Custom servers with Fornax

I've done a little organizing to make it easier to customize the server.

At the bottom, there is a definition of a function called 'serve_url()'. Here is where the magic happens: you get a url, and you output something.

The default definition just serves files:

void serve_url(conn* c, char* url){
  serve_file(c,url);
}

But you can do anything else here. For instance, if you want to show current time when the url is '/time', do this:

#include <time.h>
void serve_time(conn* c){
  time_t t = time(NULL);
  char *str = ctime(&t);  
  c->wrem = snprintf(c->wbuf,WBUF_SIZE,"20 text/gemini\r\n#%s\n",str);
  c->wptr = c->wbuf;
}

/*=============================================================================
  Serve a file, or current time if url is '/time'

=============================================================================*/
void serve_url(conn* c, char* url){
  if(!strncmp(url,"/time",6))
    serve_time(c);
  else
    serve_file(c,url);
}

See it in action here:

gemini://spell.ddns.net:10965/

See the updated README.gmi for more information on how to hack Fornax

Posted in: s/Fornax

🚀 stack [mod]

2025-09-14 · 8 months ago

2 Comments ↓

👽 spc476 · 2025-09-15 at 08:06:

Next up, define some structures to map routes to routines to run, like I've done in GLV-1.12558:

— Sample config, check the handler section

🚀 stack [OP/mod] · 2025-09-15 at 12:59:

I like your code, but I will probably not do that.

The goal of this project is a minimalistic drop-in server with a minimal footprint.

I don't really like the idea of supporting CGI variants or a complex routing mechanism for different directories. I'd rather run multiple application servers on different ports if I must.

And besides, so many other servers do that already (with various degrees of success, as I found out the hard way).

But there is nothing stopping someone else from adding a routing and configuration mechanism to Fornax.