Webserver

The Webserver is built and configured like any other server component using our multithreaded server framework. Let's have a look at the main configuration of the server component itself.

<server
  name="http"
  type="\AppserverIo\Server\Servers\MultiThreadedServer"
  worker="\AppserverIo\Server\Workers\ThreadWorker"
  socket="\AppserverIo\Server\Sockets\StreamSocket"
  serverContext="\AppserverIo\Server\Contexts\ServerContext"
  requestContext="\AppserverIo\Server\Contexts\RequestContext"
  loggerName="System">

There are several attributes to configure for a server component, which are described in the following table.

Attributes Description
name The name of the server component used for reference and logging purposes.
type The server type implementation classname based on AppserverIo\Server\Interfaces\ServerInterface. It provides the main daemon like logic of the server.
worker The worker queue implementation classname based on \AppserverIo\Server\Interfaces\WorkerInterface. It introduces a common worker queue logic for the server with the ability to process many requests at the same time. This could be either a classic event loop or a threaded, forked mechanism.
socket The socket implementation classname based on AppserverIo\Psr\Socket\SocketInterface. It provides common socket functionality. As we have our psr for sockets you might want to have a look at it.
serverContext The server context implementation classname based on \AppserverIo\Server\Interfaces\ServerContextInterface. It represents the server context while running as a daemon and holds the configuration, loggers and an optional injectable container object, which can be used to connect several server components.
requestContext The request context implementation classname based on \AppserverIo\Server\Interfaces\RequestContextInterface. It holds all vars needed (server, environment and module vars), which can be processed and modified by the defined server-module-chain. After the request was pre-processed by internal server-modules, the request context provides the information for specific file-handlers being able to process the request in a common way.
loggerName The logger instance to use in the server's context.

In the following section, the server params are discussed.

<params>
    <param name="admin" type="string">info@appserver.io</param>
    <param name="software" type="string">appserver/1.0.0-beta4.19 (linux) PHP/5.5.19</param>
    <param name="transport" type="string">tcp</param>
    <param name="address" type="string">127.0.0.1</param>
    <param name="port" type="integer">9080</param>
    <param name="workerNumber" type="integer">64</param>
    <param name="workerAcceptMin" type="integer">3</param>
    <param name="workerAcceptMax" type="integer">8</param>
    <param name="documentRoot" type="string">webapps</param>
    <param name="directoryIndex" type="string">index.do index.php index.html index.htm</param>
    <param name="keepAliveMax" type="integer">64</param>
    <param name="keepAliveTimeout" type="integer">5</param>
    <param name="errorsPageTemplatePath" type="string">var/www/errors/error.phtml</param>
</params>

They are used to define several key/value pairs for the Webserver implementation. Some of them are common to all HTTP servers. Their descriptions can be found within the server configuration documentation

Descriptions for webserver specific params are available below.

Param Type Description
documentRoot string Defines the root directory for the server to append the URI to and search for the requested file or directory. The document root path is relative to the servers root directory, if there is no beginning slash "/"
directoryIndex string Whitespace separated list of index resources to look up the requested directory. The server will return the first one that is found. If none of the resources exist, the server will respond with a 404 Not Found.
keepAliveMax integer The number of requests allowed per connection when keep-alive is on. If it is set to 0 keep-alive feature will be deactivated.
keepAliveTimeout integer The number of seconds waiting for a subsequent request while in keep-alive loop, before closing the connection.
errorsPageTemplatePath string The path to the errors page template. The path is relative to the server's root directory if there is no beginning slash "/".

If you want to setup an HTTPS Webserver, you have to configure two more params.

Param Type Description
certPath string The path to your certificate file, which has to be a combined PEM file of private key and certificate. The path will be relative to the server's root directory, if there is no beginning slash "/".
passphrase string The passphrase you have created your SSL private key file with. It can be optional.

Connection Handler

As we want to handle requests based on a specific protocol, the server needs a mechanism to understand and manage those requests properly.

For our Webserver, we use \AppserverIo\WebServer\ConnectionHandlers\HttpConnectionHandler, which implements the \AppserverIo\Server\Interfaces\ConnectionHandlerInterface and follows the HTTP/1.1 specification, using our HTTP library.

<connectionHandlers>
    <connectionHandler type="\AppserverIo\WebServer\ConnectionHandlers\HttpConnectionHandler" />
</connectionHandlers>

There is the possibility to provide more than one connection handler. In most cases, it wouldn't make sense, because you will have to handle another protocol, which might not be compatible with the modules you provided in the same server configuration.

Server Modules

As mentioned in the beginning, we use our multithreaded server framework. It allows you to provide modules for request and response processing triggered by several hooks.

The following table gives an overview of the hooks, which are also available in the corresponding dictionary class \AppserverIo\Server\Dictionaries\ModuleHooks.

Hook Description
REQUEST_PRE The request pre hook is used to do something before the request has been parsed. So if there is a keep-alive loop it will be triggered with every request loop.
REQUEST_POST The request post hook is used to do something after the request has been parsed. Most modules such as CoreModule use this hook.
RESPONSE_PRE The response pre hook is triggered before the response is prepared for sending it to the connection endpoint.
RESPONSE_POST The response post hook is the last hook triggered within a keep-alive loop. It executes the module's logic, when the response is well prepared and ready to be dispatched.
SHUTDOWN The shutdown hook is called, whenever a PHP fatal error shuts down the current worker process. In this case, the current filehandler module is called to process the shutdown hook. This enables the module to react on fatal errors. If it does not react to this shutdown hook, the default error handling response dispatcher logic is used. If the module reacts on the shutdown hook and sets the response state to be dispatched, no other error handling shutdown logic will be called to fill up the response.

The next section elaborates on the list of modules provided for the Webserver by default.

<modules>
    <!-- REQUEST_POST hook -->
    <module type="\AppserverIo\WebServer\Modules\VirtualHostModule"/>
    <module type="\AppserverIo\WebServer\Modules\AuthenticationModule"/>
    <module type="\AppserverIo\WebServer\Modules\EnvironmentVariableModule" />
    <module type="\AppserverIo\WebServer\Modules\RewriteModule"/>
    <module type="\AppserverIo\WebServer\Modules\DirectoryModule"/>
    <module type="\AppserverIo\WebServer\Modules\AccessModule"/>
    <module type="\AppserverIo\WebServer\Modules\CoreModule"/>
    <module type="\AppserverIo\WebServer\Modules\PhpModule"/>
    <module type="\AppserverIo\WebServer\Modules\FastCgiModule"/>
    <module type="\AppserverIo\Appserver\ServletEngine\ServletEngine" />
    <!-- RESPONSE_PRE hook -->
    <module type="\AppserverIo\WebServer\Modules\DeflateModule"/>
    <!-- RESPONSE_POST hook -->
    <module type="\AppserverIo\Appserver\Core\Modules\ProfileModule"/>
</modules>

For every hook, all modules are processed in the same order as they are listed in the xml configuration.

The order of the modules provided by the default configuration is planned and should not be changed for security reasons. For example, if you position the AccessModule before the RewriteModule, it is possible to cancel out an access rule with a rewrite rule.

Our Webserver provides an interface called \AppserverIo\WebServer\Interfaces\HttpModuleInterface, which has to be implemented by every module.

All modules are described in the overview below.

Module Description
VirtualHostModule Provides virtual host functionality, which allows you to run more than one hostname (such as yourname.example.com and othername.example.com) on the same server, while having different params and configurations.
AuthenticationModule Offers the possibility to secure resources using basic or digest authentication based on request URI with regular expression support.
EnvironmentVariableModule This module enables you to manipulate server environment variables. They can be set conditionally, unset and copied in form of an OS context.
RewriteModule A simple rewrite module for PHP based web servers, which use a self-made structure for usable rules. It can be used similar to Apaches mod_rewrite and provides rewriting and redirecting capabilities.
DirectoryModule Provides for "trailing slash" redirects and serving directory index files.
AccessModule Allows an HTTP header based access management with regular expression support.
CoreModule HTTP server features, which are always available, such as serving static resources and finding defined file handlers.
PhpModule Acts like a classic PHP Webserver module (such as mod_php for apache) which calls and runs your requested PHP scripts in an isolated context with all globals (such as $_SERVER, $_GET, $_POST etc.) prepared in the common way.
FastCgiModule The Module allows you to connect several FastCGI backends (such as php-fpm or hhvm) based on configured file-handlers.
ServletEngine The ServletEngine introduces a super fast and simple way to implement an entry point to handle HTTP requests, which allows you to execute all performance critical tasks. Please see Servlet Engine for full documentation.
DeflateModule It provides the deflate output filter that enables output from your server to be compressed before being sent to the client via the network.
ProfileModule Allows request based realtime profiling using external tools like logstash and kibana.

Virtual Hosts

When using virtual hosts, the default server configuration can be extended and a host specific environment to run your hostname or app can be produced.

This is done by adding a virtual host configuration to your global server configuration file. See the example for a XML based configuration below:

<virtualHosts>
  <virtualHost name="example.local">
    <params>
      <param name="admin" type="string">
        admin@appserver.io
      </param>
      <param name="documentRoot" type="string">
        /opt/appserver/webapps/example
      </param>
    </params>
  </virtualHost>
</virtualHosts>

The configuration above is positioned within the server element and opens up the virtual host example.local, which has a different document root than the global configuration. The virtual host is born.

Most of the params that are available in the server node can be overwritten. Also, you can define all the following configurations like Environment Variables, Authentications, Accesses and of course Locations for every virtual host.

The virtualHost element can hold params, rewrite rules or environment variables which are only available for the specific host.

Environment Variables

You can set environment variables using either the global or the virtual host based configuration. The example below shows the basic usage of environment variables in XML format.

<environmentVariables>
  <environmentVariable
    condition=""
    definition="EXAMPLE_VAR=example" />
  <environmentVariable
    condition="Apple@$HTTP_USER_AGENT"
    definition="USER_HAS_APPLE=true" />
</environmentVariables>

There are several ways of using this feature. You can get a rough idea by having a look at Apache modules mod_env and mod_setenvif which we adopted.

You can make definitions of environment variables dependent on REGEX based conditions, which are performed on so called backreferences. These backreferences are request related server variables like HTTP_USER_AGENT.

A condition has the format <REGEX_CONDITION>@$<BACKREFERENCE>. If the condition is empty the environment variable will be set every time.

The definition is <NAME_OF_VAR>=<THE_VALUE_TO_SET>. It has the following conditions:

  • Setting a var to null will unset the variable if it existed before
  • You can use backreferences for the value you want to set as well. They are limited to environment variables of the PHP process
  • Values will be treated as strings

Authentications

You can setup request URI based basic or digest authentication with regular expression support using authentications. Here is an example of how to configure basic or digest auth.

<authentications>
    <authentication uri="^\/auth\/basic\/.*">
        <params>
            <param name="type" type="string">
                \AppserverIo\Http\Authentication\BasicAuthentication
            </param>
            <param name="realm" type="string">
                PhpWebServer Basic Authentication System
            </param>
            <param name="file" type="string">
                var/www/auth/basic/.htpasswd
            </param>
        </params>
    </authentication>
    <authentication uri="^\/auth\/digest\/.*">
        <params>
            <param name="type" type="string">
                \AppserverIo\Http\Authentication\DigestAuthentication
            </param>
            <param name="realm" type="string">
                appserver.io Digest Authentication System
            </param>
            <param name="file" type="string">
                var/www/auth/digest/.htpasswd
            </param>
        </params>
    </authentication>
</authentications>

As you can see, every authentication node has its URI attribute. You can use a regular expressions in the attribute to match the request URI. The URI attribute also has some params, which are described below.

Module Description
type The type represents an implementation of the \AppserverIo\WebServer\Interfaces\AuthenticationInterface, which provides specific auth mechanism. You can use the predelivered classes \AppserverIo\WebServer\Authentication\BasicAuthentication and \AppserverIo\WebServer\Authentication\BasicAuthentication for basic and digest authentication.
realm The string assigned by the server to identify the protection space of the request URI.
file The path to your .htpasswd credential file. The path is relative to the server's root directory, if there is no beginning slash "/".

Accesses

You can easily allow or deny access to resources based on client's HTTP request headers, by setting up accesses within your server or virtual-host configuration.

    <accesses>
        <!-- per default allow everything -->
        <access type="allow">
            <params>
                <param name="X_REQUEST_URI" type="string">.*</param>
            </params>
        </access>
    </accesses>

All access nodes need to have a type, which can be either allow or deny. To react on specific request headers and their values, you have to add one param node per header. The name attribute has to be the request header name and the value is a regular expression you want to match.

Everything is denied if there are no accesses configured. That's the reason why you'll find an allow all access rule in the appserver.xml by default. That means you can either allow everything and deny specific things or just allow specific things. Deny rules will override access rules!

All request header value checks (means all param nodes), given by an access node are AND combined. The default behavior is to deny everything if there are no accesses configured.

File Handlers

File handlers are used to define a mapping between specific Server Modules and requested resources by their file extensions.

<fileHandlers>
    <fileHandler name="fastcgi" extension=".php">
        <params>
            <param name="host" type="string">127.0.0.1</param>
            <param name="port" type="integer">9010</param>
        </params>
    </fileHandler>
<fileHandlers>

If you use this configuration, a client requesting a resource with the extension .php will be processed by the FastCGI server module. That means, instead of serving the .php file as a static resource delivered by the core module, the FastCGI module will process the request by connecting to a FastCGI backend provided in the corresponding params node.

Param Description
host The ip address to the FastCGI backend.
port The port to the FastCGI backend.

The file handler's name has to be equal to the module's name you want to trigger. So, every module has to implement a getModuleName() method as defined in \AppserverIo\Server\Interfaces\ModuleInterface.

Locations

Locations are useful, if you want to have other file handlers or if the file handler's configuration was changed on a certain request URI pattern.

<locations>
    <location condition="\/test\.php">
        <handlers>
            <handler name="fastcgi" extension=".php">
                <!--
                <params>
                    <param name="host" type="string">127.0.0.1</param>
                    <param name="port" type="integer">9555</param>
                </params>
                 -->
            </handler>
        </handlers>
    </location>
</locations>

In this example the /test.php script is processed by another FastCGI backend listening on 127.0.0.1:9555

Rewrites

Of course rewriting is possible as well. To do so, have a look at this simple but well known rewrite example, where all requests are moved to an index.php script.

<rewrites>
    <rewrite condition="-f" target="" flag="L" />
    <rewrite condition="^/(.*)$" target="index.php" flag="L" />
</rewrites>

All rewrites are based on rewrite rules, which consist of three important parts:

  • condition string : Conditions, which have to be met to take effect for the rule. See more here

  • target string : The target to rewrite the requested URI to. Within this string you can use backreferences similar to the Apache mod_rewrite module with the difference that you have to use the $ syntax (instead of the $/%/%{} syntax of Apache). Backreferences are parts of the matching rule conditions which you specifically pick out via regex.

    Simple example : A condition like (.+)@$X_REQUEST_URI produces a back reference $1 with the value /index for a requested URI /index. The target string $1/welcome.html results in a rewrite to /index/welcome.html

  • flag string : You can use flags similar to mod_rewrite, which are used to make rules react in a certain way or influence further processing. See more here

Condition Syntax

The Syntax of possible conditions is roughly based on the possibilities of Apache's RewriteCondition and RewriteRule. To make use of this combination, you can chain conditions using the {OR} symbol for OR-combined and the {AND} symbol for AND-combined conditions. Be aware of the fact that AND takes precedence over OR. Conditions can either be PCRE regex or certain fixed expressions. So, a condition string of ([A-Z]+\.txt){OR}^/([0-9]+){AND}-f matches real files (through -f) only if it either begins with numbers or ends with capital letters and the extension .txt. As you might have noticed: Backslashes do not have to be escaped.

You might also be curious about the -f condition. This is a direct copy of Apaches -f RewriteCondition. We also support several other expressions of regex based conditions, which are:

  • < : Is the operand lexically preceding <COMPARE_STRING>?
  • > : Is the operand lexically following <COMPARE_STRING>?
  • = : Is the operand lexically equal to <COMPARE_STRING>?
  • -d : Is the operand a directory?
  • -f : Is the operand a real file?
  • -s : Is the operand a real file of a size greater than 0?
  • -l : Is the operand a symbolic link?
  • -x : Is the operand an executable file?

If you are wondering what the operand might be: it is whatever you want it to be. You can specify any operand you like using the @ symbol. All conditions within a rule will use the next operand to their right and if none is given, it will use the requested URI. For example:

  • ([A-Z]+\.txt){OR}^/([0-9]+) Will take the requested URI for both conditions (note the {OR} symbol)
  • ([A-Z]+\.txt){OR}^/([0-9]+)@$DOCUMENT_ROOT Will test both conditions against the document root
  • ([A-Z]+\.txt)@$DOCUMENT_ROOT{OR}^/([0-9]+) Will only test the first one against the document root and the second against the requested URI

You might have noted the $ symbol before DOCUMENT_ROOT and remembered it from the backreference syntax. That is because all Apache common server vars can be explicitly used as backreferences too.

If this does not work for you, we also have an opposite approach.

All conditions, weather regex or expression based can be negated using the ! symbol in front of them. So !^([0-9]+) matches all strings, which do NOT begin with a number and !-d matches all non-directories.

Flags

Flags are used to further influence processing. You can specify as many flags per rewrite as you like, but be aware of their impact. Syntax for several flags is simple: just separate them with a , symbol. Flags, which might accept a parameter, can be assigned one by one using the = symbol. Currently supported flags are:

  • L : As rules are normally processed one after the other, the L flag will make the flagged rule the last one processed if matched.

  • R : If this flag is set, we redirect the client to the URL specified in the target string. If this is just a URI, we redirect to the same host. You might also specify a custom status code between 300 and 399 to indicate the reason for/ the kind of the redirect. Default is 301 aka permanent

  • M : Stands for map. Using this flag, you can specify an external source (have a look at the Injector classes of the Webserver project) of a target map. With M=<MY_BACKREFERENCE> you specify what the map's index has to match to. This matching is done only if the rewrite condition matches and will behave like another condition.

VirtualHost Examples

The following examples should help you to configure your legacy application with default settings usually provided with the applications .htaccess files.

Magento

<virtualHost name="magento.dev magento.local">
    <params>
        <param name="documentRoot" type="string">webapps/magento</param>
    </params>
    <rewrites>
        <rewrite condition="-d{OR}-f{OR}-l" target="" flag="L" />
        <rewrite condition="(.*)" target="index.php/$1" flag="L" />
    </rewrites>
    <accesses>
        <access type="allow">
            <params>
                <param name="X_REQUEST_URI" type="string">
                    ^\/([^\/]+\/)?(media|skin|js|index\.php).*
                </param>
            </params>
        </access>
    </accesses>
</virtualHost>

Neos

<virtualHost name="neos.dev neos.local">
    <params>
        <param name="documentRoot" type="string">webapps/neos-1.0.2/Web</param>
    </params>
    <rewrites>
        <rewrite
            condition="^/(_Resources/Packages/|robots\.txt|favicon\.ico){OR}-d{OR}-f{OR}-l"
            target="" flag="L" />
        <rewrite
            condition="^/(_Resources/Persistent/[a-z0-9]+/(.+/)?[a-f0-9]{40})/.+(\..+)"
            target="$1$3" flag="L" />
        <rewrite condition="^/(_Resources/Persistent/.{40})/.+(\..+)"
            target="$1$2" flag="L" />
        <rewrite condition="^/_Resources/.*" target="" flag="L" />
        <rewrite condition="(.*)" target="index.php" flag="L" />
    </rewrites>
    <environmentVariables>
        <environmentVariable condition=""
            definition="FLOW_REWRITEURLS=1" />
        <environmentVariable condition=""
            definition="FLOW_CONTEXT=Production" />
        <environmentVariable condition="Basic ([a-zA-Z0-9\+/=]+)@$Authorization"
            definition="REMOTE_AUTHORIZATION=$1" />
    </environmentVariables>
</virtualHost>

ORO CRM

<virtualHost name="oro-crm.dev oro-crm.local">
    <params>
        <param name="documentRoot" type="string">webapps/crm-application/web
        </param>
    </params>
    <rewrites>
        <rewrite condition="-f" target="" flag="L" />
        <rewrite condition="^/(.*)$" target="app.php" flag="L" />
    </rewrites>
</virtualHost>

Wordpress

<virtualHost name="wordpress.local">
    <params>
        <param name="documentRoot" type="string">webapps/wordpress</param>
    </params>
</virtualHost>

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