Shambhala API notes

These are some notes on the Shambhala API and the data structures you have to deal with, etc. They are not yet nearly complete, but hopefully, they will help you get your bearings.

A few notes on general pedagogical style here. In the interest of conciseness, all structure declarations here are incomplete --- the real ones have more slots, that I'm not telling you about. For the most part, these are reserved to one component of the server core or another, and should be altered by modules with caution. However, in some cases, they really are things I just haven't gotten around to yet. Welcome to the bleeding edge.

Finally, here's an outline, to give you some bare idea of what's coming up, and in what order:

Basic concepts.

We begin with an overview of the basic concepts behind the Shambhala API, and how they are manifested in the code.

Handlers, Modules, and Requests

Shambhala breaks down request handling into a series of steps, more or less the same way the Netscape Server API does (although Shambhala has a few more stages than NetSite does, as hooks for stuff I thought might be useful in the future). These are:

URI -> Filename translation
Auth ID checking [is the user who they say they are?]
Auth access checking [is the user authorized here?]
Access checking other than auth
Determining MIME type of the object requested
"Fixups" --- there aren't any of these yet, but the phase is intended as a hook for possible extensions like SetEnv, which don't really fit well elsewhere.
Actually sending a response back to the client.
Logging the request

These phases are handled by looking at each of a succession of modules, looking to see if each of them has a handler for the phase, and attempting invoking it if so. The handler can typically do one of three things:

Handle the request, and indicate that it has done so by returning the magic constant OK.
Decline to handle the request, by returning the magic integer constant DECLINED. In this case, the server behaves in all respects as if the handler simply hadn't been there.
Signal an error, by returning one of the HTTP error codes. This terminates normal handling of the request, although an ErrorDocument may be invoked to try to mop up, and it will be logged in any case.

Most phases are terminated by the first module that handles them; however, for logging, "fixups", and non-access authentication checking, all handlers always run (barring an error). Also, the response phase is unique in that modules may declare multiple handlers for it, via a dispatch table keyed on the MIME type of the requested object. Modules may declare a response-phase handler which can handle any request, by giving it the key */* (i.e., a wildcard MIME type specification). However, wildcard handlers are only invoked if the server has already tried and failed to find a more specific response handler for the MIME type of the requested object (either none existed, or they all declined).

The handlers themselves are functions of one argument (a request_rec structure. vide infra), which returns an integer, as above.

A brief tour of a module

At this point, we need to explain the structure of a module. Our candidate will be one of the messier ones, the CGI module --- this handles both CGI scripts and the ScriptAlias config file command. It's actually a great deal more complicated than most modules, but if we're going to have only one example, it might as well be the one with its fingers in everyplace.

Let's begin with handlers. In order to handle the CGI scripts, the module declares a response handler for them. Because of ScriptAlias, it also has handlers for the name translation phase (to recognise ScriptAliased URI's), the type-checking phase (any ScriptAliased request is typed as a CGI script).

The module needs to maintain some per (virtual) server information, namely, the ScriptAliases in effect; the module structure therefore contains pointers to a functions which builds these structures, and to another which combines two of them (in case the main server and a virtual server both have ScriptAliases declared).

Finally, this module contains code to handle the ScriptAlias command itself. This particular module only declares one command, but there could be more, so modules have command tables which declare their commands, and describe where they are permitted, and how they are to be invoked.

A final note on the declared types of the arguments of some of these commands: a pool is a pointer to a resource pool structure; these are used by the server to keep track of the memory which has been allocated, files opened, etc., either to service a particular request, or to handle the process of configuring itself. That way, when the request is over (or, for the configuration pool, when the server is restarting), the memory can be freed, and the files closed, en masse, without anyone having to write explicit code to track them all down and dispose of them. Also, a cmd_parms structure contains various information about the config file being read, and other status information, which is sometimes of use to the function which processes a config-file command (such as ScriptAlias). With no further ado, the module itself:

/* Declarations of handlers. */

int translate_scriptalias (request_rec *);
int type_scriptalias (request_rec *);
int cgi_handler (request_rec *);

/* Subsdiary dispatch table for response-phase handlers, by MIME type */

handler_rec cgi_handlers[] = {
{ "application/x-httpd-cgi", cgi_handler },
{ NULL }
};

/* Declarations of routines to manipulate the module's configuration
 * info.  Note that these are returned, and passed in, as void *'s;
 * the server core keeps track of them, but it doesn't, and can't,
 * know their internal structure.
 */

void *make_cgi_server_config (pool *);
void *merge_cgi_server_config (pool *, void *, void *);

/* Declarations of routines to handle config-file commands */

char *script_alias (cmd_parms *, void *per_dir_config, char *fake, char *real);

command_rec cgi_cmds[] = {
{ "ScriptAlias", script_alias, NULL, RSRC_CONF, TAKE2,
    "a fakename and a realname"},
{ NULL }
};

module cgi_module = {
   STANDARD_MODULE_STUFF,
   NULL,			/* initializer */
   NULL,			/* dir config creater */
   NULL,			/* dir merger --- default is to override */
   make_cgi_server_config,      /* server config */
   merge_cgi_server_config,	/* merge server config */
   cgi_cmds,			/* command table */
   cgi_handlers,		/* handlers */
   translate_scriptalias,	/* filename translation */
   NULL,			/* check_user_id */
   NULL,			/* check auth */
   NULL,			/* check access */
   type_scriptalias,		/* type_checker */
   NULL,			/* fixups */
   NULL				/* logger */
};

How handlers work

The sole argument to handlers is a request_rec structure. This structure describes a particular request which has been made to the server, on behalf of a client. In most cases, each connection to the client generates only one request_rec structure.

A brief tour of the `request_rec`

The request_rec contains pointers to a resource pool which will be cleared when the server is finished handling the request; to structures containing per-server and per-connection information, and most importantly, information on the request itself.

The most important such information is a small set of character strings describing attributes of the object being requested, including its URI, filename, content-type and content-encoding (these being filled in by the translation and type-check handlers which handle the request, respectively).

Other commonly used data items are tables giving the MIME headers on the client's original request, MIME headers to be sent back with the ppppresponse (which modules can add to at will), and environment variables for any subprocesses which are spawned off in the course of servicing the request. These tables are manipulated using the table_get and table_set routines.

Finally, there are pointers to two data structures which, in turn, point to per-module configuration structures. Specifically, these hold pointers to the data structures which the module has built to describe the way it has been configured to operate in a given directory (via .htaccess files or <Directory> sections), for private data it has built in the course of servicing the request (so modules' handlers for one phase can pass "notes" to their handlers for other phases). There is another such configuration vector in the server_rec data structure pointed to by the request_rec, which contains per (virtual) server configuration data.

Here is an abridged declaration, giving the fields most commonly used:

struct request_rec {

  pool *pool;
  conn_rec *connection;
  server_rec *server;

  /* What object is being requested */
  
  char *uri;
  char *filename;
  char *path_info;
  char *args;			/* QUERY_ARGS, if any */
  struct stat finfo;		/* Set by server core;
                                 * st_mode set to zero if no such file */
  
  char *content_type;
  char *content_encoding;
  
  /* MIME header environments, in and out.  Also, an array containing
   * environment variables to be passed to subprocesses, so people can
   * write modules to add to that environment.
   *
   * The difference between headers_out and err_headers_out is that the
   * latter are printed even on error, and persist across internal redirects
   * (so the headers printed for ErrorDocument handlers will have them).
   */
  
  table *headers_in;
  table *headers_out;
  table *err_headers_out;
  table *subprocess_env;

  /* Info about the request itself... */
  
  int header_only;		/* HEAD request, as opposed to GET */
  char *protocol;		/* Protocol, as given to us, or HTTP/0.9 */
  char *method;			/* GET, HEAD, POST, etc. */
  int method_number;		/* M_GET, M_POST, etc. */

  /* Info for logging */

  char *the_request;
  int bytes_sent;

  /* A flag which modules can set, to indicate that the data being
   * returned is volatile, and clients should be told not to cache it.
   */

  int no_cache;

  /* Various other config info which may change with .htaccess files
   * These are config vectors, with one void* pointer for each module
   * (the thing pointed to being the module's business).
   */
  
  void *per_dir_config;		/* Options set in config files, etc. */
  void *request_config;		/* Notes on *this* request */
  
};

Where request_rec structures come from

Most request_rec structures are built by reading an HTTP request from a client, and filling in the fields. However, there are a few exceptions:

If the request is to an imagemap, a type map (i.e., a *.var file), or a CGI script which returned a local "Location:", then the resource which the user requested is going to be ultimately located by some URI other than what the client originally supplied. In this case, the server does an internal redirect, constructing a new request_rec for the new URI, and processing it almost exactly as if the client had requested the new URI directly.
If some handler signaled an error, and an ErrorDocument is in scope, the same internal redirect machinery comes into play.
Finally, a handler occasionally needs to investigate "what would happen if" some other request were run. For instance, the directory indexing module needs to know what MIME type would be assigned to a request for each directory entry, in order to figure out what icon to use.
Such handlers can construct a sub-request, using the functions sub_req_lookup_file and sub_req_lookup_uri; this constructs a new request_rec structure and processes it as you would expect, up to but not including the point of actually sending a response. (These functions skip over the access checks if the sub-request is for a file in the same directory as the original request).
(Server-side includes work by building sub-requests and then actually invoking the response handler for them, via the function run_sub_request).

Handling requests, declining, and returning error codes

As discussed above, each handler, when invoked to handle a particular request_rec, has to return an int to indicate what happened. That can either be

OK --- the request was handled successfully. This may or may not terminate the phase.
DECLINED --- no erroneous condition exists, but the module declines to handle the phase; the server tries to find another.
an HTTP error code, which aborts handling of the request.

Note that if the error code returned is REDIRECT, then the module should put a Location in the request's headers_out, to indicate where the client should be redirected to.

Special considerations for response handlers

Handlers for most phases do their work by simply setting a few fields in the request_rec structure (or, in the case of access checkers, simply by returning the correct error code). However, response handlers have to actually send a request back to the client.

They should begin by sending an HTTP response header, using the function send_http_header. (You don't have to do anything special to skip sending the header for HTTP/0.9 requests; the function figures out on its own that it shouldn't do anything). If the request is marked header_only, that's all they should do; they should return after that, without attempting any further output.

Otherwise, they should produce a request body which responds to the client as appropriate. The primitives for this are rputc and rprintf, for internally generated output, and send_fd, to copy the contents of some FILE * straight to the client.

One final consideration: when doing I/O to the client, there is the possibility of indefinite delays. It is therefore important to arm a timeout before initiating I/O to the client.

At this point, you should more or less understand the following piece of code, which is the handler which handles GET requests which have no more specific handler; it also shows how conditional GETs can be handled, if it's desirable to do so in a particular response handler. (The functions pfopen and pfclose tie the FILE * returned into the resource pool machinery, so it will be closed even if the request is aborted).

int default_handler (request_rec *r)
{
    int errstatus;
    FILE *f;
    
    if (r->method_number != M_GET) return DECLINED;
    if (r->finfo.st_mode == 0) return NOT_FOUND;
	
    if ((errstatus = set_content_length (r, r->finfo.st_size))
	|| (errstatus = set_last_modified (r, r->finfo.st_mtime)))
        return errstatus;
    
    f = pfopen (r->pool, r->filename, "r");

    if (f == NULL) {
        log_reason("file permissions deny server access", r->filename, r);
        return FORBIDDEN;
    }
      
    register_timeout ("send", r);
    send_http_header (r);

    if (!r->header_only) {
	send_fd (f, r);
    }
    
    kill_timeout(r);
    pfclose (r->pool, f);
    return OK;
}

Finally, if all of this is too much of a challenge, there are a few ways out of it. First off, as shown above, a response handler which has not yet produced any output can simply return an error code, in which case the server will automatically produce an error response. Secondly, it can punt to some other handler by invoking internal_redirect, which is how the internal redirection machinery discussed above is invoked. A response handler which has internally redirected should always return OK.

(Invoking internal_redirect from handlers which are not response handlers will lead to serious confusion).

Special considerations for authentication handlers

Stuff that should be discussed here in detail:

Authentication-phase handlers not invoked unless auth is configured for the directory.
Common auth configuration stored in the core per-dir configuration; it has accessors auth_type, auth_name, and requires.
Common routines, to handle the protocol end of things, at least for HTTP basic authentication (get_basic_auth_pw, which sets the connection->user structure field automatically, and note_basic_auth_failure, which arranges for the proper WWW-Authenticate: header to be sent back).

Special considerations for logging handlers

When a request has internally redirected, there is the question of what to log. Shambhala handles this by bundling the entire chain of redirects into a list of request_rec structures which are threaded through the r->prev and r->next pointers. The request_rec which is passed to the logging handlers in such cases is the one which was originally built for the intial request from the client; note that the bytes_sent field will only be correct in the last request in the chain (the one for which a response was actually sent).

Resource allocation and resource pools

One of the problems of writing and designing a server-pool server is that of preventing leakage, that is, allocating resources (memory, open files, etc.), without subsequently releasing them. The resource pool machinery is designed to prevent this. Stuff that should be discussed here in detail:

Allocating memory --- palloc and friends
The array and table stuff
Files and file descriptors
sub-pools and destroy_sub_request

Configuration, commands and the like

One of the design goals for this server was to maintain external compatibility with the NCSA 1.3 server --- that is, to read the same configuration files, to process all the directives therein correctly, and in general to be a drop-in replacement for NCSA. On the other hand, another design goal was to move as much of the server's functionality into modules which have as little as possible to do with the monolithic server core. The only way to reconcile these goals is to move the handling of most commands from the central server into the modules.

However, just giving the modules command tables is not enough to divorce them completely from the server core. The server has to remember the commands in order to act on them later. That involves maintaining data which is private to the modules, and which can be either per-server, or per-directory. Most things are per-directory, including in particular access control and authorization information, but also information on how to determine file types from suffixes, which can be modified by AddType and DefaultType directives, and so forth. In general, the governing philosophy is that anything which can be made configurable by directory should be; per-server information is generally used in the standard set of modules for information like Aliases and Redirects which come into play before the request is tied to a particular place in the underlying file system.

Another requirement for emulating the NCSA server is being able to handle the per-directory configuration files, generally called .htaccess files, though even in the NCSA server they can contain directives which have nothing at all to do with access control. Accordingly, after URI -> filename translation, but before performing any other phase, the server walks down the directory hierarchy of the underlying filesystem, following the translated pathname, to read any .htaccess files which might be present. The information which is read in then has to be merged with the applicable information from the server's own config files (either from the <Directory> sections in access.conf, or from defaults in srm.conf, which actually behaves for most purposes almost exactly like <Directory />).

Finally, after having served a request which involved reading .htaccess files, we need to discard the storage allocated for handling them. That is solved the same way it is solved wherever else similar problems come up, by tying those structures to the per-transaction resource pool.

Per-directory configuration structures

Let's look out how all of this plays out in mod_mime.c, which defines the file typing handler which emulates the NCSA server's behavior of determining file types from suffixes. What we'll be looking at, here, is the code which implements the AddType and AddEncoding commands. These commands can appear in .htaccess files, so they must be handled in the module's private per-directory data, which in fact, consists of two separate tables for MIME types and encoding information, and is declared as follows:

typedef struct {
    table *forced_types;	/* Additional AddTyped stuff */
    table *encoding_types;	/* Added with AddEncoding... */
} mime_dir_config;

When the server is reading a configuration file, or <Directory> section, which includes one of the MIME module's commands, it needs to create a mime_dir_config structure, so those commands have something to act on. It does this by invoking the function it finds in the module's "create per-dir config slot", with two arguments: the name of the directory to which this configuration information applies (or NULL for srm.conf), and a pointer to a resource pool in which the allocation should happen.

(If we are reading a .htaccess file, that resource pool is the per-request resource pool for the request; otherwise it is a resource pool which is used for configuration data, and cleared on restarts. Either way, it is important for the structure being created to vanish when the pool is cleared, by registering a cleanup on the pool if necessary).

For the MIME module, the per-dir config creation function just pallocs the structure above, and a creates a couple of tables to fill it. That looks like this:

void *create_mime_dir_config (pool *p, char *dummy)
{
    mime_dir_config *new =
      (mime_dir_config *) palloc (p, sizeof(mime_dir_config));

    new->forced_types = make_table (p, 4);
    new->encoding_types = make_table (p, 4);
    
    return new;
}

Now, suppose we've just read in a .htaccess file. We already have the per-directory configuration structure for the next directory up in the hierarchy. If the .htaccess file we just read in didn't have any AddType or AddEncoding commands, its per-directory config structure for the MIME module is still valid, and we can just use it. Otherwise, we need to merge the two structures somehow.

To do that, the server invokes the module's per-directory config merge function, if one is present. That function takes three arguments: the two structures being merged, and a resource pool in which to allocate the result. For the MIME module, all that needs to be done is overlay the tables from the new per-directory config structure with those from the parent:

void *merge_mime_dir_configs (pool *p, void *parent_dirv, void *subdirv)
{
    mime_dir_config *parent_dir = (mime_dir_config *)parent_dirv;
    mime_dir_config *subdir = (mime_dir_config *)subdirv;
    mime_dir_config *new =
      (mime_dir_config *)palloc (p, sizeof(mime_dir_config));

    new->forced_types = overlay_tables (p, subdir->forced_types,
					parent_dir->forced_types);
    new->encoding_types = overlay_tables (p, subdir->encoding_types,
					  parent_dir->encoding_types);

    return new;
}

As a note --- if there is no per-directory merge function present, the server will just use the subdirectory's configuration info, and ignore the parent's. For some modules, that works just fine (e.g., for the includes module, whose per-directory configuration information consists solely of the state of the XBITHACK), and for those modules, you can just not declare one, and leave the corresponding structure slot in the module itself NULL.

Command handling

Now that we have these structures, we need to be able to figure out how to fill them. That involves processing the actual AddType and AddEncoding commands. To find commands, the server looks in the module's command table. That table contains information on how many arguments the commands take, and in what formats, where it is permitted, and so forth. That information is sufficient to allow the server to invoke most command-handling functions with preparsed arguments. Without further ado, let's look at the AddType command handler, which looks like this (the AddEncoding command looks basically the same, and won't be shown here):

char *add_type(cmd_parms *cmd, mime_dir_config *m, char *ct, char *ext)
{
    if (*ext == '.') ++ext;
    table_set (m->forced_types, ext, ct);
    return NULL;
}

This command handler is unusually simple. As you can see, it takes four arguments, two of which are preparsed arguments, the third being the per-directory configuration structure for the module in question, and the fourth being a pointer to a cmd_parms structure. That structure contains a bunch of arguments which are frequently of use to some, but not all, commands, including a resource pool (from which memory can be allocated, and to which cleanups should be tied), and the (virtual) server being configured, from which the module's per-server configuration data can be obtained if required.

Another way in which this particular command handler is unusually simple is that there are no error conditions which it can encounter. If there were, it could return an error message instead of NULL; this causes an error to be printed out on the server's stderr, followed by a quick exit, if it is in the main config files; for a .htaccess file, the syntax error is logged in the server error log (along with an indication of where it came from), and the request is bounced with a server error response (HTTP error status, code 500).

The MIME module's command table has entries for these commands, which look like this:

command_rec mime_cmds[] = {
{ "AddType", add_type, NULL, OR_FILEINFO, TAKE2, 
    "a mime type followed by a file extension" },
{ "AddEncoding", add_encoding, NULL, OR_FILEINFO, TAKE2, 
    "an encoding (e.g., gzip), followed by a file extension" },
{ NULL }
};

The entries in these tables are:

The name of the command
The function which handles it
a (void *) pointer, which is passed in the cmd_parms structure to the command handler --- this is useful in case many similar commands are handled by the same function.
A bit mask indicating where the command may appear. There are mask bits corresponding to each AllowOverride option, and an additional mask bit, RSRC_CONF, indicating that the command may appear in the server's own config files, but not in any .htaccess file.
A flag indicating how many arguments the command handler wants preparsed, and how they should be passed in. TAKE2 indicates two preparsed arguments. Other options are TAKE1, which indicates one preparsed argument, FLAG, which indicates that the argument should be On or Off, and is passed in as a boolean flag, RAW_ARGS, which causes the server to give the command the raw, unparsed arguments (everything but the command name itself). There is also ITERATE, which means that the handler looks the same as TAKE1, but that if multiple arguments are present, it should be called multiple times, and finally ITERATE2, which indicates that the command handler looks like a TAKE2, but if more arguments are present, then it should be called multiple times, holding the first argument constant.
Finally, we have a string which describes the arguments that should be present. If the arguments in the actual config file are not as required, this string will be used to help give a more specific error message. (You can safely leave this NULL).

Finally, having set this all up, we have to use it. This is ultimately done in the module's handlers, specifically for its file-typing handler, which looks more or less like this; note that the per-directory configuration structure is extracted from the request_rec's per-directory configuration vector by using the get_module_config function.

int find_ct(request_rec *r)
{
    int i;
    char *fn = pstrdup (r->pool, r->filename);
    mime_dir_config *conf =
      (mime_dir_config *)get_module_config(r->per_dir_config, &mime_module);
    char *type;

    if (S_ISDIR(r->finfo.st_mode)) {
        r->content_type = DIR_MAGIC_TYPE;
	return OK;
    }
    
    if((i=rind(fn,'.')) < 0) return DECLINED;
    ++i;

    if ((type = table_get (conf->encoding_types, &fn[i])))
    {
        r->content_encoding = type;

	/* go back to previous extension to try to use it as a type */
	
        fn[i-1] = '\0';
	if((i=rind(fn,'.')) < 0) return OK;
	++i;
    }

    if ((type = table_get (conf->forced_types, &fn[i])))
    {
        r->content_type = type;
    }
    
    return OK;
}

Side notes --- per-server configuration, virtual servers, etc.

The basic ideas behind per-server module configuration are basically the same as those for per-directory configuration; there is a creation function and a merge function, the latter being invoked where a virtual server has partially overriden the base server configuration, and a combined structure must be computed. (As with per-directory configuration, the default if no merge function is specified, and a module is configured in some virtual server, is that the base configuration is simply ignored).

The only substantial difference is that when a command needs to configure the per-server private module data, it needs to go to the cmd_parms data to get at it. Here's an example, from the alias module, which also indicates how a syntax error can be returned (note that the per-directory configuration argument to the command handler is declared as a dummy, since the module doesn't actually have per-directory config data):

char *add_redirect(cmd_parms *cmd, void *dummy, char *f, char *url)
{
    server_rec *s = cmd->server;
    alias_server_conf *conf =
        (alias_server_conf *)get_module_config(s->module_config,&alias_module);
    alias_entry *new = push_array (conf->redirects);

    if (!is_url (url)) return "Redirect to non-URL";
    
    new->fake = f; new->real = url;
    return NULL;
}