Nex

A mini Multi-Threaded ProxyServer + HTTPserver in python using socket programming

Instructions

• settings.conf file contains all the settings related to the server. Change them as per your need before running the server
• Run python server.py to initialize the server.
• tests/ directory includes all the sample files that are used for nose2-testing.
• public_html is the server directory that is used by the server to host the codes.
• error_pages contains all the templates of various error codes.
• other_templates contains other templates used for rendering by the Nex server.

Notes

• All the essential directories must be present in the appropriate location as mentioned in the configuration file.

Features Supported

• Proper status_codes if file found or not ...
• Mimetype taken into account of returned file
• Variable injection in template
• Listing contents of Directory with details about the files.
• HOST validation
• 403 forbidden, 404 not found etc error codes handled
• Separate configuration file for server
• Client mapping with IPv4 address
• Threading between clients and locks and complete private data(using local variables for each thread)
• Tests written using nose2 and integrated in Travis-CI
• Thread safe logging and colored logging.
• Audio/Video/Image rendering
• URL encoding/decoding
• py2 and py3 support (partial support for py3 for now)
• Can be used as a proxy server by just changing the server config file.
• All the directories can be relative as well as absolute in settings.conf

settings.config

• MAX_REQUEST_LEN - Max number of bytes we receive at once for proxy server.
• SERVER_NAME - Server Name, "Nex - Simple HTTP server/v.0.3",
• SERVER_SHORT_NAME - Server short name, "Nex/v.0.2",
• HOST_NAME - Current host name. (Default: "0.0.0.0"),
• BIND_PORT - The port to which the server will bind itself. (Default: 12345),
• PROXY_SERVER - If true then the server acts as a proxy server. Else like a normal http-webserver. (Default: "true"),
• MAX_CLIENT_BACKLOG - Max no of client requests that can be queued. (Default: 50),
• MAX_REQUEST_LEN : Max no of bytes that can be received by the server in a single request. (Default: 999999),
• HOST_ALLOWED : [ '*' ]
• BLACKLIST_DOMAINS : [ "blocked.com" ]
• PUBLIC_HTML : "./public_html"
• ERROR_DIR : "./error_pages"
• OTHER_TEMPLATES : "./other_templates"
• STATUS_STRING : Contains all the status codes with their status strings.

TODO

• Do not read the whole file in memory. Read in chunks and send. Systems crashes when big files are accessed.
• Update tests based on the new config file.
• Tests for all the errors returned
• Allow ranged sending of file that supports seeking of video.
• Checking the presence of all the configuration/essential directories before forking the server thread.
• Separate error pages from actual functions and break the flow if error to respond error funcs.
• Split server class into multiple ones.(PEP8)
• Respect more headers
• Close the pending sockets in the threads too, this sometimes results in the blocking of the main server thread.(http://voorloopnul.com/blog/a-python-proxy-in-less-than-100-lines-of-code/)
• Use the argument parsing using argparse.
• Check why do we get blank requests.

Contribute

• I have mentioned a lot of TODO's above, just send a PR.
• Any other bug fix or update is also appreciated.