kawipiko -- blazingly fast static HTTP server

kawipiko-archiver

>> kawipiko-archiver --help
>> kawipiko-archiver --man
--sources <path>

--archive <path>

--compress <gzip | zopfli | brotli | identity>
--compress-level <number>
--compress-cache <path>

--exclude-index
--exclude-strip
--exclude-cache
--include-etag

--exclude-slash-redirects
--include-folder-listing
--exclude-paths-index

--progress  --debug

--version
--help          (show this short help)
--man           (show the full manual)

--sources-md5   (dump an ``md5sum`` of the sources)
--sources-cpio  (dump a ``cpio.gz`` of the sources)

--sbom  --sbom-text  --sbom-json

Flags

--sources

The path to the source folder that is the root of the static website content.

--archive

The path to the target CDB file that contains the archived static content.

--compress, and --compress-level

Each individual file (and consequently of the corresponding HTTP response body) is compressed with either gzip, zopfli or brotli; by default (or alternatively with identity) no compression is used.

Even if compression is explicitly requested, if the compression ratio is bellow a certain threshold (depending on the uncompressed size), the file is stored without any compression. (It's senseless to force the client to spend time and decompress the response body if that time is not recovered during network transmission.)

The compression level can be chosen, the value depending on the algorithm:

  • gzip -- -1 for algorithm default, -2 for Huffman only, 0 to 9 for fast to slow;
  • zopfli -- -1 for algorithm default, 0 to 30 iterations for fast to slow;
  • brotli -- -1 for algorithm default, 0 to 9 for fast to slow, -2 for extreme;
  • (by "algorithm default", it is meant "what that algorithm considers the recommended default compression level";)
  • kawipiko by default uses the maximum compression level for each algorithm; (i.e. 9 for gzip, 30 for zopfli, and -2 for brotli;)

--sources-cache <path>, and --compress-cache <path>

At the given path a single file is created (that is an BBolt database), that will be used to cache the following information:

  • in case of --sources-cache, the fingerprint of each file contents is stored, so that if the file was not changed, re-reading it shouldn't be attempted unless it is absolutely necessary; also if the file is small enough, its contents is stored in this database (deduplicated by its fingerprint);
  • in case of --compress-cache the compression outcome of each file contents is stored (deduplicated by its fingerprint), so that compression is done only once over multiple runs;

Each of these caches can be safely reused between multiple related archives, especially when they have many files in common. Each of these caches can be independently used (or shared).

Using these caches allows one to very quickly rebuild an archive when only a couple of files have been changed, without even touching the file-system for the unchanged ones.

--exclude-index

Disables using _index.* and index.* files (where .* is one of .html, .htm, .xhtml, .xht, .txt, .json, and .xml) to respond to a request whose URL path ends in / (corresponding to the folder wherein _index.* or index.* file is located). (This can be used to implement "slash" blog style URL's like /blog/whatever/ which maps to /blog/whatever/index.html.)

--exclude-strip

Disables using a file with the suffix .html, .htm, .xhtml, .xht, and .txt to respond to a request whose URL does not exactly match an existing file. (This can be used to implement "suffix-less" blog style URL's like /blog/whatever which maps to /blog/whatever.html.)

--exclude-cache

Disables adding an Cache-Control: public, immutable, max-age=3600 header that forces the browser (and other intermediary proxies) to cache the response for an hour (the public and max-age=3600 arguments), and furthermore not request it even on reloads (the immutable argument).

--include-etag

Enables adding an ETag response header that contains the SHA256 of the response body.

By not including the ETag header (i.e. the default), and because identical headers are stored only one, if one has many files of the same type (that in turn without ETag generates the same headers), this can lead to significant reduction in stored headers blocks, including reducing RAM usage. (At this moment it does not support HTTP conditional requests, i.e. the If-None-Match, If-Modified-Since and their counterparts; however this ETag header might be used in conjuction with HEAD requests to see if the resource has changed.)

--exclude-slash-redirects

Disables adding redirects to/from paths with/without / (For example, by default, if /file exists, then there is also a /file/ redirect towards /file; and vice-versa from /folder towards /folder/.)

--include-folder-listing

Enables the creation of an internal list of folders.

--exclude-paths-index

Disables the creation of an internal list of references that can be used in conjunction with the --index-all flag of the kawipiko-server.

--progress

Enables periodic reporting of various metrics.

--debug

Enables verbose logging. It will log various information about the archived files (including compression statistics).

Ignored files

Wildcard files

By placing a file whose name matches _wildcard.* (i.e. with the prefix _wildcard. and any other suffix), it will be used to respond to any request whose URL fails to find a "better" match.

These wildcard files respect the folder hierarchy, in that wildcard files in (direct or transitive) subfolders override the wildcard file in their parents (direct or transitive).

In addition to _wildcard.*, there is also support for _200.html (or just 200.html), plus _404.html (or just 404.html).

Redirect files

By placing a file whose name is _redirects (or _redirects.txt), it instructs the archiver to create redirect responses.

The syntax is quite simple:

# This is a comment.

# NOTE:  Absolute paths are allowed only at the top of the sources folder.
/some-path     https://example.com/     301

# NOTE:  Relative paths are always, and are reinterpreted as relative to the containing folder.
./some-path    https://example.com/     302

# NOTE:  Redirects only for a specific domain.  (The protocol is irelevant.)
#        (Allowed only at the top of the sources folder.)
://example.com/some-path         https://example.com/    303
http://example.com/some-path     https://example.com/    307
https://example.com/some-path    https://example.com/    308