UOCIS322 - Project 1

This project will get you started with creating a simple webpage server.

Getting started

Directory structure:

• the "pages" (HTML files and their assets) will be located in DOCROOT. For this project that location is the pages/ directory. Make sure you specify this in your credentials.ini!

  • Make sure you don't hardcode either pages/ or the port number -- they should be read from credentials.ini, or default.ini if credentials.ini does not exist.

• Everything that's located in pageserver/. That consists of a Python application (pageserver.py) that starts listening at a specified port and handles requests. This is the key file you'll be editing for this project.

• There's a configuration parser, much like the one seen in project-0, but a more detailed version. It not only looks for your credentials.ini file, both in pageserver/ and the parent directory and falls back to default.ini if missing, it also allows you to override those settings through CLI. These will be discussed in the lab.

• Makefile here refers to the two scripts provided: start.sh and stop.sh. The former starts the server, by calling pageserver.py. It will also store its PID (process id), in order to kill it later through stop.sh. However, if you notice that it failed to do so, you can kill it manually by looking up the PID.

Tasks

The goal of this project is to implement a "file checking" logic for the existing server. Currently, if you set it up and start the server, it will just serve a page with a cat figure. What is expected is for the server to handle the requests as follows:

• If a file exists in DOCROOT (pages/ in this case) (i.e. trivia.html, any name, any extention or format) exists, transmit 200 OK header followed by that file. If the file doesn't exist, transmit 404 Not Found error code in the header along with a message in the body explaining further. If a request includes illegal characters (.. or ~), the response should be a 403 Forbidden error, again with a message in the body explaining it.

• Update README with your name, info, and a brief description of the project.

• You will submit your credentials.ini in Canvas. It should include your name and repo URL.

Grading Rubric

• If everything works as expected, 100 will be assigned.
• If existing pages and files are NOT handled correctly, 30 points will be docked.
• For each of the errors not handled correctly (403, and 404), 15 points will be docked.
• If README.md is not updated with your name and info, 10 points will be docked.
• If credentials.ini is commited, 10 points will be docked.
• If the repo clones, but make install or make run throws an error, 10 will be assigned.
• If credentials.ini is incorrect or not submitted, 0 will be assigned.

Authors

Carsten Konyn.

I did the project, I was confused about how to access the file but I did it. I also didn't know that I could import inbuilt libraries which made me try using a try and except instead of a much simpler method.