README.md

Sloop

A server written in plain C

This server program allows inbound connections from clients and can interact with them in any conceivable way. It is typically used as a web server. I have written it in plain C and stripped it down as far as possible. It does use realloc at one point in buffer.c.

This code distills my experience with writing servers in various languages, including Perl and Fexl (which uses C). My goal is to make the code as simple as possible, and any remaining intricacy should be there only by proven necessity.

Running the demo

There is a world server which demonstrates serving a single static web page.

To start the server:

cd sloop/src
./world start

(Note that if the server is already running, that will automatically stop the old one for you.)

To connect to the server, point your browser to:

http://127.0.0.1:9722

To stop the server:

./world stop

To see a usage message:

./world

The server uses a run directory:

cd sloop/run
ls -l

There you may see an error_log and a pid file. The error_log captures any stderr from a client program. The pid stores the process ID of the main server program which is used to stop the server.

Utilities

The world script automatically builds the code and runs it, but you can also run the build script directly if you like, e.g.:

./build         # Build anything out of date
./build clean   # Force a full build
./build erase   # Erase build output files

There is also a show utility that shows you the status of the server, listing all running world processes.

./show