Quickstart

Simple Crow server

// ex1.cpp
#include "crow_all.h"

int main()
{
  crow::SimpleApp app;

  CROW_ROUTE(app, "/")
  ([]{
    return "Hello, world!";
  });

  app
    .port(8080)
    .run();
}

This is the simplest web server using Crow.

Compile and run with following command:

$ g++ ex1.cpp -std=c++11 -O3 -lboost_system -lboost_thread
$ ./a.out
(2015-01-08 13:37:43) [INFO    ] Crow/0.1 server is running, local port 8080

crow::SimpleApp is the main class for our HTTP server. It's Simple because SimpleApp doesn't have any middlewares. For details about middleware, see middleware section.

CROW_ROUTE macro registers a handler function for each url pattern. In this case, a HTTP request to url / will return a Hello, World! response with 200 OK status code. Other url returns 404 error.

app instance has several methods to configure the server. For example, .port(number) method changes the listening port and .multithreaded() method turns on multiple thread mode for serving requests.

Finally app.run() is called and Crow starts to serve.

Routing

Request handler function

Logging

JSON

Template (Mustache)

Middleware