Are you building a client? You just need to look at the test client libwebsockets-test-client.
If you are building a standalone server, there are three choices, in order of preferability.
Lws provides a generic web server app that can be configured with JSON config files. https://libwebsockets.org itself uses this method.
With lwsws handling the serving part, you only need to write an lws protocol plugin. See plugin-standalone for an example of how to do that outside lws itself, using lws public apis.
$ cmake .. -DLWS_WITH_LWSWS=1
See README.lwsws.md for information on how to configure lwsws.
NOTE this method implies libuv is used by lws, to provide crossplatform implementations of timers, dynamic lib loading etc for plugins and lwsws.
This method lets you configure web serving in code, instead of using lwsws.
Plugins are still used, which implies libuv needed.
$ cmake .. -DLWS_WITH_PLUGINS=1
This is the original way lws implemented servers, plugins and libuv are not required, but without plugins separating the protocol code directly, the combined code is all squidged together and is much less maintainable.
This method is still supported in lws but all ongoing and future work is being done in protocol plugins only.
@section tsb Testing server with a browser
If you run libwebsockets-test-server and point your browser (eg, Chrome) to
http://127.0.0.1:7681
It will fetch a script in the form of test.html, and then run the script in there on the browser to open a websocket connection. Incrementing numbers should appear in the browser display.
By default the test server logs to both stderr and syslog, you can control what is logged using -d <log level>, see later.
@section tsd Running test server as a Daemon
You can use the -D option on the test server to have it fork into the background and return immediately. In this daemonized mode all stderr is disabled and logging goes only to syslog, eg, /var/log/messages or similar.
The server maintains a lockfile at /tmp/.lwsts-lock that contains the pid of the master process, and deletes this file when the master process terminates.
To stop the daemon, do
$ kill cat /tmp/.lwsts-lock
If it finds a stale lock (the pid mentioned in the file does not exist any more) it will delete the lock and create a new one during startup.
If the lock is valid, the daemon will exit with a note on stderr that it was already running.
@section sssl Using SSL on the server side
To test it using SSL/WSS, just run the test server with
$ libwebsockets-test-server --ssl
and use the URL
https://127.0.0.1:7681
The connection will be entirely encrypted using some generated certificates that your browser will not accept, since they are not signed by any real Certificate Authority. Just accept the certificates in the browser and the connection will proceed in first https and then websocket wss, acting exactly the same.
test-server.c is all that is needed to use libwebsockets for serving both the script html over http and websockets.
@section lwstsdynvhost Dynamic Vhosts
You can send libwebsockets-test-server or libwebsockets-test-server-v2.0 a SIGUSR1 to toggle the creation and destruction of an identical second vhost on port + 1.
This is intended as a test and demonstration for how to bring up and remove vhosts dynamically.
@section wscl Testing websocket client support
If you run the test server as described above, you can also connect to it using the test client as well as a browser.
$ libwebsockets-test-client localhost
will by default connect to the test server on localhost:7681 and print the dumb increment number from the server at the same time as drawing random circles in the mirror protocol; if you connect to the test server using a browser at the same time you will be able to see the circles being drawn.
The test client supports SSL too, use
$ libwebsockets-test-client localhost --ssl -s
the -s tells it to accept the default self-signed cert from the server, otherwise it will strictly fail the connection if there is no CA cert to validate the server's certificate.
@section choosingts Choosing between test server variations
If you will be doing standalone serving with lws, ideally you should avoid making your own server at all, and use lwsws with your own protocol plugins.
The second best option is follow test-server-v2.0.c, which uses a mount to autoserve a directory, and lws protocol plugins for ws, without needing any user callback code (other than what's needed in the protocol plugin).
For those two options libuv is needed to support the protocol plugins, if that's not possible then the other variations with their own protocol code should be considered.
@section echo Testing simple echo
You can test against echo.websockets.org as a sanity test like this (the client connects to port 80 by default):
$ libwebsockets-test-echo --client echo.websocket.org
This echo test is of limited use though because it doesn't negotiate any protocol. You can run the same test app as a local server, by default on localhost:7681
$ libwebsockets-test-echo
and do the echo test against the local echo server
$ libwebsockets-test-echo --client localhost --port 7681
If you add the --ssl switch to both the client and server, you can also test with an encrypted link.
@section tassl Testing SSL on the client side
To test SSL/WSS client action, just run the client test with
$ libwebsockets-test-client localhost --ssl
By default the client test applet is set to accept self-signed certificates used by the test server, this is indicated by the use_ssl var being set to 2. Set it to 1 to reject any server certificate that it doesn't have a trusted CA cert for.
@section taping Using the websocket ping utility
libwebsockets-test-ping connects as a client to a remote websocket server and pings it like the normal unix ping utility.
$ libwebsockets-test-ping localhost handshake OK for protocol lws-mirror-protocol Websocket PING localhost.localdomain (127.0.0.1) 64 bytes of data. 64 bytes from localhost: req=1 time=0.1ms 64 bytes from localhost: req=2 time=0.1ms 64 bytes from localhost: req=3 time=0.1ms 64 bytes from localhost: req=4 time=0.2ms 64 bytes from localhost: req=5 time=0.1ms 64 bytes from localhost: req=6 time=0.2ms 64 bytes from localhost: req=7 time=0.2ms 64 bytes from localhost: req=8 time=0.1ms ^C --- localhost.localdomain websocket ping statistics --- 8 packets transmitted, 8 received, 0% packet loss, time 7458ms rtt min/avg/max = 0.110/0.185/0.218 ms $
By default it sends 64 byte payload packets using the 04 PING packet opcode type. You can change the payload size using the -s= flag, up to a maximum of 125 mandated by the 04 standard.
Using the lws-mirror protocol that is provided by the test server, libwebsockets-test-ping can also use larger payload sizes up to 4096 is BINARY packets; lws-mirror will copy them back to the client and they appear as a PONG. Use the -m flag to select this operation.
The default interval between pings is 1s, you can use the -i= flag to set this, including fractions like -i=0.01 for 10ms interval.
Before you can even use the PING opcode that is part of the standard, you must complete a handshake with a specified protocol. By default lws-mirror-protocol is used which is supported by the test server. But if you are using it on another server, you can specify the protocol to handshake with by --protocol=protocolname
@section ta fraggle Fraggle test app
By default it runs in server mode
$ libwebsockets-test-fraggle libwebsockets test fraggle (C) Copyright 2010-2011 Andy Green <andy@warmcat.com> licensed under LGPL2.1 Compiled with SSL support, not using it Listening on port 7681 server sees client connect accepted v06 connection Spamming 360 random fragments Spamming session over, len = 371913. sum = 0x2D3C0AE Spamming 895 random fragments Spamming session over, len = 875970. sum = 0x6A74DA1 ...
You need to run a second session in client mode, you have to give the -c switch and the server address at least:
$ libwebsockets-test-fraggle -c localhost libwebsockets test fraggle (C) Copyright 2010-2011 Andy Green <andy@warmcat.com> licensed under LGPL2.1 Client mode Connecting to localhost:7681 denied deflate-stream extension handshake OK for protocol fraggle-protocol client connects to server EOM received 371913 correctly from 360 fragments EOM received 875970 correctly from 895 fragments EOM received 247140 correctly from 258 fragments EOM received 695451 correctly from 692 fragments ...
The fraggle test sends a random number up to 1024 fragmented websocket frames each of a random size between 1 and 2001 bytes in a single message, then sends a checksum and starts sending a new randomly sized and fragmented message.
The fraggle test client receives the same message fragments and computes the same checksum using websocket framing to see when the message has ended. It then accepts the server checksum message and compares that to its checksum.
@section taproxy proxy support
The http_proxy environment variable is respected by the client connection code for both ws:// and wss://. It doesn't support authentication.
You use it like this
$ export http_proxy=myproxy.com:3128 $ libwebsockets-test-client someserver.com
@section talog debug logging
By default logging of severity "notice", "warn" or "err" is enabled to stderr.
Again by default other logging is compiled in but disabled from printing.
By default debug logs below "notice" in severity are not compiled in. To get them included, add this option in CMAKE
$ cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=DEBUG
If you want to see more detailed debug logs, you can control a bitfield to select which logs types may print using the lws_set_log_level() api, in the test apps you can use -d <number> to control this. The types of logging available are (OR together the numbers to select multiple)
@section ws13 Websocket version supported
The final IETF standard is supported for both client and server, protocol version 13.
@section latency Latency Tracking
Since libwebsockets runs using poll() and a single threaded approach, any unexpected latency coming from system calls would be bad news. There's now a latency tracking scheme that can be built in with --with-latency at configure-time, logging the time taken for system calls to complete and if the whole action did complete that time or was deferred.
You can see the detailed data by enabling logging level 512 (eg, -d 519 on the test server to see that and the usual logs), however even without that the "worst" latency is kept and reported to the logs with NOTICE severity when the context is destroyed.
Some care is needed interpreting them, if the action completed the first figure (in us) is the time taken for the whole action, which may have retried through the poll loop many times and will depend on network roundtrip times. High figures here don't indicate a problem. The figure in us reported after "lat" in the logging is the time taken by this particular attempt. High figures here may indicate a problem, or if you system is loaded with another app at that time, such as the browser, it may simply indicate the OS gave preferential treatment to the other app during that call.
@section autobahn Autobahn Test Suite
Lws can be tested against the autobahn websocket fuzzer.
pip install autobahntestsuite
wstest -m fuzzingserver
Run tests like this
libwebsockets-test-echo --client localhost --port 9001 -u "/runCase?case=20&agent=libwebsockets" -v -d 65535 -n 1
(this runs test 20)
http://localhost:8080/test_browser.html
fill in "libwebsockets" in "User Agent Identifier" and press "Update Reports (Manual)"
file:///projects/libwebsockets/reports/clients/index.html
to see the results
@section autobahnnotes Autobahn Test Notes
Autobahn tests the user code + lws implementation. So to get the same results, you need to follow test-echo.c in terms of user implementation.
Two of the tests make no sense for Libwebsockets to support and we fail them.