Apache HTTP Server Version 2.4

Apache > HTTP Server > Documentation > Version 2.4 > Developer Documentation

# Apache 1.3 API notes

### Warning

This document has not been updated to take into account changes made in the 2.0 version of the Apache HTTP Server. Some of the information may still be relevant, but please use it with care.

These are some notes on the Apache API and the data structures you have to deal with, etc. They are not yet nearly complete, but hopefully, they will help you get your bearings. Keep in mind that the API is still subject to change as we gain experience with it. (See the TODO file for what might be coming). However, it will be easy to adapt modules to any changes that are made. (We have more modules to adapt than you do).

A few notes on general pedagogical style here. In the interest of conciseness, all structure declarations here are incomplete -- the real ones have more slots that I'm not telling you about. For the most part, these are reserved to one component of the server core or another, and should be altered by modules with caution. However, in some cases, they really are things I just haven't gotten around to yet. Welcome to the bleeding edge.

Finally, here's an outline, to give you some bare idea of what's coming up, and in what order:

- Basic concepts.
  - Handlers, Modules, and Requests
  - A brief tour of a module
- How handlers work
  - A brief tour of the `request_rec`
  - Where request_rec structures come from
  - Handling requests, declining, and returning error codes
  - Special considerations for response handlers
  - Special considerations for authentication handlers
  - Special considerations for logging handlers
- Resource allocation and resource pools
- Configuration, commands and the like
  - Per-directory configuration structures
  - Command handling
  - Side notes --- per-server configuration, virtual servers, etc.

## Basic concepts

We begin with an overview of the basic concepts behind the API, and how they are manifested in the code.

### Handlers, Modules, and Requests

Apache breaks down request handling into a series of steps, more or less the same way the Netscape server API does (although this API has a few more stages than NetSite does, as hooks for stuff I thought might be useful in the future). These are:

- URI -> Filename translation
- Auth ID checking [is the user who they say they are?]
- Auth access checking [is the user authorized here?]
- Access checking other than auth
- Determining MIME type of the object requested
- `Fixups' -- there aren't any of these yet, but the phase is intended as a hook for possible extensions like `SetEnv`, which don't really fit well elsewhere.
- Actually sending a response back to the client.
- Logging the request

These phases are handled by looking at each of a succession of modules, looking to see if each of them has a handler for the phase, and attempting invoking it if so. The handler can typically do one of three things:

- Handle the request, and indicate that it has done so by returning the magic constant `OK`.
- Decline to handle the request, by returning the magic integer constant `DECLINED`. In this case, the server behaves in all respects as if the handler simply hadn't been there.
- Signal an error, by returning one of the HTTP error codes. This terminates normal handling of the request, although an ErrorDocument may be invoked to try to mop up, and it will be logged in any case.

Most phases are terminated by the first module that handles them; however, for logging, `fixups', and non-access authentication checking, all handlers always run (barring an error). Also, the response phase is unique in that modules may declare multiple handlers for it, via a dispatch table keyed on the MIME type of the requested object. Modules may declare a response-phase handler which can handle any request, by giving it the key `*/*` (i.e., a wildcard MIME type specification). However, wildcard handlers are only invoked if the server has already tried and failed to find a more specific response handler for the MIME type of the requested object (either none existed, or they all declined).

The handlers themselves are functions of one argument (a `request_rec` structure. vide infra), which returns an integer, as above.

### A brief tour of a module

At this point, we need to explain the structure of a module. Our candidate will be one of the messier ones, the CGI module -- this handles both CGI scripts and the `ScriptAlias` config file command. It's actually a great deal more complicated than most modules, but if we're going to have only one example, it might as well be the one with its fingers in every place.

Let's begin with handlers. In order to handle the CGI scripts, the module declares a response handler for them. Because of `ScriptAlias`, it also has handlers for the name translation phase (to recognize `ScriptAlias`ed URIs), the type-checking phase (any `ScriptAlias`ed request is typed as a CGI script).

The module needs to maintain some per (virtual) server information, namely, the `ScriptAlias`es in effect; the module structure therefore contains pointers to a functions which builds these structures, and to another which combines two of them (in case the main server and a virtual server both have `ScriptAlias`es declared).

Finally, this module contains code to handle the `ScriptAlias` command itself. This particular module only declares one command, but there could be more, so modules have command tables which declare their commands, and describe where they are permitted, and how they are to be invoked.

A final note on the declared types of the arguments of some of these commands: a `pool` is a pointer to a resource pool structure; these are used by the server to keep track of the memory which has been allocated, files opened, etc., either to service a particular request, or to handle the process of configuring itself. That way, when the request is over (or, for the configuration pool, when the server is restarting), the memory can be freed, and the files closed, en masse, without anyone having to write explicit code to track them all down and dispose of them. Also, a `cmd_parms` structure contains various information about the config file being read, and other status information, which is sometimes of use to the function which processes a config-file command (such as `ScriptAlias`). With no further ado, the module itself:

`/* Declarations of handlers. */
int translate_scriptalias (request_rec *);
int type_scriptalias (request_rec *);
int cgi_handler (request_rec *);
/* Subsidiary dispatch table for response-phase
* handlers, by MIME type */
handler_rec cgi_handlers[] = {
{ "application/x-httpd-cgi", cgi_handler },
{ NULL }
};
/* Declarations of routines to manipulate the
* module's configuration info. Note that these are
* returned, and passed in, as void *'s; the server
* core keeps track of them, but it doesn't, and can't,
* know their internal structure.
*/
void *make_cgi_server_config (pool *);
void *merge_cgi_server_config (pool *, void *, void *);
/* Declarations of routines to handle config-file commands */
extern char *script_alias(cmd_parms *, void *per_dir_config, char *fake, char *real);
command_rec cgi_cmds[] = {
{ "ScriptAlias", script_alias, NULL, RSRC_CONF, TAKE2,
"a fakename and a realname"},
{ NULL }
};
module cgi_module = {`

      STANDARD_MODULE_STUFF,
      NULL,                     /* initializer */
      NULL,                     /* dir config creator */
      NULL,                     /* dir merger */
      make_cgi_server_config,   /* server config */
      merge_cgi_server_config,  /* merge server config */
      cgi_cmds,                 /* command table */
      cgi_handlers,             /* handlers */
      translate_scriptalias,    /* filename translation */
      NULL,                     /* check_user_id */
      NULL,                     /* check auth */
      NULL,                     /* check access */
      type_scriptalias,         /* type_checker */
      NULL,                     /* fixups */
      NULL,                     /* logger */
      NULL                      /* header parser */
    };

## How handlers work

The sole argument to handlers is a `request_rec` structure. This structure describes a particular request which has been made to the server, on behalf of a client. In most cases, each connection to the client generates only one `request_rec` structure.

### A brief tour of the request_rec

The `request_rec` contains pointers to a resource pool which will be cleared when the server is finished handling the request; to structures containing per-server and per-connection information, and most importantly, information on the request itself.

The most important such information is a small set of character strings describing attributes of the object being requested, including its URI, filename, content-type and content-encoding (these being filled in by the translation and type-check handlers which handle the request, respectively).

Other commonly used data items are tables giving the MIME headers on the client's original request, MIME headers to be sent back with the response (which modules can add to at will), and environment variables for any subprocesses which are spawned off in the course of servicing the request. These tables are manipulated using the `ap_table_get` and `ap_table_set` routines.

Note that the `Content-type` header value cannot be set by module content-handlers using the `ap_table_*()` routines. Rather, it is set by pointing the `content_type` field in the `request_rec` structure to an appropriate string. e.g.,

`r->content_type = "text/html";`

Finally, there are pointers to two data structures which, in turn, point to per-module configuration structures. Specifically, these hold pointers to the data structures which the module has built to describe the way it has been configured to operate in a given directory (via `.htaccess` files or `<Directory>` sections), for private data it has built in the course of servicing the request (so modules' handlers for one phase can pass `notes' to their handlers for other phases). There is another such configuration vector in the `server_rec` data structure pointed to by the `request_rec`, which contains per (virtual) server configuration data.

Here is an abridged declaration, giving the fields most commonly used:

`struct request_rec {
pool *pool;
conn_rec *connection;
server_rec *server;
/* What object is being requested */
char *uri;
char *filename;
char *path_info;`

    char *args;           /* QUERY_ARGS, if any */
    struct stat finfo;    /* Set by server core;
                           * st_mode set to zero if no such file */

`char *content_type;
char *content_encoding;
/* MIME header environments, in and out. Also,
* an array containing environment variables to
* be passed to subprocesses, so people can write
* modules to add to that environment.
*
* The difference between headers_out and
* err_headers_out is that the latter are printed
* even on error, and persist across internal
* redirects (so the headers printed for
* `ErrorDocument` handlers will have them).
*/
table *headers_in;
table *headers_out;
table *err_headers_out;
table *subprocess_env;
/* Info about the request itself... */
`

    int header_only;     /* HEAD request, as opposed to GET */
    char *protocol;      /* Protocol, as given to us, or HTTP/0.9 */
    char *method;        /* GET, HEAD, POST, etc. */
    int method_number;   /* M_GET, M_POST, etc. */

`/* Info for logging */
char *the_request;
int bytes_sent;
/* A flag which modules can set, to indicate that
* the data being returned is volatile, and clients
* should be told not to cache it.
*/
int no_cache;
/* Various other config info which may change
* with .htaccess files
* These are config vectors, with one void*
* pointer for each module (the thing pointed
* to being the module's business).
*/
`

    void *per_dir_config;   /* Options set in config files, etc. */
    void *request_config;   /* Notes on *this* request */

`};`

### Where request_rec structures come from

Most `request_rec` structures are built by reading an HTTP request from a client, and filling in the fields. However, there are a few exceptions:

- If the request is to an imagemap, a type map (i.e., a `*.var` file), or a CGI script which returned a local `Location:', then the resource which the user requested is going to be ultimately located by some URI other than what the client originally supplied. In this case, the server does an internal redirect, constructing a new `request_rec` for the new URI, and processing it almost exactly as if the client had requested the new URI directly.
- If some handler signaled an error, and an `ErrorDocument` is in scope, the same internal redirect machinery comes into play.

- Finally, a handler occasionally needs to investigate `what would happen if' some other request were run. For instance, the directory indexing module needs to know what MIME type would be assigned to a request for each directory entry, in order to figure out what icon to use.

  Such handlers can construct a sub-request, using the functions `ap_sub_req_lookup_file`, `ap_sub_req_lookup_uri`, and `ap_sub_req_method_uri`; these construct a new `request_rec` structure and processes it as you would expect, up to but not including the point of actually sending a response. (These functions skip over the access checks if the sub-request is for a file in the same directory as the original request).

  (Server-side includes work by building sub-requests and then actually invoking the response handler for them, via the function `ap_run_sub_req`).

### Handling requests, declining, and returning error codes

As discussed above, each handler, when invoked to handle a particular `request_rec`, has to return an `int` to indicate what happened. That can either be

- `OK` -- the request was handled successfully. This may or may not terminate the phase.
- `DECLINED` -- no erroneous condition exists, but the module declines to handle the phase; the server tries to find another.
- an HTTP error code, which aborts handling of the request.

Note that if the error code returned is `REDIRECT`, then the module should put a `Location` in the request's `headers_out`, to indicate where the client should be redirected to.

### Special considerations for response handlers

Handlers for most phases do their work by simply setting a few fields in the `request_rec` structure (or, in the case of access checkers, simply by returning the correct error code). However, response handlers have to actually send a request back to the client.

They should begin by sending an HTTP response header, using the function `ap_send_http_header`. (You don't have to do anything special to skip sending the header for HTTP/0.9 requests; the function figures out on its own that it shouldn't do anything). If the request is marked `header_only`, that's all they should do; they should return after that, without attempting any further output.

Otherwise, they should produce a request body which responds to the client as appropriate. The primitives for this are `ap_rputc` and `ap_rprintf`, for internally generated output, and `ap_send_fd`, to copy the contents of some `FILE *` straight to the client.

At this point, you should more or less understand the following piece of code, which is the handler which handles `GET` requests which have no more specific handler; it also shows how conditional `GET`s can be handled, if it's desirable to do so in a particular response handler -- `ap_set_last_modified` checks against the `If-modified-since` value supplied by the client, if any, and returns an appropriate code (which will, if nonzero, be USE_LOCAL_COPY). No similar considerations apply for `ap_set_content_length`, but it returns an error code for symmetry.

`int default_handler (request_rec *r)
{
int errstatus;
FILE *f;
if (r->method_number != M_GET) return DECLINED;
if (r->finfo.st_mode == 0) return NOT_FOUND;
if ((errstatus = ap_set_content_length (r, r->finfo.st_size))
|| (errstatus = ap_set_last_modified (r, r->finfo.st_mtime)))
return errstatus;
f = fopen (r->filename, "r");
if (f == NULL) {
log_reason("file permissions deny server access", r->filename, r);
return FORBIDDEN;
}
register_timeout ("send", r);
ap_send_http_header (r);
if (!r->header_only) send_fd (f, r);
ap_pfclose (r->pool, f);
return OK;
}`

Finally, if all of this is too much of a challenge, there are a few ways out of it. First off, as shown above, a response handler which has not yet produced any output can simply return an error code, in which case the server will automatically produce an error response. Secondly, it can punt to some other handler by invoking `ap_internal_redirect`, which is how the internal redirection machinery discussed above is invoked. A response handler which has internally redirected should always return `OK`.

(Invoking `ap_internal_redirect` from handlers which are not response handlers will lead to serious confusion).

### Special considerations for authentication handlers

Stuff that should be discussed here in detail:

- Authentication-phase handlers not invoked unless auth is configured for the directory.
- Common auth configuration stored in the core per-dir configuration; it has accessors `ap_auth_type`, `ap_auth_name`, and `ap_requires`.
- Common routines, to handle the protocol end of things, at least for HTTP basic authentication (`ap_get_basic_auth_pw`, which sets the `connection->user` structure field automatically, and `ap_note_basic_auth_failure`, which arranges for the proper `WWW-Authenticate:` header to be sent back).

### Special considerations for logging handlers

When a request has internally redirected, there is the question of what to log. Apache handles this by bundling the entire chain of redirects into a list of `request_rec` structures which are threaded through the `r->prev` and `r->next` pointers. The `request_rec` which is passed to the logging handlers in such cases is the one which was originally built for the initial request from the client; note that the `bytes_sent` field will only be correct in the last request in the chain (the one for which a response was actually sent).

## Resource allocation and resource pools

One of the problems of writing and designing a server-pool server is that of preventing leakage, that is, allocating resources (memory, open files, etc.), without subsequently releasing them. The resource pool machinery is designed to make it easy to prevent this from happening, by allowing resource to be allocated in such a way that they are automatically released when the server is done with them.

The way this works is as follows: the memory which is allocated, file opened, etc., to deal with a particular request are tied to a resource pool which is allocated for the request. The pool is a data structure which itself tracks the resources in question.

When the request has been processed, the pool is cleared. At that point, all the memory associated with it is released for reuse, all files associated with it are closed, and any other clean-up functions which are associated with the pool are run. When this is over, we can be confident that all the resource tied to the pool have been released, and that none of them have leaked.

Server restarts, and allocation of memory and resources for per-server configuration, are handled in a similar way. There is a configuration pool, which keeps track of resources which were allocated while reading the server configuration files, and handling the commands therein (for instance, the memory that was allocated for per-server module configuration, log files and other files that were opened, and so forth). When the server restarts, and has to reread the configuration files, the configuration pool is cleared, and so the memory and file descriptors which were taken up by reading them the last time are made available for reuse.

It should be noted that use of the pool machinery isn't generally obligatory, except for situations like logging handlers, where you really need to register cleanups to make sure that the log file gets closed when the server restarts (this is most easily done by using the function `ap_pfopen`, which also arranges for the underlying file descriptor to be closed before any child processes, such as for CGI scripts, are `exec`ed), or in case you are using the timeout machinery (which isn't yet even documented here). However, there are two benefits to using it: resources allocated to a pool never leak (even if you allocate a scratch string, and just forget about it); also, for memory allocation, `ap_palloc` is generally faster than `malloc`.

We begin here by describing how memory is allocated to pools, and then discuss how other resources are tracked by the resource pool machinery.

### Allocation of memory in pools

Memory is allocated to pools by calling the function `ap_palloc`, which takes two arguments, one being a pointer to a resource pool structure, and the other being the amount of memory to allocate (in `char`s). Within handlers for handling requests, the most common way of getting a resource pool structure is by looking at the `pool` slot of the relevant `request_rec`; hence the repeated appearance of the following idiom in module code:

`int my_handler(request_rec *r)
{
struct my_structure *foo;
...
foo = (foo *)ap_palloc (r->pool, sizeof(my_structure));
}`

Note that there is no `ap_pfree` -- `ap_palloc`ed memory is freed only when the associated resource pool is cleared. This means that `ap_palloc` does not have to do as much accounting as `malloc()`; all it does in the typical case is to round up the size, bump a pointer, and do a range check.

(It also raises the possibility that heavy use of `ap_palloc` could cause a server process to grow excessively large. There are two ways to deal with this, which are dealt with below; briefly, you can use `malloc`, and try to be sure that all of the memory gets explicitly `free`d, or you can allocate a sub-pool of the main pool, allocate your memory in the sub-pool, and clear it out periodically. The latter technique is discussed in the section on sub-pools below, and is used in the directory-indexing code, in order to avoid excessive storage allocation when listing directories with thousands of files).

### Allocating initialized memory

There are functions which allocate initialized memory, and are frequently useful. The function `ap_pcalloc` has the same interface as `ap_palloc`, but clears out the memory it allocates before it returns it. The function `ap_pstrdup` takes a resource pool and a `char *` as arguments, and allocates memory for a copy of the string the pointer points to, returning a pointer to the copy. Finally `ap_pstrcat` is a varargs-style function, which takes a pointer to a resource pool, and at least two `char *` arguments, the last of which must be `NULL`. It allocates enough memory to fit copies of each of the strings, as a unit; for instance:

`ap_pstrcat (r->pool, "foo", "/", "bar", NULL);`

returns a pointer to 8 bytes worth of memory, initialized to `"foo/bar"`.

### Commonly-used pools in the Apache Web server

A pool is really defined by its lifetime more than anything else. There are some static pools in http_main which are passed to various non-http_main functions as arguments at opportune times. Here they are:

`permanent_pool`
  never passed to anything else, this is the ancestor of all pools
`pconf`
  - subpool of permanent_pool
  - created at the beginning of a config "cycle"; exists until the server is terminated or restarts; passed to all config-time routines, either via cmd->pool, or as the "pool *p" argument on those which don't take pools
  - passed to the module init() functions
`ptemp`
  - sorry I lie, this pool isn't called this currently in 1.3, I renamed it this in my pthreads development. I'm referring to the use of ptrans in the parent... contrast this with the later definition of ptrans in the child.
  - subpool of permanent_pool
  - created at the beginning of a config "cycle"; exists until the end of config parsing; passed to config-time routines via cmd->temp_pool. Somewhat of a "bastard child" because it isn't available everywhere. Used for temporary scratch space which may be needed by some config routines but which is deleted at the end of config.
`pchild`
  - subpool of permanent_pool
  - created when a child is spawned (or a thread is created); lives until that child (thread) is destroyed
  - passed to the module child_init functions
  - destruction happens right after the child_exit functions are called... (which may explain why I think child_exit is redundant and unneeded)
`ptrans`
  - should be a subpool of pchild, but currently is a subpool of permanent_pool, see above
  - cleared by the child before going into the accept() loop to receive a connection
  - used as connection->pool
`r->pool`
  - for the main request this is a subpool of connection->pool; for subrequests it is a subpool of the parent request's pool.
  - exists until the end of the request (i.e., ap_destroy_sub_req, or in child_main after process_request has finished)
  - note that r itself is allocated from r->pool; i.e., r->pool is first created and then r is the first thing palloc()d from it

For almost everything folks do, `r->pool` is the pool to use. But you can see how other lifetimes, such as pchild, are useful to some modules... such as modules that need to open a database connection once per child, and wish to clean it up when the child dies.

You can also see how some bugs have manifested themself, such as setting `connection->user` to a value from `r->pool` -- in this case connection exists for the lifetime of `ptrans`, which is longer than `r->pool` (especially if `r->pool` is a subrequest!). So the correct thing to do is to allocate from `connection->pool`.

And there was another interesting bug in `mod_include` / `mod_cgi`. You'll see in those that they do this test to decide if they should use `r->pool` or `r->main->pool`. In this case the resource that they are registering for cleanup is a child process. If it were registered in `r->pool`, then the code would `wait()` for the child when the subrequest finishes. With `mod_include` this could be any old `#include`, and the delay can be up to 3 seconds... and happened quite frequently. Instead the subprocess is registered in `r->main->pool` which causes it to be cleaned up when the entire request is done -- i.e., after the output has been sent to the client and logging has happened.

### Tracking open files, etc.

As indicated above, resource pools are also used to track other sorts of resources besides memory. The most common are open files. The routine which is typically used for this is `ap_pfopen`, which takes a resource pool and two strings as arguments; the strings are the same as the typical arguments to `fopen`, e.g.,

`...
FILE *f = ap_pfopen (r->pool, r->filename, "r");
if (f == NULL) { ... } else { ... }
`

There is also a `ap_popenf` routine, which parallels the lower-level `open` system call. Both of these routines arrange for the file to be closed when the resource pool in question is cleared.

Unlike the case for memory, there are functions to close files allocated with `ap_pfopen`, and `ap_popenf`, namely `ap_pfclose` and `ap_pclosef`. (This is because, on many systems, the number of files which a single process can have open is quite limited). It is important to use these functions to close files allocated with `ap_pfopen` and `ap_popenf`, since to do otherwise could cause fatal errors on systems such as Linux, which react badly if the same `FILE*` is closed more than once.

(Using the `close` functions is not mandatory, since the file will eventually be closed regardless, but you should consider it in cases where your module is opening, or could open, a lot of files).

### Other sorts of resources -- cleanup functions

More text goes here. Describe the cleanup primitives in terms of which the file stuff is implemented; also, `spawn_process`.

Pool cleanups live until `clear_pool()` is called: `clear_pool(a)` recursively calls `destroy_pool()` on all subpools of `a`; then calls all the cleanups for `a`; then releases all the memory for `a`. `destroy_pool(a)` calls `clear_pool(a)` and then releases the pool structure itself. i.e., `clear_pool(a)` doesn't delete `a`, it just frees up all the resources and you can start using it again immediately.

### Fine control -- creating and dealing with sub-pools, with a note on sub-requests

On rare occasions, too-free use of `ap_palloc()` and the associated primitives may result in undesirably profligate resource allocation. You can deal with such a case by creating a sub-pool, allocating within the sub-pool rather than the main pool, and clearing or destroying the sub-pool, which releases the resources which were associated with it. (This really is a rare situation; the only case in which it comes up in the standard module set is in case of listing directories, and then only with very large directories. Unnecessary use of the primitives discussed here can hair up your code quite a bit, with very little gain).

The primitive for creating a sub-pool is `ap_make_sub_pool`, which takes another pool (the parent pool) as an argument. When the main pool is cleared, the sub-pool will be destroyed. The sub-pool may also be cleared or destroyed at any time, by calling the functions `ap_clear_pool` and `ap_destroy_pool`, respectively. (The difference is that `ap_clear_pool` frees resources associated with the pool, while `ap_destroy_pool` also deallocates the pool itself. In the former case, you can allocate new resources within the pool, and clear it again, and so forth; in the latter case, it is simply gone).

One final note -- sub-requests have their own resource pools, which are sub-pools of the resource pool for the main request. The polite way to reclaim the resources associated with a sub request which you have allocated (using the `ap_sub_req_...` functions) is `ap_destroy_sub_req`, which frees the resource pool. Before calling this function, be sure to copy anything that you care about which might be allocated in the sub-request's resource pool into someplace a little less volatile (for instance, the filename in its `request_rec` structure).

(Again, under most circumstances, you shouldn't feel obliged to call this function; only 2K of memory or so are allocated for a typical sub request, and it will be freed anyway when the main request pool is cleared. It is only when you are allocating many, many sub-requests for a single main request that you should seriously consider the `ap_destroy_...` functions).

## Configuration, commands and the like

One of the design goals for this server was to maintain external compatibility with the NCSA 1.3 server --- that is, to read the same configuration files, to process all the directives therein correctly, and in general to be a drop-in replacement for NCSA. On the other hand, another design goal was to move as much of the server's functionality into modules which have as little as possible to do with the monolithic server core. The only way to reconcile these goals is to move the handling of most commands from the central server into the modules.

However, just giving the modules command tables is not enough to divorce them completely from the server core. The server has to remember the commands in order to act on them later. That involves maintaining data which is private to the modules, and which can be either per-server, or per-directory. Most things are per-directory, including in particular access control and authorization information, but also information on how to determine file types from suffixes, which can be modified by `AddType` and `ForceType` directives, and so forth. In general, the governing philosophy is that anything which can be made configurable by directory should be; per-server information is generally used in the standard set of modules for information like `Alias`es and `Redirect`s which come into play before the request is tied to a particular place in the underlying file system.

Another requirement for emulating the NCSA server is being able to handle the per-directory configuration files, generally called `.htaccess` files, though even in the NCSA server they can contain directives which have nothing at all to do with access control. Accordingly, after URI -> filename translation, but before performing any other phase, the server walks down the directory hierarchy of the underlying filesystem, following the translated pathname, to read any `.htaccess` files which might be present. The information which is read in then has to be merged with the applicable information from the server's own config files (either from the `<Directory>` sections in `access.conf`, or from defaults in `srm.conf`, which actually behaves for most purposes almost exactly like `<Directory />`).

Finally, after having served a request which involved reading `.htaccess` files, we need to discard the storage allocated for handling them. That is solved the same way it is solved wherever else similar problems come up, by tying those structures to the per-transaction resource pool.

### Per-directory configuration structures

Let's look out how all of this plays out in `mod_mime.c`, which defines the file typing handler which emulates the NCSA server's behavior of determining file types from suffixes. What we'll be looking at, here, is the code which implements the `AddType` and `AddEncoding` commands. These commands can appear in `.htaccess` files, so they must be handled in the module's private per-directory data, which in fact, consists of two separate tables for MIME types and encoding information, and is declared as follows:

    typedef struct {
        table *forced_types;      /* Additional AddTyped stuff */
        table *encoding_types;    /* Added with AddEncoding... */
    } mime_dir_config;

When the server is reading a configuration file, or `<Directory>` section, which includes one of the MIME module's commands, it needs to create a `mime_dir_config` structure, so those commands have something to act on. It does this by invoking the function it finds in the module's `create per-dir config slot', with two arguments: the name of the directory to which this configuration information applies (or `NULL` for `srm.conf`), and a pointer to a resource pool in which the allocation should happen.

(If we are reading a `.htaccess` file, that resource pool is the per-request resource pool for the request; otherwise it is a resource pool which is used for configuration data, and cleared on restarts. Either way, it is important for the structure being created to vanish when the pool is cleared, by registering a cleanup on the pool if necessary).

For the MIME module, the per-dir config creation function just `ap_palloc`s the structure above, and a creates a couple of tables to fill it. That looks like this:

`void *create_mime_dir_config (pool *p, char *dummy)
{
mime_dir_config *new =
(mime_dir_config *) ap_palloc (p, sizeof(mime_dir_config));
new->forced_types = ap_make_table (p, 4);
new->encoding_types = ap_make_table (p, 4);
return new;
}`

Now, suppose we've just read in a `.htaccess` file. We already have the per-directory configuration structure for the next directory up in the hierarchy. If the `.htaccess` file we just read in didn't have any `AddType` or `AddEncoding` commands, its per-directory config structure for the MIME module is still valid, and we can just use it. Otherwise, we need to merge the two structures somehow.

To do that, the server invokes the module's per-directory config merge function, if one is present. That function takes three arguments: the two structures being merged, and a resource pool in which to allocate the result. For the MIME module, all that needs to be done is overlay the tables from the new per-directory config structure with those from the parent:

`void *merge_mime_dir_configs (pool *p, void *parent_dirv, void *subdirv)
{
mime_dir_config *parent_dir = (mime_dir_config *)parent_dirv;
mime_dir_config *subdir = (mime_dir_config *)subdirv;
mime_dir_config *new =
(mime_dir_config *)ap_palloc (p, sizeof(mime_dir_config));
new->forced_types = ap_overlay_tables (p, subdir->forced_types,
parent_dir->forced_types);
new->encoding_types = ap_overlay_tables (p, subdir->encoding_types,
parent_dir->encoding_types);
return new;
}`

As a note -- if there is no per-directory merge function present, the server will just use the subdirectory's configuration info, and ignore the parent's. For some modules, that works just fine (e.g., for the includes module, whose per-directory configuration information consists solely of the state of the `XBITHACK`), and for those modules, you can just not declare one, and leave the corresponding structure slot in the module itself `NULL`.

### Command handling

Now that we have these structures, we need to be able to figure out how to fill them. That involves processing the actual `AddType` and `AddEncoding` commands. To find commands, the server looks in the module's command table. That table contains information on how many arguments the commands take, and in what formats, where it is permitted, and so forth. That information is sufficient to allow the server to invoke most command-handling functions with pre-parsed arguments. Without further ado, let's look at the `AddType` command handler, which looks like this (the `AddEncoding` command looks basically the same, and won't be shown here):

`char *add_type(cmd_parms *cmd, mime_dir_config *m, char *ct, char *ext)
{
if (*ext == '.') ++ext;
ap_table_set (m->forced_types, ext, ct);
return NULL;
}`

This command handler is unusually simple. As you can see, it takes four arguments, two of which are pre-parsed arguments, the third being the per-directory configuration structure for the module in question, and the fourth being a pointer to a `cmd_parms` structure. That structure contains a bunch of arguments which are frequently of use to some, but not all, commands, including a resource pool (from which memory can be allocated, and to which cleanups should be tied), and the (virtual) server being configured, from which the module's per-server configuration data can be obtained if required.

Another way in which this particular command handler is unusually simple is that there are no error conditions which it can encounter. If there were, it could return an error message instead of `NULL`; this causes an error to be printed out on the server's `stderr`, followed by a quick exit, if it is in the main config files; for a `.htaccess` file, the syntax error is logged in the server error log (along with an indication of where it came from), and the request is bounced with a server error response (HTTP error status, code 500).

The MIME module's command table has entries for these commands, which look like this:

`command_rec mime_cmds[] = {
{ "AddType", add_type, NULL, OR_FILEINFO, TAKE2,
"a mime type followed by a file extension" },
{ "AddEncoding", add_encoding, NULL, OR_FILEINFO, TAKE2,
"an encoding (e.g., gzip), followed by a file extension" },
{ NULL }
};`

The entries in these tables are:

- The name of the command
- The function which handles it
- a `(void *)` pointer, which is passed in the `cmd_parms` structure to the command handler --- this is useful in case many similar commands are handled by the same function.
- A bit mask indicating where the command may appear. There are mask bits corresponding to each `AllowOverride` option, and an additional mask bit, `RSRC_CONF`, indicating that the command may appear in the server's own config files, but not in any `.htaccess` file.
- A flag indicating how many arguments the command handler wants pre-parsed, and how they should be passed in. `TAKE2` indicates two pre-parsed arguments. Other options are `TAKE1`, which indicates one pre-parsed argument, `FLAG`, which indicates that the argument should be `On` or `Off`, and is passed in as a boolean flag, `RAW_ARGS`, which causes the server to give the command the raw, unparsed arguments (everything but the command name itself). There is also `ITERATE`, which means that the handler looks the same as `TAKE1`, but that if multiple arguments are present, it should be called multiple times, and finally `ITERATE2`, which indicates that the command handler looks like a `TAKE2`, but if more arguments are present, then it should be called multiple times, holding the first argument constant.
- Finally, we have a string which describes the arguments that should be present. If the arguments in the actual config file are not as required, this string will be used to help give a more specific error message. (You can safely leave this `NULL`).

Finally, having set this all up, we have to use it. This is ultimately done in the module's handlers, specifically for its file-typing handler, which looks more or less like this; note that the per-directory configuration structure is extracted from the `request_rec`'s per-directory configuration vector by using the `ap_get_module_config` function.

`int find_ct(request_rec *r)
{
int i;
char *fn = ap_pstrdup (r->pool, r->filename);
mime_dir_config *conf = (mime_dir_config *)
ap_get_module_config(r->per_dir_config, &mime_module);
char *type;
if (S_ISDIR(r->finfo.st_mode)) {
r->content_type = DIR_MAGIC_TYPE;
return OK;
}
if((i=ap_rind(fn,'.')) < 0) return DECLINED;
++i;
if ((type = ap_table_get (conf->encoding_types, &fn[i])))
{
r->content_encoding = type;
/* go back to previous extension to try to use it as a type */
fn[i-1] = '\0';
if((i=ap_rind(fn,'.')) < 0) return OK;
++i;
}
if ((type = ap_table_get (conf->forced_types, &fn[i])))
{
r->content_type = type;
}
return OK; }`

### Side notes -- per-server configuration, virtual servers, etc.

The basic ideas behind per-server module configuration are basically the same as those for per-directory configuration; there is a creation function and a merge function, the latter being invoked where a virtual server has partially overridden the base server configuration, and a combined structure must be computed. (As with per-directory configuration, the default if no merge function is specified, and a module is configured in some virtual server, is that the base configuration is simply ignored).

The only substantial difference is that when a command needs to configure the per-server private module data, it needs to go to the `cmd_parms` data to get at it. Here's an example, from the alias module, which also indicates how a syntax error can be returned (note that the per-directory configuration argument to the command handler is declared as a dummy, since the module doesn't actually have per-directory config data):

`char *add_redirect(cmd_parms *cmd, void *dummy, char *f, char *url)
{
server_rec *s = cmd->server;
alias_server_conf *conf = (alias_server_conf *)
ap_get_module_config(s->module_config,&alias_module);
alias_entry *new = ap_push_array (conf->redirects);
if (!ap_is_url (url)) return "Redirect to non-URL";
new->fake = f; new->real = url;
return NULL;
}`