Pi3Web Feature Suite

Pi3Web
This feature suite and tutorial requires that the server is running the featured configuration (Conf/Features.pi3).

If the server was setup and configured using the Pi3Web enhanced interface (EnhPi3.exe) on Windows 95/NT most but not all these tutorial features will be available.


Automatic Directory Indexing

Pi3 has a flexible directory indexing handler called 'DirectoryIndex'. This handler allows many different types of indexes to be created. If you are running the Windows 95/NT enhanced interface, you can choose between different layouts for
directory listings. The following examples are only available, if you are running Pi3Web from the featured configuration (Features.pi3):
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Pi3Expressions

Pi3Expressions are textual expressions that are expanded and evaluated by a built in expression engine. They are used in many places for conditional behaviour or generating dynamic text.

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ISAPI Extensions

Pi3Web supports ISAPI Extensions via the ISAPI20 handler. This is supported on Windows platforms only.
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Support for Virtual Hosting

Virtual hosting, otherwise known as multi-homing is the ability of a single world wide web server to appear as a different site based on a certain factors. Pi3Web supports all forms of virtual hosting: The simplist method of virtual hosting to demostrate is URL path based virtual hosting. Click on the link below to go to 'Server2', an alternate virtual host for this site:
Host2
Note this example is not available if you used the Pi3Web enhanced interface (EnhPi3.exe) for setup and configuration.

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Clickable Image Maps

Click in the imagemap below.

IMAPTEST

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Configurable Error Messages

Messages send to web browser in the event of HTTP errors can be configured. Server side includes or CGI can be used to generate more informative error messages.

Click this here to view the error message generated in the event of a 404 (Not Found) error. SSI errors are disabled per default for security reasons and need to be enabled via the administration if you are using the Pi3Web enhanced interface (EnhPi3.exe).

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Server Side Includes (SSI)

Server Side Includes or server parsed HTML is a mechanism by which the HTTP server parses HTML content prior to transmission to the client browser and performs substitution on patterns within HTML comments.

Click this link to view an SSI test page.

For further information refer to the SSI handler SendSSI.

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Fast CGI

Note that this feature needs a fast cgi application server running. If you start a fast cgi application server using something like

cgi-fcgi -start -connect :3333 echo.exe

you will be able to issue a fast CGI request against it with /cgi-fast/FCGI3333.txt/path_info?qs1&qs2.

Test other fast CGI applications:

URL Connects to Fast CGI application at
/cgi-fast/FCGI3333.txt/path_info?qs1&qs2. localhost:3333
/cgi-fast/FCGI3334.txt/path_info?qs1&qs2. localhost:3334
/cgi-fast/FCGI3335.txt/path_info?qs1&qs2. localhost:3335
View the FastCGI handler documentation for additional information about configuration of fast cgi applications. Return to index.

User Directory Mapping

This allows user directories to map correctly when requested with a tilda (~) before the user name. See the
UserDirectory handler for an example. Note this example is not available if you used the Pi3Web enhanced interface (EnhPi3.exe) for setup and configuration. The link

/~jroy/hello

Should map to

/home/jroy/public_html/hello

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Configurable Redirections

Pi3Web provides a mapping to internal or external resources by redirection via HTTP. This can be used to point to an
URL outside of the server from within the site hosted by Pi3Web.

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Protected Realms (Basic Authentication)

The basic authentication
handler provides HTTP authentication for the configured realms.

Note, this example is only available if you used the Pi3Web enhanced interface (EnhPi3.exe) in order to add an username and a password for the administration realm. Click here.

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Logging

The handler
ExpressionLogger can be used to generate any number of logfile by flexible criteria and content.

Note that the facility to view the server logfiles has been removed from the 'Features' configuration. If you are using the 'Devel' configuration or the logfile mapping has been re-enabled then the server logfiles can be seen here logfiles.

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SSL transport layer

The Pi3 IO concept is very flexible, you can replace or chain IO handlers. A feature related to this concept is SSLv2, SSLv3 and TLSv1 support based on
openssl. If you are running the enhanced interface for Windows NT/95, you can enable and configure SSL using the administration client including the generation of SSL keys and 'self-signed' server certificates for demonstration purposes.

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PHP4 embedded script interpreter support

Although you can use PHP4 as
Standard CGI program, Pi3Web has a faster built in support for PHP4 scripts based on PHP 4.x.

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ISAPI Filters

Pi3Web supports ISAPI filters. The example showing a
Dynamic Authentication Filter via a filter DLL can be enabled in the featured configuration (Features.pi3). Read the related instructions in install.daf.

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Other HTTP Methods

Pi3Web supports HTTP/1.1 request methods PUT, DELETE, OPTIONS and TRACE. Furthermore you can use the HTTP method POST for RFC1867 (Netscape) compliant
HTML upload forms after enabling this method for the server.

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NTLM Authentication Method

Pi3Web supports NTLM (challenge response) authentication, whereas the user will be logged in personalized by a Windows NT domain. So you will inherit the rights of the NT user for your web server session. This feature is only available on serverside platforms based on Windows NT technology and clientside with the MSIE browser after configuring a NTLM authentication realm.
NTLM authentication can be tested if you are running the featured configuration (Features.pi3) by activation of the comment line 'CheckAuth NtlmAuth' in the 'Default' handler.

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Digest Authentication Method

Pi3Web supports Digest (MD5 based challenge response) authentication accordingly to RFC 2069. Since plaintext passwords are neither transmitted from browser to server during authentication nor stored at the server for password verification but only MD5 hashes, this authentication method is more secure than basic authentication. This feature is only available, if you create a digest based authentication realm for the server and if the browser (e.g.
Opera) supports digest authentication at the client side.

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