Simple Web Client

Due: 5:00am, Friday, October 4, 2024

Get the Assignment Code

Login to your university Unix account and copy the assignment code to a location under your home directory:

The starter code for this assignment is on the Linux server here:

  /export/home/public/schwesin/cpsc328/assignments/project3

Description

The purpose of this assignment is to create a web client that can make simple HTTP GET requests. The form of the request is similar to this:

GET / HTTP/1.1\r\n
Host: example.com\r\n
Connection: close\r\n
\r\n

where example.com would be replaced with the value of the host command line argument. It is important to note that each line of the request ends with a Carriage Return - Linefeed (CRLF) sequence and that then end of the request has a single CRLF (this is how we know the header portion of the request is done.)

If we are requesting a specific resource, it would be indicated in the first line of the request as the path to the file:

GET /path/to/file.html HTTP/1.1\r\n

Here is the general flow of the program:

• Create a socket: this is a combination of getaddrinfo and socket and the values of the -h, -p, and -f command line arguments.

• Connect the socket with connect

• Build and send the HTTP request with send; if the verbose flag is set, then print the request to standard out. This requires splitting the URL into the host and path parts.

• Receive the HTTP response with recv

• Close the socket with close

Specifications

• The name of the compiled program must be webclient.

• The input to the program must be in the form of command line arguments as follows:

  • -h <string> host (default localhost)
  • -p <string> port (default 80)
  • -f <string> file path (default /)
  • -v verbose: print the HTTP request

• The following rules must be added to the provided Makefile:

  • Add a rule to build an executable named webclient. This must be the default action of the Makefile.
  • Add a rule called clean to remove any temporary files and the webclient executable.

• If the implementation language is Python, the socket.create_connection function is forbidden and the urllib module is forbidden.

Turning in the Assignment

To turn in the assignment, execute the submit script by running the command

  make submit

from within the project3 directory.

Grading Criteria

• Consistent coding style
• Modular design
• Correct implementation of the specification
• Correct error checking of library calls