HTTP and WebSocket server

Description

HTTP and WebSocket server

Details

Allows R code to listen for and interact with HTTP and WebSocket clients, so you can serve web traffic directly out of your R process. Implementation is based on libuv and http-parser.

This is a low-level library that provides little more than network I/O and implementations of the HTTP and WebSocket protocols. For an easy way to create web applications, try Shiny instead.

Author(s)

Joe Cheng joe@rstudio.com

See Also

startServer

Examples

## Not run: 
demo("echo", package="httpuv")

## End(Not run)

PipeServer class

Description

This class represents a server running one application that listens on a named pipe.

Methods

initialize(name, mask, app)

Create a new PipeServer object. app is an httpuv application object as described in startServer.

getName()

Return the value of name that was passed to initialize().

getMask()

Return the value of mask that was passed to initialize().

stop()

Stops a running server.

isRunning()

Returns TRUE if the server is currently running.

getStaticPaths()

Returns a list of staticPath objects for the server.

setStaticPath(..., .list = NULL)

Sets a static path for the current server. Each static path can be given as a named argument, or as an named item in .list. If there already exists a static path with the same name, it will be replaced.

removeStaticPath(path)

Removes a static path with the given name.

getStaticPathOptions()

Returns a list of default staticPathOptions for the current server. Each static path will use these options by default, but they can be overridden for each static path.

setStaticPathOption(..., .list = NULL)

Sets one or more static path options. Each option can be given as a named argument, or as a named item in .list.

Super class

httpuv::Server -> PipeServer

Methods

Public methods

• PipeServer$new()

• PipeServer$getName()

• PipeServer$getMask()

Method new()

Usage

PipeServer$new(name, mask, app, quiet = FALSE)

Method getName()

Usage

PipeServer$getName()

Method getMask()

Usage

PipeServer$getMask()

See Also

Server and WebServer.

Server class

Description

The Server class is the parent class for WebServer and PipeServer. This class defines an interface and is not meant to be instantiated.

Methods

stop()

Stops a running server.

isRunning()

Returns TRUE if the server is currently running.

getStaticPaths()

Returns a list of staticPath objects for the server.

setStaticPath(..., .list = NULL)

Sets a static path for the current server. Each static path can be given as a named argument, or as an named item in .list. If there already exists a static path with the same name, it will be replaced.

removeStaticPath(path)

Removes a static path with the given name.

getStaticPathOptions()

Returns a list of default staticPathOptions for the current server. Each static path will use these options by default, but they can be overridden for each static path.

setStaticPathOption(..., .list = NULL)

Sets one or more static path options. Each option can be given as a named argument, or as a named item in .list.

Methods

Public methods

• Server$stop()

• Server$isRunning()

• Server$getStaticPaths()

• Server$setStaticPath()

• Server$removeStaticPath()

• Server$getStaticPathOptions()

• Server$setStaticPathOption()

Method stop()

Usage

Server$stop()

Method isRunning()

Usage

Server$isRunning()

Method getStaticPaths()

Usage

Server$getStaticPaths()

Method setStaticPath()

Usage

Server$setStaticPath(..., .list = NULL)

Method removeStaticPath()

Usage

Server$removeStaticPath(path)

Method getStaticPathOptions()

Usage

Server$getStaticPathOptions()

Method setStaticPathOption()

Usage

Server$setStaticPathOption(..., .list = NULL)

See Also

WebServer and PipeServer.

WebServer class

Description

This class represents a web server running one application. Multiple servers can be running at the same time.

Methods

initialize(host, port, app)

Create a new WebServer object. app is an httpuv application object as described in startServer.

getHost()

Return the value of host that was passed to initialize().

getPort()

Return the value of port that was passed to initialize().

stop()

Stops a running server.

isRunning()

Returns TRUE if the server is currently running.

getStaticPaths()

Returns a list of staticPath objects for the server.

setStaticPath(..., .list = NULL)

Sets a static path for the current server. Each static path can be given as a named argument, or as an named item in .list. If there already exists a static path with the same name, it will be replaced.

removeStaticPath(path)

Removes a static path with the given name.

getStaticPathOptions()

Returns a list of default staticPathOptions for the current server. Each static path will use these options by default, but they can be overridden for each static path.

setStaticPathOption(..., .list = NULL)

Sets one or more static path options. Each option can be given as a named argument, or as a named item in .list.

Super class

httpuv::Server -> WebServer

Methods

Public methods

• WebServer$new()

• WebServer$getHost()

• WebServer$getPort()

Method new()

Usage

WebServer$new(host, port, app, quiet = FALSE)

Method getHost()

Usage

WebServer$getHost()

Method getPort()

Usage

WebServer$getPort()

See Also

Server and PipeServer.

WebSocket class

Description

A WebSocket object represents a single WebSocket connection. The object can be used to send messages and close the connection, and to receive notifications when messages are received or the connection is closed.

Details

Note that this WebSocket class is different from the one provided by the package named websocket. This class is meant to be used on the server side, whereas the one in the websocket package is to be used as a client. The WebSocket class in httpuv has an older API than the one in the websocket package.

WebSocket objects should never be created directly. They are obtained by passing an onWSOpen function to startServer.

Fields

request

The Rook request environment that opened the connection. This can be used to inspect HTTP headers, for example.

Methods

onMessage(func)

Registers a callback function that will be invoked whenever a message is received on this connection. The callback function will be invoked with two arguments. The first argument is TRUE if the message is binary and FALSE if it is text. The second argument is either a raw vector (if the message is binary) or a character vector.

onClose(func)

Registers a callback function that will be invoked when the connection is closed.

send(message)

Begins sending the given message over the websocket. The message must be either a raw vector, or a single-element character vector that is encoded in UTF-8.

close()

Closes the websocket connection.

Methods

Public methods

• WebSocket$new()

• WebSocket$onMessage()

• WebSocket$onClose()

• WebSocket$send()

• WebSocket$close()

• WebSocket$clone()

Method new()

Usage

WebSocket$new(handle, req)

Method onMessage()

Usage

WebSocket$onMessage(func)

Method onClose()

Usage

WebSocket$onClose(func)

Method send()

Usage

WebSocket$send(message)

Method close()

Usage

WebSocket$close(code = 1000L, reason = "")

Method clone()

The objects of this class are cloneable with this method.

Usage

WebSocket$clone(deep = FALSE)

Arguments

Examples

## Not run: 
# A WebSocket echo server that listens on port 8080
startServer("0.0.0.0", 8080,
  list(
    onHeaders = function(req) {
      # Print connection headers
      cat(capture.output(str(as.list(req))), sep = "\n")
    },
    onWSOpen = function(ws) {
      cat("Connection opened.\n")

      ws$onMessage(function(binary, message) {
        cat("Server received message:", message, "\n")
        ws$send(message)
      })
      ws$onClose(function() {
        cat("Connection closed.\n")
      })

    }
  )
)

## End(Not run)

URI encoding/decoding

Description

Encodes/decodes strings using URI encoding/decoding in the same way that web browsers do. The precise behaviors of these functions can be found at developer.mozilla.org: encodeURI, encodeURIComponent, decodeURI, decodeURIComponent

Usage

encodeURI(value)

encodeURIComponent(value)

decodeURI(value)

decodeURIComponent(value)

Arguments

Details

Intended as a faster replacement for utils::URLencode() and utils::URLdecode().

encodeURI differs from encodeURIComponent in that the former will not encode reserved characters: ;,/?:@&=+$

decodeURI differs from decodeURIComponent in that it will refuse to decode encoded sequences that decode to a reserved character. (If in doubt, use decodeURIComponent.)

For encodeURI and encodeURIComponent, input strings will be converted to UTF-8 before URL-encoding.

Value

Encoded or decoded character vector of the same length as the input value. decodeURI and decodeURIComponent will return strings that are UTF-8 encoded.

Apply the value of .Random.seed to R's internal RNG state

Description

This function is needed in unusual cases where a C++ function calls an R function which sets the value of .Random.seed. This function should be called at the end of the R function to ensure that the new value .Random.seed is preserved. Otherwise, Rcpp may overwrite it with a previous value.

Usage

getRNGState()

Interrupt httpuv runloop

Description

Interrupts the currently running httpuv runloop, meaning runServer or service will return control back to the caller and no further tasks will be processed until those methods are called again. Note that this may cause in-process uploads or downloads to be interrupted in mid-request.

Usage

interrupt()

Check whether an address is IPv4 or IPv6

Description

Given an IP address, this checks whether it is an IPv4 or IPv6 address.

Usage

ipFamily(ip)

Arguments

Value

For IPv4 addresses, 4; for IPv6 addresses, 6. If the address is neither, -1.

Examples

ipFamily("127.0.0.1")   # 4
ipFamily("500.0.0.500") # -1
ipFamily("500.0.0.500") # -1

ipFamily("::")          # 6
ipFamily("::1")         # 6
ipFamily("fe80::1ff:fe23:4567:890a") # 6

List all running httpuv servers

Description

This returns a list of all running httpuv server applications.

Usage

listServers()

Get and set logging level

Description

The logging level for httpuv can be set to report differing levels of information. Possible logging levels (from least to most information reported) are: "OFF", "ERROR", "WARN", "INFO", or "DEBUG". The default level is ERROR.

Usage

logLevel(level = NULL)

Arguments

Value

If level=NULL, then this returns the current logging level. If level is any other value, then this returns the previous logging level, from before it is set to the new value.

Find an open TCP port

Description

Finds a random available TCP port for listening on, within a specified range of ports. The default range of ports to check is 1024 to 49151, which is the set of TCP User Ports. This function automatically excludes some ports which are considered unsafe by web browsers.

Usage

randomPort(min = 1024L, max = 49151L, host = "127.0.0.1", n = 20)

Arguments

Value

A port that is available to listen on.

Examples

## Not run: 
s <- startServer("127.0.0.1", randomPort(), list())
browseURL(paste0("http://127.0.0.1:", s$getPort()))

s$stop()

## End(Not run)

Convert raw vector to Base64-encoded string

Description

Converts a raw vector to its Base64 encoding as a single-element character vector.

Usage

rawToBase64(x)

Arguments

Examples

set.seed(100)
result <- rawToBase64(as.raw(runif(19, min=0, max=256)))
stopifnot(identical(result, "TkGNDnd7z16LK5/hR2bDqzRbXA=="))

Run a server

Description

This is a convenience function that provides a simple way to call startServer, service, and stopServer in the correct sequence. It does not return unless interrupted or an error occurs.

Usage

runServer(host, port, app, interruptIntervalMs = NULL)

Arguments

Details

If you have multiple hosts and/or ports to listen on, call the individual functions instead of runServer.

See Also

startServer, service, stopServer

Examples

## Not run: 
# A very basic application
runServer("0.0.0.0", 5000,
  list(
    call = function(req) {
      list(
        status = 200L,
        headers = list(
          'Content-Type' = 'text/html'
        ),
        body = "Hello world!"
      )
    }
  )
)

## End(Not run)

Serve a directory

Description

runStaticServer() provides a convenient interface to start a server to host a single static directory, either in the foreground or the background.

Usage

runStaticServer(
  dir = getwd(),
  host = "127.0.0.1",
  port = NULL,
  ...,
  background = FALSE,
  browse = interactive()
)

Arguments

Value

Starts a server on the specified host and port. By default the server runs in the foreground and is accessible at ⁠http://127.0.0.1:7446⁠. When background = TRUE, the server object is returned invisibly.

See Also

runServer() provides a similar interface for running a dynamic app server. Both runStaticServer() and runServer() are built on top of startServer(), service() and stopServer(). Learn more about httpuv servers in startServer().

Examples

website_dir <- system.file("example-static-site", package = "httpuv")
runStaticServer(dir = website_dir)

Process requests

Description

Process HTTP requests and WebSocket messages. If there is nothing on R's call stack – if R is sitting idle at the command prompt – it is not necessary to call this function, because requests will be handled automatically. However, if R is executing code, then requests will not be handled until either the call stack is empty, or this function is called (or alternatively, run_now is called).

Usage

service(timeoutMs = ifelse(interactive(), 100, 1000))

Arguments

Details

In previous versions of httpuv (1.3.5 and below), even if a server created by startServer exists, no requests were serviced unless and until service was called.

This function simply calls run_now(), so if your application schedules any later callbacks, they will be invoked.

Examples

## Not run: 
while (TRUE) {
  service()
}

## End(Not run)

Create an HTTP/WebSocket daemonized server (deprecated)

Description

This function will be removed in a future release of httpuv. It is simply a wrapper for startServer. In previous versions of httpuv (1.3.5 and below), startServer ran applications in the foreground and startDaemonizedServer ran applications in the background, but now both of them run applications in the background.

Usage

startDaemonizedServer(host, port, app, quiet = FALSE)

Arguments

Create an HTTP/WebSocket server

Description

Creates an HTTP/WebSocket server on the specified host and port.

Usage

startServer(host, port, app, quiet = FALSE)

startPipeServer(name, mask, app, quiet = FALSE)

Arguments

Details

startServer binds the specified port and listens for connections on an thread running in the background. This background thread handles the I/O, and when it receives a HTTP request, it will schedule a call to the user-defined R functions in app to handle the request. This scheduling is done with later(). When the R call stack is empty – in other words, when an interactive R session is sitting idle at the command prompt – R will automatically run the scheduled calls. However, if the call stack is not empty – if R is evaluating other R code – then the callbacks will not execute until either the call stack is empty, or the run_now() function is called. This function tells R to execute any callbacks that have been scheduled by later(). The service() function is essentially a wrapper for run_now().

In older versions of httpuv (1.3.5 and below), it did not use a background thread for I/O, and when this function was called, it did not accept connections immediately. It was necessary to call service repeatedly in order to actually accept and handle connections.

If the port cannot be bound (most likely due to permissions or because it is already bound), an error is raised.

The application can also specify paths on the filesystem which will be served from the background thread, without invoking $call() or $onHeaders(). Files served this way will be only use a C++ code, which is faster than going through R, and will not be blocked when R code is executing. This can greatly improve performance when serving static assets.

The app parameter is where your application logic will be provided to the server. This can be a list, environment, or reference class that contains the following methods and fields:

call(req)

Process the given HTTP request, and return an HTTP response (see Response Values). This method should be implemented in accordance with the Rook specification. Note that httpuv augments req with an additional item, req$HEADERS, which is a named character vector of request headers.

onHeaders(req)

Optional. Similar to call, but occurs when headers are received. Return NULL to continue normal processing of the request, or a Rook response to send that response, stop processing the request, and ask the client to close the connection. (This can be used to implement upload size limits, for example.)

onWSOpen(ws)

Called back when a WebSocket connection is established. The given object can be used to be notified when a message is received from the client, to send messages to the client, etc. See WebSocket.

staticPaths

A named list of paths that will be served without invoking call() or onHeaders. The name of each one is the URL path, and the value is either a string referring to a local path, or an object created by the staticPath function.

staticPathOptions

A set of default options to use when serving static paths. If not set or NULL, then it will use the result from calling staticPathOptions() with no arguments.

The startPipeServer variant can be used instead of startServer to listen on a Unix domain socket or named pipe rather than a TCP socket (this is not common).

Value

A handle for this server that can be passed to stopServer to shut the server down.

A WebServer or PipeServer object.

Response Values

The call function is expected to return a list containing the following, which are converted to an HTTP response and sent to the client:

status

A numeric HTTP status code, e.g. 200 or 404L.

headers

A named list of HTTP headers and their values, as strings. This can also be missing, an empty list, or NULL, in which case no headers (other than the Date and Content-Length headers, as required) will be added.

body

A string (or raw vector) to be sent as the body of the HTTP response. This can also be omitted or set to NULL to avoid sending any body, which is useful for HTTP 1xx, 204, and 304 responses, as well as responses to HEAD requests.

See Also

stopServer, runServer, listServers, stopAllServers.

Examples

## Not run: 
# A very basic application
s <- startServer("0.0.0.0", 5000,
  list(
    call = function(req) {
      list(
        status = 200L,
        headers = list(
          'Content-Type' = 'text/html'
        ),
        body = "Hello world!"
      )
    }
  )
)

s$stop()


# An application that serves static assets at the URL paths /assets and /lib
s <- startServer("0.0.0.0", 5000,
  list(
    call = function(req) {
      list(
        status = 200L,
        headers = list(
          'Content-Type' = 'text/html'
        ),
        body = "Hello world!"
      )
    },
    staticPaths = list(
      "/assets" = "content/assets/",
      "/lib" = staticPath(
        "content/lib",
        indexhtml = FALSE
      ),
      # This subdirectory of /lib should always be handled by the R code path
      "/lib/dynamic" = excludeStaticPath()
    ),
    staticPathOptions = staticPathOptions(
      indexhtml = TRUE
    )
  )
)

s$stop()

## End(Not run)

Create a staticPath object

Description

The staticPath function creates a staticPath object. Note that if any of the arguments (other than path) are NULL, then that means that for this particular static path, it should inherit the behavior from the staticPathOptions set for the application as a whole.

Usage

staticPath(
  path,
  indexhtml = NULL,
  fallthrough = NULL,
  html_charset = NULL,
  headers = NULL,
  validation = NULL
)

excludeStaticPath()

Arguments

Details

The excludeStaticPath function tells the application to ignore a particular path for static serving. This is useful when you want to include a path for static serving (like "/") but then exclude a subdirectory of it (like "/dynamic") so that the subdirectory will always be passed to the R code for handling requests. excludeStaticPath can be used not only for directories; it can also exclude specific files.

See Also

staticPathOptions.

Create options for static paths

Description

Create options for static paths

Usage

staticPathOptions(
  indexhtml = TRUE,
  fallthrough = FALSE,
  html_charset = "utf-8",
  headers = list(),
  validation = character(0),
  exclude = FALSE
)

Arguments

Stop all servers

Description

This will stop all applications which were created by startServer or startPipeServer.

Usage

stopAllServers()

See Also

stopServer to stop a specific server.

Stop a running daemonized server in Unix environments (deprecated)

Description

This function will be removed in a future release of httpuv. Instead, use stopServer.

Usage

stopDaemonizedServer(server)

Arguments

Stop a server

Description

Given a server object that was returned from a previous invocation of startServer or startPipeServer, this closes all open connections for that server and unbinds the port.

Usage

stopServer(server)

Arguments

See Also

stopAllServers to stop all servers.