1 HTTP server in ROOT

The idea of THttpServer is to provide remote http access to running ROOT application and enable HTML/JavaScript user interface. Any registered object can be requested and displayed in the web browser. There are many benefits of such approach:

1.1 Starting the HTTP server

To start the http server, at any time, create an instance of the THttpServer class like:

serv = new THttpServer("http:8080");

This will start a civetweb-based http server on the port 8080. Then one should be able to open the address “http://localhost:8080” in any modern browser (IE9, Firefox, Chrome, Opera) and browse objects created in application. By default, the server can access files, canvases, and histograms via the gROOT pointer. All those objects can be displayed with JSROOT graphics.

There is a snapshot (frozen copy) of such server, running in tutorials/http/httpserver.C macro from ROOT tutorial.

1.2 Registering objects

At any time, one could register other objects with the command:

TGraph* gr = new TGraph(10);
gr->SetName("gr1");
serv->Register("graphs/subfolder", gr);

One should specify sub-folder name, where objects will be registered. If sub-folder name does not starts with slash /, than top-name folder /Objects/ will be prepended. At any time one could unregister objects:

serv->Unregister(gr);

THttpServer does not take ownership over registered objects - they should be deleted by user.

If the objects content is changing in the application, one could enable monitoring flag in the browser - then objects view will be regularly updated.

1.3 Command interface

THttpServer class provide simple interface to invoke command from web browser. One just register command like:

serv->RegisterCommand("/DoSomething","SomeFunction()");

Element with name DoSomething will appear in the web browser and can be clicked. It will result in gROOT->ProcessLineSync("SomeFunction()") call. When registering command, one could specify icon name which will be displayed with the command.

serv->RegisterCommand("/DoSomething","SomeFunction()", "/rootsys/icons/ed_execute.png");

In example usage of images from $ROOTSYS/icons directory is shown. One could prepend button; string to the icon name to let browser show command as extra button. In last case one could hide command element from elements list:

serv->Hide("/DoSomething");

One can find example of command interface usage in tutorials/http/httpcontrol.C macro.

1.4 Configuring user access

By default, the http server is open for anonymous access. One could restrict the access to the server for authenticated users only. First of all, one should create a password file, using the htdigest utility.

[shell] htdigest -c .htdigest domain_name user_name

It is recommended not to use special symbols in domain or user names. Several users can be add to the “.htdigetst” file. When starting the server, the following arguments should be specified:

root [0] new THttpServer("http:8080?auth_file=.htdigest&auth_domain=domain_name");

After that, the web browser will automatically request to input a name/password for the domain “domain_name”

1.5 Using FastCGI interface

FastCGI is a protocol for interfacing interactive programs with a web server like Apache, lighttpd, Microsoft ISS and many others.

When starting THttpServer, one could specify:

serv = new THttpServer("fastcgi:9000");

An example of configuration file for lighttpd server is:

server.modules += ( "mod_fastcgi" )
fastcgi.server = (
   "/remote_scripts/" =>
     (( "host" => "192.168.1.11",
        "port" => 9000,
        "check-local" => "disable",
        "docroot" => "/"
     ))
)

In this case, to access a running ROOT application, one should open the following address in the web browser:

http://lighttpd_hostname/remote_scripts/root.cgi/

In fact, the FastCGI interface can run in parallel to http server. One can just call:

serv = new THttpServer("http:8080");
serv->CreateEngine("fastcgi:9000");

One could specify a debug parameter to be able to adjust the FastCGI configuration on the web server:

serv->CreateEngine("fastcgi:9000?debug=1");

All user access will be ruled by the main web server - for the moment one cannot restrict access with fastcgi engine.

1.6 Integration with existing applications

In many practical cases no change of existing code is required. Opened files (and all objects inside), existing canvas and histograms are automatically scanned by the server and will be available to the users. If necessary, any object can be registered directly to the server with a THttpServer::Register() call.

Central point of integration - when and how THttpServer get access to data from a running application. By default it is done during the gSystem->ProcessEvents() call - THttpServer uses a synchronous timer which is activated every 100 ms. Such approach works perfectly when running macros in an interactive ROOT session.

If an application runs in compiled code and does not contain gSystem->ProcessEvents() calls, two method are available.

1.6.1 Asynchronous timer

The first method is to configure an asynchronous timer for the server, like for example:

serv->SetTimer(100, kFALSE);

Then, the timer will be activated even without any gSystem->ProcessEvents() method call. The main advantage of such method is that the application code can be used as it is. The disadvantage - there is no control when the communication between the server and the application is performed. It could happen just in-between of TH1::Fill() calls and an histogram object may be incomplete.

1.6.2 Explicit call of THttpServer::ProcessRequests() method

The second method is preferable - one just inserts in the application regular calls of the THttpServer::ProcessRequests() method, like:

serv->ProcessRequests();

In such case, one can fully disable the timer of the server:

serv->SetTimer(0, kTRUE);

1.7 Data access from command shell

The big advantage of the http protocol is that it is not only supported in web browsers, but also in many other applications. One could use http requests to directly access ROOT objects and data members from any kind of scripts.

If one starts a server and register an object like for example:

root [1]  serv = new THttpServer("http:8080");
root [2]  TNamed* n1 = new TNamed("obj", "title");
root [3]  serv->Register("subfolder", n1);

One could request a JSON representation of such object with the command:

[shell] wget http://localhost:8080/Objects/subfolder/obj/root.json

Then, its representation will look like:

{
   "_typename" : "TNamed",
   "fUniqueID" : 0,
   "fBits" : 50331656,
   "fName" : "obj",
   "fTitle" : "title"
}

The following requests can be performed:

All data will be automatically zipped if ‘.gz’ extension is appended. Like:

[shell] wget http://localhost:8080/Objects/subfolder/obj/root.json.gz

If the access to the server is restricted with htdigest, it is recommended to use the curl program since only curl correctly implements such authentication method. The command will look like:

[shell] curl --user "accout:password" http://localhost:8080/Objects/subfolder/obj/root.json --digest -o root.json

1.7.1 Access to object data in JSON format

Request root.json implemented with TBufferJSON class. TBufferJSON generates such object representation, which could be directly used in JSROOT for drawing. root.json returns either complete object or just object member like:

[shell] wget http://localhost:8080/Objects/subfolder/obj/fTitle/root.json

The result will be: “title”.

For the root.json request one could specify the ‘compact’ parameter, which allow to reduce the number of spaces and new lines without data lost. This parameter can have values from ‘0’ (no compression) till ‘3’ (no spaces and new lines at all).

Usage of root.json request is about as efficient as binary root.bin request. Comparison of different request methods with TH1 object shown in the table:

Request

Size

root.bin

1658 bytes

root.bin.gz

782 bytes

root.json

7555 bytes

root.json?compact=3

5381 bytes

root.json.gz?compact=3

1207 bytes

One should remember that json always includes names of the data fields which are not present in the binary representation. Even then, the size difference is negligible.

root.json used in JSROOT to request objects from THttpServer.

1.7.2 Generating images out of objects

For the ROOT classes which are implementing Draw method (like TH1 or TGraph)
one could produce images with requests: root.png, root.gif, root.jpeg. For example:

wget "http://localhost:8080/Files/hsimple.root/hpx/root.png?w=500&h=500&opt=lego1" -O lego1.png

For all such requests one could specify following parameters:

1.7.3 Methods execution

By default THttpServer starts in monitoring (read-only) mode and therefore forbid any methods execution. One could specify read-write mode when server is started:

serv = new THttpServer("http:8080;rw");

Or one could disable read-only mode with the call:

serv->SetReadOnly(kFALSE);

‘exe.json’ accepts following parameters:

Example of retrieving object title:

[shell] wget 'http://localhost:8080/Objects/subfolder/obj/exe.json?method=GetTitle' -O title.txt

Example of TTree::Draw method execution:

[shell] wget 'http://localhost:8080/Files/job1.root/ntuple/exe.json?method=Draw&prototype="Option_t*"&opt="px:py>>h1"&_ret_object_=h1' -O exe.json

To get debug information about command execution, one could submit ‘exe.txt’ request with same arguments.

1.7.4 Commands execution

If command registered to the server:

serv->RegisterCommand("/Folder/Start", "DoSomthing()");

It can be invoked with cmd.json request like:

[shell] wget http://localhost:8080/Folder/Start/cmd.json -O result.txt

If command fails, false will be returned, otherwise result of gROOT->ProcessLineSync() execution