The Xavante Lua Web Server

Installing

The default directory structure for Xavante is based on two directories:

  $XAVANTE_BIN  -- Lua and binary libraries, xavante_start.lua
    /cgilua
    /coxpcall
    /socket
    /xavante    -- Xavante Lua files

  $XAVANTE_WEB  -- Xavante default HTTP documents
    /doc        -- Xavante documentation
    /img        -- test images

The distributed source of Xavante can be copied to the $XAVANTE_BIN directory together with Lua and the other binary libraries.

The file t_xavante_start.lua is a template for the startup file. You must redefine it to something like the example below and then rename it to xavante_start.lua.

-- xavante_start.lua configured for a Windows installation
-- based on the C:\xavante directory

-- Library extension for the platform used
local LIB_EXT      = [[.dll]]

-- Physical location of Xavante file structure.
-- The example structure assumes that the bin
-- and web directories are under the same directory
local XAVANTE_HOME = [[C:/Xavante]]
local XAVANTE_BIN  = XAVANTE_HOME..[[/bin]]
local XAVANTE_WEB  = XAVANTE_HOME..[[/web]]

-- compatibility code for Lua version 5.0 providing
-- 5.1 behavior
if string.find (_VERSION, "Lua 5.0") and not package then
	if not LUA_PATH then
		LUA_PATH = XAVANTE_BIN.."/?.lua;"..
                   XAVANTE_BIN.."/?/?.lua"
	end
	require"compat-5.1"
	package.cpath = XAVANTE_BIN.."/?"..LIB_EXT..";"..
	                XAVANTE_BIN.."/lib?"..LIB_EXT
end

require "xavante.server"

xavante.setwebdir(XAVANTE_WEB)

-- Loads the configuration file and starts Xavante
xavante.start()

Configuring

The file $XAVANTE_BIN/xavante/config.lua defines the Xavante configuration. Xavante defines virtualhosts for each site that it is running. Each virtualhost can define a set of rules for it. Each rule matches a URL pattern with a handler. Xavante currently offers a file handler, a redirect handler and a CGILua handler for general files, URL remapping and CGILua scripts.

A tipical config.lua uses the format below

require "xavante.filehandler"
require "xavante.cgiluahandler"
require "xavante.redirecthandler"

local simplerules = {

    -- URL remapping example
    { match = "/",
      with = xavante.redirecthandler,
      params = {"/index.lp"}}, 
    
    -- filehandler example
    { match = "/*",
      with = xavante.filehandler,
      params = {baseDir = xavante.webdir()}},

    -- cgiluahandler example
    { match = {"/*.lp", "/*.lua"},
      with = xavante.cgiluahandler.makeHandler (xavante.webdir())},
}

xavante.HTTP{
    server = {host = "*", port = 80},
    
    defaultHost = {
    	rules = simplerules
    },
}

To use virtual hosts with Xavante, the call to xavante.HTTP would be changed to something like

xavante.HTTP{
    server = {host = "*", port = 80},
    
    defaultHost = {},
    
    virtualhosts = {
        ["www.sitename.com"] = simplerules
    }
}

Running

Running Xavante requires the execution of the correctly set xavante_start.lua. This can be done through a .bat file in Windows, or by giving execution rights to the xavante_start.lua on Linux.

Remember that xavante_start.lua is the configured version of t_xavante_start.lua and if you are installing Xavante from the source files you should edit it first.

After calling xavante_start.lua, opening the URL http://localhost on your browser should show the Xavante welcome page. If you changed the port number on config.lua you should also use this port number in the URL.