node-cgi

An http/stack/connect layer to invoke and serve CGI executables.

This module implements RFC 3875, and offers an easy interface to run and serve CGI executables using Node's HTTP server. I wrote this so I could directly serve GitWeb through Node.

CGI Scripts?

If you're not familiar with CGI scripts, they're simply executable files that get invoked by a web server with client requests. The script has Environment Variables set that indicate information about the HTTP request the client has sent.

Here's what a simple "Hello World" CGI script in sh would look like:

#!/bin/sh

# Headers are written first. The special "Status"
# header indicates the response status code
echo "Status: 200"
echo "Content-Type: text/plain"
echo
    
# Followed by a response body
echo "Hello World!"

Let's call it hello.cgi. Be sure to make it executable with chmod +x hello.cgi!

Invoking "The Script" with Node

Now, we need to set up our Node HTTP server. For every request sent to the server, our hello.cgi script will be invoked, and the response will be sent back to the HTTP client:

var cgi = require('cgi');
var http = require('http');
var path = require('path');

var script = path.resolve(__dirname, 'hello.cgi');

http.createServer( cgi(script) ).listen(80);

This will set up a CGI handler with the default options.

License

(The MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2012 Nathan Rajlich <[email protected]>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.