Tufão - an asynchronous web framework for C++ built on top of Qt

Tufão is a web framework for C++ that makes use of Qt's object communication system (signals & slots). It features:

• High performance standalone server
• Cross-plataform support
• Good documentation
• Support modern HTTP features
  • Persistent streams
  • Chunked entities
  • 100-continue status
  • WebSocket
• HTTPS support
• Flexible request router
• Static file server with support for conditional requests, partial download and automatic mime detection
• Plugin-based server to allow change the running code without restart the application
• Flexible and secure session support
• QtCreator's plugin to allow create new applications rapidly
• Lots of tests
• Timeout support
• C++11

It uses Ryan Dahl's HTTP parser to provide good performance.

You can generate documentation from the source code using Doxygen. The documentation will be put on the doc folder in the html and tex formats. There is also experimental support for Qt compressed help files.

LICENSE

The library is under the LGPLv2 and public header files, documentation and examples are under MIT license.

The Tufão logo is licensed under [Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported] (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).

The library is dynamic linked against Qt and include code from Ryan Dahl's HTTP parser. Qt library is licensed under LGPL and Ryan Dahl's HTTP parser is licensed under MIT license.

So, you can create commercial applications (the only restriction is that if you do any modifications to Tufão, these modifications must be redistributed).

BUILD

Make sure you have Qt and CMake installed and with the PATH to its executables set, then create a folder for the build and, from there, run:

$ cmake OPTIONS path_to_source_dir
$ make MAKEOPTIONS

OPTIONS can be null or have a combination of the following values:

• -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=${INSTALLDIR} sets the directory where to install Tufão.
• -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug
• -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
• -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo
• -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=MinSizeRel
• -DLIB_SUFFIX=${LIB_SUFFIX} set the suffix for the install destination. If you are compiling Tufão under a 64 bit system using a 32 bit "environment", maybe you want to set this variable to 32, then Tufão libs will be installed under "${INSTALLDIR}/lib32". This setting is highly dependent on your operating system conventions and I do not try to put any auto magic detection.
• -DGENERATE_DOC=YES generate documentation using Doxygen
• -DENABLE_TESTS=YES generate and run tests

OPTIONS available on Windows:

• -G"MinGW Makefiles" to generate Makefiles for use with MinGW environment
• -G"Visual Studio 10" to generate project files for Visual Studio 10

MAKEOPTIONS can be null or have a combination of the following values:

• install installs Tufão
• DESTDIR=${PKGDIR} sets the directory where to install Tufão. This options should be used if you intend to package Tufão to set the package directory. To choose another installation directory, see options in OPTIONS, above.

Example:

$ cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr
$ make DESTDIR=pkg install

NOTE: Qt 5.0 or later is required for 1.x series. Qt 4.7 or later is required to 0.x series.

NOTE: If you intend to create a CPack-based installer, just run:

# To create a binary distribution:
cpack -C CPackConfig.cmake

# To create a source distribution:
cpack -C CPackSourceConfig.cmake

# To create a Windows NSIS-based installer:
cpack -GNSIS

Documentation

To generate the documentation, just run doxygen using Doxyfile as configuration file and the documentation will be generated in the folder doc. The documentation is available in the following formats:

• HTML: Always generated. It should be in the doc/html folder.
• latex: You can use this format to generate a pdf. Just run make inside the doc/latex folder.
• Qt Compressed Help file: If you have qhelpgenerator binary tool in the system PATH, then the file is generated when you run doxygen and should be in doc/qch/tufao.qch. If you have qhelpgenerator tool installed, but not configured in the system PATH, but still want to generate the documentation in this format, just run the tool using doc/html/index.qhp as input file.

Tests

Tufão also have a lot of code to test its correctness. These codes are based on QTestLib and generate self-contained executables. There is also some CTest rules and integration with the CMake build. To run the tests, just execute:

make tests

Or, if you don't want to use Makefiles:

ctest

In Visual Studio, the target RUN_TESTS is created.

CTest integrates with CDash to allow developers to centralize the tests result. You can send the results to CDash running the Experimental target:

make Experimental

You can see the Tufão testing log at Tufao CDash project's page.

INSTALL

The default install prefix is /usr/local, if you don't intend to change it, just run, after build:

# make install

To install to a different prefix, run:

$ cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=${DESTDIR}
$ make install

USAGE

To use Tufão in your Qt projects, just edit your .pro file and add the line:

CONFIG += C++11 TUFAO1

You can find some examples in the examples folder.

If you're planning to use OS X, then the following line is also required, as reported by some users:

QMAKE_MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET = 10.7

Tufão has PKG-CONFIG support also. Its module name is 'tufao1'.

If you want use Tufão in other build system, just add the compiler option -ltufao1.

You can also see Tufão documentation integrated in QtAssistant.

NEWS

Version 1.3

• Added canHandleRequest to HttpFileServer

Version 1.2

• New class to handle REST api introduced (thanks to Timothy Reaves)
  • The class has its own plugin system, partly incompatible with Tufão's default
• Tufão's plugin system improved to better track files deletion.
  • It requires no code changes, but you still need to do a one-line change to the config file, because I was worried about backwards compatibility.
  • See HttpPluginServer::setConfig for details

Version 1.1

• Add ability to ignore a set of SSL errors in WebSocket
• Documentation updates
• Bugfix in AbstractHttpServerRequestHandler (thanks to Benjamin Zeller)
• Updated Ryan Dahl's HTTP parser to version 2.2.1

Version 1.0

• The project finally have a logo (made by me in Inkscape)
• Deprecated API was removed
• Url and QueryString removed in favor of QUrl
• Headers refactored to inherit from QMultiHash instead of QMultiMap
• HttpServerResponse
  • Constructor's options argument is optional now
  • setOptions method added
  • Constructor takes a reference to a QIODevice instead a pointer
• HttpServerRequest
  • Constructor takes a reference to a QAbstractSocket instead a pointer
  • socket method returns a reference instead a pointer
  • url returns a QUrl
  • data signal was changed and you must use readBody method to access body's content.
  • the upgrade's head data is accessed from the request body from now on
  • now the object auto-disconnects slots from data and end signals right before emit ready
  • setCustomData and customData methods added
    • Now HttpServerRequestRouter use these methods to pass the list of captured texts
• HttpServer uses reference instead of pointers in several places
• AbstractHttpServerRequestRouter refactored to explore lambdas features.
• Tufão's plugin system fully refactored
  • It's using JSON files as configuration
• AbstractHttpServerRequestHandler::handleRequest
  • It uses references instead pointers
  • It receives 2 arguments instead of 3
• One more abstraction to sessions created to explore lambdas
• WebSocket
  • startServerHandshake is taking references instead pointers
• LESS POINTERS and MORE REFERENCES
  • This change exposes a model more predictive and natural
  • I'm caring less about Qt style and more about C++ style
    • But don't worry, I'll maintain a balance
• Using scoped enums
• HttpFileServer uses/sends mime info
• Interfaces don't inherit from QObject anymore, so you can use multiple inheritance to make the same class implement many interfaces
• HttpUpgradeRouter introduced
  • HttpServer::setUpgradeHandler also
• Updated QtCreator plugin to work with QtCreator 2.7.0 and Qt 5

Version 0.6:

• HttpServerRequest
  • setUrl added
• UrlRewriterHandler added
• HttpUpgradeRouter added
• headers can be "streamed" to QDebug objects

Version 0.5:

• WebSocket
  • peerAddress() method added
  • peerSocket() method added

Version 0.4:

• Using CMake build system
  • Changes to allow parallel Tufão installations (if major versions differs)
  • Added PKGCONFIG support
• Session support
• Better documentation

Version 0.3

• More application templates in QtCreator Tufão's plugin
• Class to serve static files with support for conditional requests and byte-range requests
• Robust request router added
• HTTP plugin server added
• Using newer version of Ryan Dahl's HTTP parser
• Changed license from public headers to MIT
• MSVC support
• Some minor improvements

Version 0.2:

• Code is more stable
• Documentation improved
• HttpServerResponse is easier to use
• WebSocket support
• TUFAO_VERSION_MAJOR and TUFAO_VERSION_MINOR macros added
• QtCreator plugin
• New examples

ROADMAP

Here is a small roadmap for Tufão:

1.4:

• RPC support
• Service discovery and description support

1.5:

• Forms and file uploads