I am new to network programming and got started with boost, REST etc. I wanted to know if I could use REST API's with boost-asio such as using Google Maps' Distance Matrix in my program. But I couldn't find a proper documentation for boost.
I don't expect you to give me complete working code rather I need idea or some sort of guidance as to what to do, where to find things etc.Also this program will be in C++ purely (I don't know if it can even be done in C++, given this answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/28736632/4846740). Thanks
Note: This post was not very helpful Integrating Google maps with C++ Program
You'd want to
use a REST library (e.g. cpprestsdk or some other frameworks like autobahn-cpp?), or
= at least write the REST requests on top of a HTTP library, such as Boost Beast
The library examples show you everything you need to send requests and receive responses. If you want, you can use additional libraries like https://github.com/0xdead4ead/BeastHttp to make it even more high-level/instant.
I would 100% recommend that you do not do this in C++. While I'm not a huge fan of Python, it's undoubtedly the hammer that is made for this nail. Check out BeautifulSoup, Mechanize, and Scrapy (+XPath), for really convenient ways of obtaining/parsing HTML, filling out web forms, and gaining responses. Typically, unless you're doing realtime target tracking, you do not need the latency gained from running everything in C/C++. You can get away with quarter-second, or even half-second updates.
I'm not sure what you're trying to do, but I would say save yourself the headache, and just work with Python.
Related
I am building a server-client application that involves heavy signal processing (e.g. FFT). I have a working application written in C++/Qt, where everything (signal processing and other calculations) is done in client and server just sends raw data. Now I feel it would be easier to implement these features on the server. So, that maintenance becomes easier.
As I am doing signal processing, I think I should stick to C++ for performance. But I am open to new ideas.
Constraints:
I need type checking so javascript is out of discussion.
Scaling includes adding more server and each server will have at the max
10-12 users. So, Hardware cost is important. I cannot use x number of
i7 processors.
No option of using cloud services.
So, right now my question is as follows:
How can I create web services using C++ for Linux server? (Although cross platform is not important, I would appreciate if I can achieve it.)
EDIT [02:09:2015]
Right now, I think the choice is between poco and C++ Rest SDK. I feel I should go for C++ Rest SDK. Mainly because it has only those features that I need. And Also it is supported by microsoft and uses boost internally. So, I feel in future, this might be well integreated with standard.
You could use cross-platform Poco library to implement HTTP server, it is really straightforward with this framework, and they have a lot of examples. You can also use JSON serialization (like rapidjson library) to implement REST service on top of HTTP - this way your Web service will be accesable by most of the modern Web frameworks.
You might want to take a look at the C++ Rest SDK, an open source, cross platform API from Microsoft.
Like #nogard suggested, I also recommend POCO for now. It's the most serious and feature-full solution. Given you mentioned Qt, I suggest you to take a look at Tufão.
EDIT:
I forgot to mention one comparison of mine on the C++ HTTP server frameworks.
If you directly handle HTTP requests, you might loose the functionality what Web Servers does well what it was build to do. I had a similar issue, what I did was wrap up my Qt c++ code inside a PHP extension. In your case you can do the same. Wrap your logic inside what ever technology you are about to use, doesn't matter it's PHP, net , Java or anything else.
I am trying to get into C++ programming so apologise if this is a bit of a stupid question.
I am attempting to create a program in C++ that is linked to a website via the database, that's all sorted. In this program, the user must log into it to be able to use its features, I've also managed to do this fine. My question is, what is the best way of storing that users session so I can refer to their username, display that users settings from the database e.c.t?
I am unsure, but I don't think c++ has session options like in php so I cannot do it that way. I did some googling before I posted this, spent all night trying to find a solution, I found nothing.
My knowledge if c++ is slim and this may sound like a more complicated or unnecessary route to take, but it was thinking of perhaps when the user logs in, to create a txt file storing that users username and then calling on it when I need to refer to that users username for queries and such, then when the user logs out or closes the program it deletes the file. Is that stupid? Forgive me if it is.
Is there better way to go about this?
Thanks for your time!
EDIT
I read your comments, if it needs to be a stand-alone application, like some sort of client, you could take a look at the C++ libraries I mentioned, but I'd use any higher level language (Java or C# have good documentation and there are many tutorials for creating GUIs, if that's what your're looking for. I think even Python would make a good candidate).
If you really must use C++, your best bet would be to use an existing library to implement your web solution. POCO includes an HTTP server framework, and a library for sockets and other forms of low-level network programming. Boost ASIO can also serve your purposes. But this is hardly something I'd recommend to start learning programming, or C++ for that matter.
If you want to learn about web programming, then you should definitely take a look at other languages. PHP or ASP.NET come to mind. AS you learn, you'll most likely also end up writing some form of Javascript. You can find a lot of info out there, just Google for tutorials. A site to get started is w3Schools, but any site with tutorials will do. Good luck!
What is a good choice for a simple http Server lib? It doesn't need high performance. I rather look for something simple for some REST/JSON communication ("API").
It must be able though to work in a multithreaded environment and must be able to handle large POST request.
Any suggestions? I already tried cpp-netlib but this seems to be much too complicated for such an easy task...
Edit: I am looking for something really light-weight and simple. E.g. like Sinatra in the Ruby world. Poco is for me another example of a too heavy-weight library.
The first one that comes to mind is Poco Library ( http://pocoproject.org/ )
Cross platform, stable, well documented. While the library itself offers more than you probably need you can build and omit the portions you aren't planning on using to reduce bloat.
They have a fully featured Net library that includes several salient classes and utilities.
Here is a pdf of slides from that library, of particular interest is the HTTPServer class:
http://pocoproject.org/slides/200-Network.pdf
Not sure about large POST data, but I've previously used mongoose: https://github.com/cesanta/mongoose/.
If the LGPL license is unwanted there is a MIT fork from when the project was MIT that also add a C++ API https://github.com/bel2125/civetweb
I would encourage you to start with http server samples in boost.asio. They are so simple and easy to understand, that you should be able to easily extend them as needed.
However, if you want to jump onto something more polished than just sample code, I know of 3 http servers in C++ which you may like to try:
"x0 - HTTP Web Server Framework" to me personally this one seems most promising, because it's lightweight and simple
"highpower / xiva" is a simple http server framework for delivering notifications to browsers
"Pion, a project of Atomic Labs" is a part of elaborate framework for handling large amounts of data
Pretty late answer; but hope this helps.
For your interest of a server that can handle REST, here is the easiest HTTP Server library to use (in my opinion): https://github.com/yhirose/cpp-httplib.
For JSON parsing, you may search for another library to use it in conjunction.
Personally, I'd go for Arachnida but that might be because I wrote it.
Is there a relatively easy way to display the output of a C++ program on a webpage? And I don't mean manually, in other words, you see it on a webpage as it runs not as in I make a code tag and write it in myself.
EDIT: Just so everybody can get this clear I am going to post this up here. I am NOT trying to make a webpage in C++. Please excuse me if this sounds spiteful or anything but I am getting a lot of answers relating to that.
Step one, get yourself a server-side language. Be that PHP, ASP, Python, Ruby, whatever. Get it set up so you can serve it.
Step two, find your language's exec equivalent. Practically all of them have them. It'll let you run a command as if it were from the command line, usually with arguments and capture the output. Here's PHP's:
http://php.net/manual/en/function.exec.php
Of course, if you're passing user-input as arguments, sanitise!
I've just seen that you accepted Scott's answer. I usually wouldn't chase up a SO thread so persistently but I fear you're about to make a mistake that you'll come to regret down the line. Giving direct access to your program and its own built-in server is a terrible idea for two reasons:
You waste a day implementing this built-in server and then getting it to persist and testing it
More importantly, you've just opened up another attack vector into your server. When it comes to security, keep it simple.
You're far better having your C++ app running behind another (mature) server side language as all the work is done for you and it can filter the input to keep things safe.
You could write a CGI app in C++, or you could use an existing web server language to execute the command and send the output to the client.
You want to use Witty.
Wt (pronounced 'witty') is a C++
library for developing interactive web
applications.
The API is widget-centric and similar
to desktop GUI APIs. To the developer,
it offers complete abstraction of any
web-specific implementation details,
including event handling, graphics
support, graceful degradation (or
progressive enhancement), and pretty
URLs.
Unlike many page-based frameworks, Wt
was designed for creating stateful
applications that are at the same time
highly interactive (leveraging
techinques such as AJAX to their
fullest) and accessible (supporting
plain HTML browsers), using automatic
graceful degradation or progressive
enhancement.
The library comes with an application
server that acts as a stand-alone web
server or integrates through FastCGI
with other web servers.
I am not sure this is what you are looking for but you may want CGI You may want to look at this SO question, C++ may not be the best language for what you want to do.
based off the questions you posted Writing a web app like what you want is no simple task. What I would recommend is use some other library (this is one i found with a quick google) to get a web console on your server and give the user it is running under execute deny permissions on every folder except the folder you have your app installed.
This is still is a risky method if you don't set up the security correctly but it is the easiest solution without digging around too much on existing libraries to just have the application interactive.
EDIT --
The "Best" solution is learn AJAX and have your program post its own pages with it but like I said, it will not be easy.
It sounds like you want something like a telnet session embedded in a webpage. A quick google turns up many Java telnet apps, though I'm not qualified to evaluate which would be most ideal to embed in html.
You would set up the login script on the host machine to run your c++ app and the user would interact with it through the shell window. Note though that this will only work for pure command line apps. If you want to use a GUI app in this way, then you should look into remote desktop software or VNC.
It may be worth looking into Adobe's "Alchemy" project on Adobe Labs
This may help you with what you're trying to achieve.
:)
Are you looking for something like what codepad.org does? I believe they explain how they did it here.
There is a library called C++ Server Pages - Poco. I used it for one of my college project, its pretty good. There is also good documentation to get started with, u can find it here http://pocoproject.org/docs/
I was told I have to use winsock, but I dont know where to start. For example, I am trying to access, lets say http://www.newegg.com/, I am trying to get the text title of just the three front page products. Any help is greatly appreciated. :D
I'd also recommend libcurl for this sort of thing.
You can use the cURL command line tool to generate sample code as well, which is helpful for experimentation.
W3.org themselves provide sample C / C++ librarys for Http requests.
Find them here
Specifically, look for HTTPReq.c
Use boost library and poco. They both provide solutions for network programming. Boost also provide spirit library which you can use for parsing data from websites. Poco libraru also provides NetSSL, crypto solutions.
P.S. boost::spirit is not a library for parsing data from websites, it provides solution for parsing strings ...
you need to open a socket.
then you need to do an http get
somewhat like :-
http://www.esqsoft.com/examples/troubleshooting-http-using-telnet.htm
You could use the QNetworkAccessmanager class from Qt framework.
I'm assuming you need to use c++ for a reason, such as integration with existing software, otherwise, as per some of the other suggestions, choosing a language with a more convenient framework (eg: scripting language) would be better suited for the task.
If you would like to avoid getting your hands dirty with WINSOCK, or have the need to run on a platform other than windows, you could look at the using the boost asio library.
The following page contains links to simple sync and async http clients:
http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_37_0/doc/html/boost_asio/examples.html
You can find documentation on the library itself at:
http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_37_0/doc/html/boost_asio.html
Use c++ if you must, but it might be a lot less painful to use python.
Look at the Python httplib module for how to set the host you want to pull from etc. Python's available for free for most platforms and is enough like C++ that you can probably learn python a heck of a lot faster than you can learn to write a program controlled browser in c++. Well, maybe that's not true for everyone on this site, but I'll bet it's true for "most" of us. I used to get stock quotes updated in near real time from CNN Money years ago and IIRC it was around 100 lines of python code.
Hotei