries will be built. |
| Option | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
MALLOY_FEATURE_CLIENT |
ON |
Enable client features. |
MALLOY_FEATURE_SERVER |
ON |
Enable server features. |
MALLOY_FEATURE_HTML |
ON |
Whether to enable HTML support. |
MALLOY_FEATURE_TLS |
OFF |
Whether to enable TLS support. |
| Option | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
MALLOY_DEPENDENCY_SPDLOG_DOWNLOAD |
ON |
Whether to use FetchContent() to pull in spdlog. If set to OFF, find_package() is used instead. |
MALLOY_DEPENDENCY_FMT_DOWNLOAD |
ON |
Same as above but for fmt |