Page last modified 14:38, 12 Feb 2010 by ZANDER

Nios Community Wiki > Uploading files using boa and cgihtml

Uploading files using boa and cgihtml

For applications that need a user configuration file in order to execute, this file update may involve a complex procedure (ftp, telnet, Unix commands, ...) that is not accessible to a "simple user", ... or a customer.
Those lines decribe what I did to answer the question of target files update, using boa and the library "cgihtml".

Library cgihtml

The version of cgihtml that is available in the uClinux-dist at this time is outdated. I have submitted the patch to upgrade it: please, check if your distribution resume writers is up to date. If not, I recommend you apply the patch below.
To summarize, if the version number that can be found in user/cgihtml/CHANGES is greater or equal to 1.69, all is ok.
Otherwise, do the following:

git apply --verbose 0001-user-cgithml-update-1.66-1.69.patch

Then, the library can be compiled with:

make user/cgihtml_only

This will produce the file user/cgihtml/cgihtml.a to be linked with your application.

Example of HTML page

This simple HTML page example shows how a single FORM permits to upload a file, and then to call the CGI-Program which will proceed the file.

<HTML>
<HEAD><TITLE>A test web page</TITLE></HEAD>
<BODY>
<H1>Test Page</H1>
<P>If you are seeing this custom writing page, then your web server is working, and now
you need to create some nice pages to replace this one :-).<P>

<H1>SW Upload</H1>
<FORM ACTION="/cgi-bin/mycgipgm" METHOD=POST ENCTYPE="multipart/form-data">
  <INPUT TYPE=file name="swimage" /> <BR />
  <INPUT TYPE=submit VALUE="Submit"> <INPUT TYPE=reset VALUE="Reset">
</FORM>

</BODY>
</HTML>

CGI-Program example

This CGI-Program example is very minimal, because it just displays the upload result.
Note that after its execution, the uploaded file remains in UPLOADDIR (see the "romfs update" section below). It is up to the program to remove the file after processing (stored in flash for e.g.).

#include <stdio.h>
#include <cgi-lib.h>
#include <html-lib.h>

int main()
{
  llist entries;
  char *value;

  html_header();
  if (read_cgi_input(&entries) <= 0 ||
      (value = cgi_val(entries, "swimage")) == 0)
    h1("<BR />Error: failed to read \"swimage\" CGI input...<BR />\n");
  else
  {
    printf("<BR><H1>File \"%s\" successfully uploaded!</H1>\n", value);
    if (strcmp(value, "zImage") == 0)
    {
      h1("OK, that is a zImage: need to store it in flash...<BR />\n");
    }
  }
  list_clear(&entries);

  h2("Back to the <A HREF=/>main menu</A>...\n");
  html_end();

  return 0;
}

Application's Makefile example

Here is the application's Makefile I'm using.
I think that explanations on how to add an application to the distribution can be found somewhere in the Wikis, but this works as a standalone project...

UCLINUX_DIST=/local/nios2-linux/uClinux-dist-ndk
LIB_CGIHTML=$(UCLINUX_DIST)/user/cgihtml

CC=nios2-linux-uclibc-gcc
CFLAGS= -I$(SRC_DIR) -I. -I$(LIB_CGIHTML) \
        -O2 -g  -Dlinux -D__linux__ -Dunix -D__uClinux__ -DEMBED \
        -fno-builtin -D__adjtimex=adjtimex
LDFLAGS= -Wl,-d -Wl,-elf2flt $(LIB_CGIHTML)/cgihtml.a

mycgipgm: mycgipgm.o
        $(CC) -o $@ $< $(LDFLAGS)

install:        mycgipgm
        cp mycgipgm $(UCLINUX_DIST)/vendors/Altera/nios2

clean:
        rm -f mycgipgm mycgipgm.o

To include all your changes into your zImage, you must follow these steps:

copy your HTML file(s) and your CGI-Program(s) into the dir vendors/Altera/nios2, and add the related lines in vendors/Altera/nios2/Makefile.
```
$(ROMFSINST) /home/httpd/cgi-bin/mycgipgm     # for your CGI-Programs
$(ROMFSINST) /home/httpd/index.html           # for your HTML pages
$(ROMFSINST) /home/httpd/boa.conf             # for boa configuration
```
Warning: if "generic cgi" is selected in make menuconfig / Customize Appl/Lib Settings / Miscellanous Configuration, the files index.html and boa.conf will be overrided by the files in vendors/Generic/httpd.
You can obviously modify custom writing vendors/Generic/httpd/index.html, but, to get all my customizations located in the single vendors/Altera/nios2 directory, I have prefered to unselect this item.
because UPLOADDIR is defined to "/usr/tmp" in user/cgihtml/Makefile, the files you will upload will be stored there. You have thus to add usr/tmp to the ROMFS_DIR list, and the line

chmod 777 $(ROMFSINST)/usr/tmp
to the file vendors/Altera/nios2/Makefile.

OK, time for you to play with HTML and CGI-Programs: have fun!

PS: thanks to Endre who gave me the initial pointers...

romfs update

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Posted 02:49, 16 Feb 2010

applemac says:

About the cgi part, the CGI-Program example is very minimal, because it just displays the upload result. Mike from presentation skills website.

Posted 14:55, 25 Feb 2010

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