cgi-core

A minimalistic, zero-dependency wrapper for supporting CGI scripts in Node.js.

🚧 This is a work in progress. 🚧

TODO roadmap:

-add more environment variables

-support Windows systems

Installation

To install the latest stable version of cgi-core:

npm install cgi-core

Synopsis

import { createServer } from "node:http";
import { createHandler } from "cgi-core";

// create a http server that handles CGI requests under the url path /cgi-bin

const handler = createHandler({
  urlPath: "/cgi-bin",
  filePath: "./cgi-bin",
  extensions: {
    "/usr/bin/perl": ["pl", "cgi"],
    "/usr/bin/python": ["py"],
    "/usr/local/bin/node": ["js", "node"]
  },
  debugOutput: false
});

const app = createServer(async (req, res) => {
  if(!await handler(req, res)) {
    // here, handle any routing outside of urlPath === '/cgi-bin'
    res.writeHead(200, { 'Content-Type': 'text/plain' });
    res.end('outside of urlPath');
  }
});
app.listen(3000);

config options

urlPath

Base url for routing. Default: '/cgi-bin'

filePath

File path where the CGI scripts are located. It is strongly advised to set a value for filePath (example: './cgi-bin'). Default: process.cwd()

extensions

Object containing file extension values for given interpreter paths. If no interpreter path is found for a file extension, the CGI script will be called as a standalone executable. Default:

{
  "/usr/bin/perl": ["pl", "cgi"],
  "/usr/bin/python": ["py"],
  "/usr/local/bin/node": ["js", "node"]
}

indexExtension

File extension to lookup for an index CGI script in any given directory. Default: 'js'

debugOutput

Set true to enable debug output. Default: false

logRequests

Set true to print HTTP request logs to STDOUT. Default: false

maxBuffer

Size of the allowed HTTP request and response payloads in bytes. Default: 2 * 1024 * 1024 (2 MB)

requestChunkSize

Size of the HTTP request payload data chunks in bytes. Default: 16 * 1024 (16 KB)

responseChunkSize

Size of the HTTP response payload data chunks in bytes. Default: 16 * 1024 (16 KB)