7 1) OpenSSL version tests not needed on LibreSSL and BoringSSL
9 2) Fix IPV6 build breakage
11 3) Some fixes for WinCE build
13 4) Additional canned mimetypes for mounts, the full list is
25 .ttf application/x-font-ttf
26 .woff application/font-woff
29 5) Allow per-vhost setting of which protocol should get used
30 when the protocol: header is not sent by the client
35 1) lws_init_vhost_client_ssl() lets you also enable client SSL context on a
45 - There are only api additions, the api is compatible with v1.7.x. But
46 there is necessarily an soname bump to 8.
48 - If you are using lws client, you mainly need to be aware the option
49 LWS_SERVER_OPTION_DO_SSL_GLOBAL_INIT is needed at context-creation time
52 - If you are using lws for serving, the above is also true but there are
53 many new features to simplify your code (and life). There is a
56 https://libwebsockets.org/lws-2.0-new-features.html
58 but basically the keywords are vhosts, mounts and plugins. You can now
59 do the web serving part from lws without any user callback code at all.
60 See ./test-server/test-server-v2.0.c for an example, it has no user
61 code for ws either since it uses the protocol plugins... that one C file
62 is all that is needed to do the whole test server function.
64 You now have the option to use a small generic ws-capable webserver
65 "lwsws" and write your ws part as a plugin. That eliminates even
66 cut-and-pasting the test server code and offers more configurable
67 features like control over http cacheability in JSON.
73 These are already in 1.7.x series
75 1) MAJOR (Windows-only) fix assert firing
77 2) MAJOR http:/1.1 connections handled by lws_return_http_status() did not
78 get sent a content-length resulting in the link hanging until the peer closed
79 it. attack.sh updated to add a test for this.
81 3) MINOR An error about hdr struct in _lws_ws_related is corrected, it's not
82 known to affect anything until after it was fixed
84 4) MINOR During the close shutdown wait state introduced at v1.7, if something
85 requests callback on writeable for the socket it will busywait until the
88 5) MAJOR Although the test server has done it for a few versions already, it
89 is now required for the user code to explicitly call
91 if (lws_http_transaction_completed(wsi))
94 when it finishes replying to a transaction in http. Previously the library
95 did it for you, but that disallowed large, long transfers with multiple
96 trips around the event loop (and cgi...).
98 6) MAJOR connections on ah waiting list that closed did not get removed from
101 7) MAJOR since we added the ability to hold an ah across http keepalive
102 transactions where more headers had already arrived, we broke the ability
103 to tell if more headers had arrived. Result was if the browser didn't
104 close the keepalive, we retained ah for the lifetime of the keepalive,
107 8) MAJOR windows-only-POLLHUP was not coming
109 9) Client should not send ext hdr if no exts
114 1) MINOR test-server gained some new switches
116 -C <file> use external SSL cert file
117 -K <file> use external SSL key file
118 -A <file> use external SSL CA cert file
120 -u <uid> set effective uid
121 -g <gid> set effective gid
123 together you can use them like this to have the test-server work with the
124 usual purchased SSL certs from an official CA.
126 --ssl -C your.crt -K your.key -A your.cer -u 99 -g 99
128 2) MINOR the OpenSSL magic to setup ECDH cipher usage is implemented in the
129 library, and the ciphers restricted to use ECDH only.
130 Using this, the lws test server can score an A at SSLLABS test
132 3) MINOR STS (SSL always) header is added to the test server if you use --ssl. With
133 that, we score A+ at SSLLABS test
135 4) MINOR daemonize function (disabled at cmake by default) is updated to work
138 5) MINOR example systemd .service file now provided for test server
139 (not installed by default)
141 6) test server html is updated with tabs and a new live server monitoring
142 feature. Input sanitization added to the js.
144 7) client connections attempted when no ah is free no longer fail, they are
145 just deferred until an ah becomes available.
147 8) The test client pays attention to if you give it an http:/ or https://
148 protocol string to its argument in URL format. If so, it stays in http[s]
149 client mode and doesn't upgrade to ws[s], allowing you to do generic http client
150 operations. Receiving transfer-encoding: chunked is supported.
152 9) If you enable -DLWS_WITH_HTTP_PROXY=1 at cmake, the test server has a
153 new URI path http://localhost:7681/proxytest If you visit here, a client
154 connection to http://example.com:80 is spawned, and the results piped on
155 to your original connection.
157 10) Also with LWS_WITH_HTTP_PROXY enabled at cmake, lws wants to link to an
158 additional library, "libhubbub". This allows lws to do html rewriting on the
159 fly, adjusting proxied urls in a lightweight and fast way.
161 11) There's a new context creation flag LWS_SERVER_OPTION_DO_SSL_GLOBAL_INIT,
162 this is included automatically if you give any other SSL-related option flag.
163 If you give no SSL-related option flag, nor this one directly, then even
164 though SSL support may be compiled in, it is never initialized nor used for the
165 whole lifetime of the lws context.
167 Conversely in order to prepare the context to use SSL, even though, eg, you
168 are not listening on SSL but will use SSL client connections later, you must
169 give this flag explicitly to make sure SSL is initialized.
175 1) MINOR APIBREAK There's a new member in struct lws_context_creation_info, ecdh_curve,
176 which lets you set the name of the ECDH curve OpenSSL should use. By
177 default (if you leave ecdh_curve NULL) it will use "prime256v1"
179 2) MINOR NEWAPI It was already possible to adopt a foreign socket that had not
180 been read from using lws_adopt_socket() since v1.7. Now you can adopt a
181 partially-used socket if you don't need SSL, by passing it what you read
182 so it can drain that before reading from the socket.
184 LWS_VISIBLE LWS_EXTERN struct lws *
185 lws_adopt_socket_readbuf(struct lws_context *context, lws_sockfd_type accept_fd,
186 const char *readbuf, size_t len);
188 3) MINOR NEWAPI CGI type "network io" subprocess execution is now possible from
191 LWS_VISIBLE LWS_EXTERN int
192 lws_cgi(struct lws *wsi, char * const *exec_array, int script_uri_path_len,
195 LWS_VISIBLE LWS_EXTERN int
196 lws_cgi_kill(struct lws *wsi);
198 To use it, you must first set the cmake option
200 $ cmake .. -DLWS_WITH_CGI=1
202 See test-server-http.c and test server path
204 http://localhost:7681/cgitest
206 stdin gets http body, you can test it with wget
208 $ echo hello > hello.txt
209 $ wget http://localhost:7681/cgitest --post-file=hello.txt -O- --quiet
213 The test script returns text/html table showing /proc/meminfo. But the cgi
214 support is complete enough to run cgit cgi.
216 4) There is a helper api for forming logging timestamps
219 lwsl_timestamp(int level, char *p, int len)
221 this generates this kind of timestamp for use as logging preamble
223 lwsts[13116]: [2016/01/25 14:52:52:8386] NOTICE: Initial logging level 7
225 5) struct lws_client_connect_info has a new member
229 If it's NULL, then everything happens as before, lws_client_connect_via_info()
230 makes a ws or wss connection to the address given.
232 If you set method to a valid http method like "GET", though, then this method
233 is used and the connection remains in http[s], it's not upgraded to ws[s].
235 So with this, you can perform http[s] client operations as well as ws[s] ones.
237 There are 4 new related callbacks
239 LWS_CALLBACK_ESTABLISHED_CLIENT_HTTP = 44,
240 LWS_CALLBACK_CLOSED_CLIENT_HTTP = 45,
241 LWS_CALLBACK_RECEIVE_CLIENT_HTTP = 46,
242 LWS_CALLBACK_COMPLETED_CLIENT_HTTP = 47,
244 6) struct lws_client_connect_info has a new member
246 const char *parent_wsi
248 if non-NULL, the client wsi is set to be a child of parent_wsi. This ensures
249 if parent_wsi closes, then the client child is closed just before.
251 7) If you're using SSL, there's a new context creation-time option flag
252 LWS_SERVER_OPTION_REDIRECT_HTTP_TO_HTTPS. If you give this, non-ssl
253 connections to the server listen port are accepted and receive a 301
254 redirect to / on the same host and port using https://
256 8) User code may set per-connection extension options now, using a new api
257 "lws_set_extension_option()".
259 This should be called from the ESTABLISHED callback like this
261 lws_set_extension_option(wsi, "permessage-deflate",
262 "rx_buf_size", "12"); /* 1 << 12 */
264 If the extension is not active (missing or not negotiated for the
265 connection, or extensions are disabled on the library) the call is
266 just returns -1. Otherwise the connection's extension has its
267 named option changed.
269 The extension may decide to alter or disallow the change, in the
270 example above permessage-deflate restricts the size of his rx
271 output buffer also considering the protocol's rx_buf_size member.
274 New application lwsws
275 ---------------------
277 A libwebsockets-based general webserver is built by default now, lwsws.
279 It's configured by JSON, by default in
283 which contains global lws context settings like this
296 which contains zero or more files describing vhosts, like this
300 { "name": "warmcat.com",
302 "host-ssl-key": "/etc/pki/tls/private/warmcat.com.key",
303 "host-ssl-cert": "/etc/pki/tls/certs/warmcat.com.crt",
304 "host-ssl-ca": "/etc/pki/tls/certs/warmcat.com.cer",
307 { "home": "file:///var/www/warmcat.com" },
308 { "default": "index.html" }
324 1) There is now a "permessage-deflate" / RFC7692 implementation. It's very
325 similar to "deflate-frame" we have offered for a long while; deflate-frame is
326 now provided as an alias of permessage-deflate.
328 The main differences are that the new permessage-deflate implementation:
330 - properly performs streaming respecting input and output buffer limits. The
331 old deflate-frame implementation could only work on complete deflate input
332 and produce complete inflate output for each frame. The new implementation
333 only mallocs buffers at initialization.
335 - goes around the event loop after each input package is processed allowing
336 interleaved output processing. The RX flow control api can be used to
337 force compressed input processing to match the rate of compressed output
338 processing (test--echo shows an example of how to do this).
340 - when being "deflate-frame" for compatibility he uses the same default zlib
341 settings as the old "deflate-frame", but instead of exponentially increasing
342 malloc allocations until the whole output will fit, he observes the default
343 input and output chunking buffer sizes of "permessage-deflate", that's
344 1024 in and 1024 out at a time.
346 2) deflate-stream has been disabled for many versions (for over a year) and is
347 now removed. Browsers are now standardizing on "permessage-deflate" / RFC7692
349 3) struct lws_extension is simplified, and lws extensions now have a public
350 api (their callback) for use in user code to compose extensions and options
351 the user code wants. lws_get_internal_exts() is deprecated but kept around
352 as a NOP. The changes allow one extension implementation to go by different
353 names and allows the user client code to control option offers per-ext.
355 The test client and server are updated to use the new way. If you use
356 the old way it should still work, but extensions will be disabled until you
359 Extensions are now responsible for allocating and per-instance private struct
360 at instance construction time and freeing it when the instance is destroyed.
361 Not needing to know the size means the extension's struct can be opaque
368 1) The info struct gained three new members
370 - max_http_header_data: 0 for default (1024) or set the maximum amount of known
371 http header payload that lws can deal with. Payload in unknown http
372 headers is dropped silently. If for some reason you need to send huge
373 cookies or other HTTP-level headers, you can now increase this at context-
376 - max_http_header_pool: 0 for default (16) or set the maximum amount of http
377 headers that can be tracked by lws in this context. For the server, if
378 the header pool is completely in use then accepts on the listen socket
379 are disabled until one becomes free. For the client, if you simultaneously
380 have pending connects for more than this number of client connections,
381 additional connects will fail until some of the pending connections timeout
384 - timeout_secs: 0 for default (currently 20s), or set the library's
385 network activity timeout to the given number of seconds
387 HTTP header processing in lws only exists until just after the first main
388 callback after the HTTP handshake... for ws connections that is ESTABLISHED and
389 for HTTP connections the HTTP callback.
391 So these settings are not related to the maximum number of simultaneous
392 connections, but the number of HTTP handshakes that may be expected or ongoing,
393 or have just completed, at one time. The reason it's useful is it changes the
394 memory allocation for header processing to be one-time at context creation
395 instead of every time there is a new connection, and gives you control over
398 Setting max_http_header_pool to 1 is fine it will just queue incoming
399 connections before the accept as necessary, you can still have as many
400 simultaneous post-header connections as you like. Since the http header
401 processing is completed and the allocation released after ESTABLISHED or the
402 HTTP callback, even with a pool of 1 many connections can be handled rapidly.
404 2) There is a new callback that allows the user code to get acccess to the
405 optional close code + aux data that may have been sent by the peer.
407 LWS_CALLBACK_WS_PEER_INITIATED_CLOSE:
408 The peer has sent an unsolicited Close WS packet. @in and
409 @len are the optional close code (first 2 bytes, network
410 order) and the optional additional information which is not
411 defined in the standard, and may be a string or non-human-
413 If you return 0 lws will echo the close and then close the
414 connection. If you return nonzero lws will just close the
417 As usual not handling it does the right thing, if you're not interested in it
420 The test server has "open and close" testing buttons at the bottom, if you
421 open and close that connection, on close it will send a close code 3000 decimal
422 and the string "Bye!" as the aux data.
424 The test server dumb-increment callback handles this callback reason and prints
426 lwsts[15714]: LWS_CALLBACK_WS_PEER_INITIATED_CLOSE: len 6
427 lwsts[15714]: 0: 0x0B
428 lwsts[15714]: 1: 0xB8
429 lwsts[15714]: 2: 0x42
430 lwsts[15714]: 3: 0x79
431 lwsts[15714]: 4: 0x65
432 lwsts[15714]: 5: 0x21
434 3) There is a new API to allow the user code to control the content of the
435 close frame sent when about to return nonzero from the user callback to
436 indicate the connection should close.
439 * lws_close_reason - Set reason and aux data to send with Close packet
440 * If you are going to return nonzero from the callback
441 * requesting the connection to close, you can optionally
442 * call this to set the reason the peer will be told if
445 * @wsi: The websocket connection to set the close reason on
446 * @status: A valid close status from websocket standard
447 * @buf: NULL or buffer containing up to 124 bytes of auxiliary data
448 * @len: Length of data in @buf to send
450 LWS_VISIBLE LWS_EXTERN void
451 lws_close_reason(struct lws *wsi, enum lws_close_status status,
452 unsigned char *buf, size_t len);
454 An extra button is added to the "open and close" test server page that requests
455 that the test server close the connection from his end.
457 The test server code will do so by
459 lws_close_reason(wsi, LWS_CLOSE_STATUS_GOINGAWAY,
460 (unsigned char *)"seeya", 5);
463 The browser shows the close code and reason he received
465 websocket connection CLOSED, code: 1001, reason: seeya
467 4) There's a new context creation time option flag
469 LWS_SERVER_OPTION_VALIDATE_UTF8
471 if you set it in info->options, then TEXT and CLOSE frames will get checked to
472 confirm that they contain valid UTF-8. If they don't, the connection will get
475 5) ECDH Certs are now supported. Enable the CMake option
477 cmake .. -DLWS_SSL_SERVER_WITH_ECDH_CERT=1
479 **and** the info->options flag
481 LWS_SERVER_OPTION_SSL_ECDH
483 to build in support and select it at runtime.
485 6) There's a new api lws_parse_uri() that simplifies chopping up
486 https://xxx:yyy/zzz uris into parts nicely. The test client now uses this
487 to allow proper uris as well as the old address style.
489 7) SMP support is integrated into LWS without any internal threading. It's
490 very simple to use, libwebsockets-test-server-pthread shows how to do it,
491 use -j <n> argument there to control the number of service threads up to 32.
493 Two new members are added to the info struct
495 unsigned int count_threads;
496 unsigned int fd_limit_per_thread;
498 leave them at the default 0 to get the normal singlethreaded service loop.
500 Set count_threads to n to tell lws you will have n simultaneous service threads
501 operating on the context.
503 There is still a single listen socket on one port, no matter how many
506 When a connection is made, it is accepted by the service thread with the least
507 connections active to perform load balancing.
509 The user code is responsible for spawning n threads running the service loop
510 associated to a specific tsi (Thread Service Index, 0 .. n - 1). See
511 the libwebsockets-test-server-pthread for how to do.
513 If you leave fd_limit_per_thread at 0, then the process limit of fds is shared
514 between the service threads; if you process was allowed 1024 fds overall then
515 each thread is limited to 1024 / n.
517 You can set fd_limit_per_thread to a nonzero number to control this manually, eg
518 the overall supported fd limit is less than the process allowance.
520 You can control the context basic data allocation for multithreading from Cmake
521 using -DLWS_MAX_SMP=, if not given it's set to 32. The serv_buf allocation
522 for the threads (currently 4096) is made at runtime only for active threads.
524 Because lws will limit the requested number of actual threads supported
525 according to LWS_MAX_SMP, there is an api lws_get_count_threads(context) to
526 discover how many threads were actually allowed when the context was created.
528 It's required to implement locking in the user code in the same way that
529 libwebsockets-test-server-pthread does it, for the FD locking callbacks.
531 If LWS_MAX_SMP=1, then there is no code related to pthreads compiled in the
532 library. If more than 1, a small amount of pthread mutex code is built into
537 LWS_VISIBLE struct lws *
538 lws_adopt_socket(struct lws_context *context, lws_sockfd_type accept_fd)
540 allows foreign sockets accepted by non-lws code to be adopted by lws as if they
541 had just been accepted by lws' own listen socket.
543 9) X-Real-IP: header has been added as WSI_TOKEN_HTTP_X_REAL_IP
545 10) Libuv support is added, there are new related user apis
547 typedef void (lws_uv_signal_cb_t)(uv_loop_t *l, uv_signal_t *w, int revents);
549 LWS_VISIBLE LWS_EXTERN int
550 lws_uv_sigint_cfg(struct lws_context *context, int use_uv_sigint,
551 lws_uv_signal_cb_t *cb);
553 LWS_VISIBLE LWS_EXTERN int
554 lws_uv_initloop(struct lws_context *context, uv_loop_t *loop, int tsi);
557 lws_uv_sigint_cb(uv_loop_t *loop, uv_signal_t *watcher, int revents);
567 1) LWS_SEND_BUFFER_POST_PADDING is now 0 and deprecated. You can remove it; if
568 you still use it, obviously it does nothing. Old binary code with nonzero
569 LWS_SEND_BUFFER_POST_PADDING is perfectly compatible, the old code just
570 allocated a buffer bigger than the library is going to use.
572 The example apps no longer use LWS_SEND_BUFFER_POST_PADDING.
574 The only path who made use of it was sending with LWS_WRITE_CLOSE --->
576 2) Because of lws_close_reason() formalizing handling close frames,
577 LWS_WRITE_CLOSE is removed from libwebsockets.h. It was only of use to send
578 close frames...close frame content should be managed using lws_close_reason()
581 3) We check for invalid CLOSE codes and complain about protocol violation in
582 our close code. But it changes little since we were in the middle of closing
585 4) zero-length RX frames and zero length TX frames are now allowed.
587 5) Pings and close used to be limited to 124 bytes, the correct limit is 125
588 so that is now also allowed.
590 6) LWS_PRE is provided as a synonym for LWS_SEND_BUFFER_PRE_PADDING, either is
593 7) There's generic support for RFC7462 style extension options built into the
594 library now. As a consequence, a field "options" is added to lws_extension.
595 It can be NULL if there are no options on the extension. Extension internal
596 info is part of the public abi because extensions may be implemented outside
599 8) WSI_TOKEN_PROXY enum was accidentally defined to collide with another token
600 of value 73. That's now corrected and WSI_TOKEN_PROXY moved to his own place at
603 9) With the addition of libuv support, libev is not the only event loop
604 library in town and his api names must be elaborated with _ev_
606 Callback typedef: lws_signal_cb ---> lws_ev_signal_cb_t
607 lws_sigint_cfg --> lws_ev_sigint_cfg
608 lws_initloop --> lws_ev_initloop
609 lws_sigint_cb --> lws_ev_sigint_cb
611 10) Libev support is made compatible with multithreaded service,
612 lws_ev_initloop (was lws_initloop) gets an extra argument for the
613 thread service index (use 0 if you will just have 1 service thread).
615 LWS_VISIBLE LWS_EXTERN int
616 lws_ev_initloop(struct lws_context *context, ev_loop_t *loop, int tsi);
619 (for earlier changelogs, see the tagged releases)