[Cppcms-users] Running CppCMS with IIS

[Artyom B. <art...@ya...>]

Hello All,

It is not the first time I'm being asked about
running CppCMS with IIS...

So I had decided to check it deeply.

--------------------------------------------------

Bottom line:

I was able to run CppCMS application
with IIS using SCGI after a small
"workaround" that is currently exists 
in svn trunk of CppCMS.

--------------------------------------------------

Before you try to use IIS in front of CppCMS I'd recommend
you to chose another web server that is more friendly
to web developers who use web server independent
API like FastCGI.

Best Approach:
--------------

Configure CppCMS with some other good web server like 
Apache or Nginx and forward requests from IIS to it.

FastCGI Connectivity
=====================


FastCGI - don't use it, it was designed to run PHP and
nothing more.


IIS's FastCGI implementation is broken and
does not support multi-threaded FastCGI applications.

   http://forums.iis.net/t/1155551.aspx

It also does not provide an option to configure 
specific port making it even impossible to use
CppCMS application with IIS.

SCGI Connectivity
=====================

Using with ISAPI SCGI.
---------------------

There is SCGI ISAPI extension that allows to use
external SCGI applications isapi_scgi

  http://woof.magicsplat.com/isapi_scgi/home

However it has two big limitations:

1.  It does not support real CGI response from the client
    and expects HTTP response.

    Currently in SVN trunk it is possible to
    set an option `service.generate_http_headers` to `true`.
    This option tells CppCMS to generate HTTP rather
    then CGI response headers.

    Using this option it was possible to run successfully
    CppCMS application with IIS.

2.  It supports only predefined set of HTTP headers
    so if you will need to get custom headers from
    for example AJAX responses you'll need to alter
    `isapi_scgi` sources.


So you'll need configuration like:

    {
      "service" : {
         "api" : "scgi",
         "ip" : "127.0.0.1",
         "port" : 9999,
         "generate_http_headers" : true
      }
    }

Troubleshooting ISAPI SCGI extension.
--------------------------------------

There are two problems:

-   Currently the project provides only 32 bit builds of
    this dll, if you need 64 bit or you'll need to build 
    it manually.

-   If you need support of custom HTTP headers you'll have
    to add them in scgi.c.

-   In order to build it with gcc you need to apply
    following changes:

        --- scgi_old.h  2011-08-17 10:48:32.109547500 +0300
        +++ scgi.h      2011-08-17 10:50:26.184022000 +0300
        @@ -37,3 +37,3 @@
          */
        -#if defined(_MSC_VER)
        +#if defined(_MSC_VER) || defined(__GNUC__)
         # define COPY_MEMORY(d, s, n) memcpy((d), (s), (n))
        @@ -48,3 +48,3 @@
         ZLINK_CREATE_TYPEDEFS(context_t);
        -typedef struct context {
        +struct context {
         OVERLAPPED ovl;             /* Must be first structure */
        @@ -81,3 +81,3 @@
             buffer_t   buf;            /* Data buffer */
        -} context_t;
        +};
             
    And the you'll be able to build the DLL as:

        gcc -O2 -shared buffer.c scgi.c logger.c -lws2_32 -o isapi_scgi.dll



Bottom line....

If you don't have to don't use IIS!
(as don't use Windows in general)


Artyom 
CppDB - C++ SQL Connectivity: http://cppcms.sf.net/sql/cppdb/