public Class WebServer

WebServer has two distinct functions:

The primary function is to allow client/server access to HSQLDB databases via the HTTP protocol. This protocol is less efficient than the HSQL protocol used by the Server class and should be used only in situations where sandboxes or firewalls between the client and the server do not allow the use of the HSQL protocol. One example is client/server access by an applet running in browsers on remote hosts and accessing the database engine on the HTTP server from which the applet originated. From version 1.7.2, HTTP database connections are persistent and support transactions. Similar to HSQL connections, they should be explicitly closed to free the server resources.

The secondary function of WebServer is to act as a simple general purpose HTTP server. It is aimed to support the minimum requirements set out by the HTTP/1.0 standard. The HEAD and GET methods can be used to query and retrieve static files from the HTTP server.

Both the database server and HTTP server functions of WebServer can be configured with the webserver.properties file. It contains entries for the database server similar to those for the HSQL protocol Server class. In addition, a list mapping different file endings to their mime types may be included in this file. (fredt@users)

From the command line, the options are as follows:

+-----------------+-------------+----------+------------------------------+
|    OPTION       |    TYPE     | DEFAULT  |         DESCRIPTION          |
+-----------------+-------------+----------+------------------------------|
| --help          |             |          | prints this message          |
| --address       | name|number | any      | server inet address          |
| --port          | number      | 80       | port at which server listens |
| --database.i    | [type]spec  | 0=test   | path of database i           |
| --dbname.i      | alias       |          | url alias for database i     |
| --silent        | true|false  | true     | false => display all queries |
| --trace         | true|false  | false    | display JDBC trace messages  |
| --no_system_exit| true|false  | false    | do not issue System.exit()   |
+-----------------+-------------+----------+------------------------------+

server.port=80
server.database.0=test
server.dbname.0=...
...
server.database.n=...
server.dbname.n=...
server.silent=true

.htm=text/html
.html=text/html
.txt=text/plain
.gif=image/gif
.class=application/octet-stream
.jpg=image/jpeg
.jgep=image/jpeg
.zip=application/x-zip-compressed

• For server.root, use '/' as the separator, even for DOS/Windows.
• File extensions for mime types must be lowercase and start with '.'