CommuniGate Pro: HTTP Modules

The Server Administrator can use any Web browser application to configure and to monitor the Server remotely, using the Web (HTML) forms.

The authentication schemes supported with the HTTP protocol protect the WebAdmin pages from an unauthorized access. In order to access the WebAdmin pages, the user should provide the name and the password of a CommuniGate Pro Account with required Server Access Rights.

By default, the HTTP Admin module accepts clear text TCP/IP WebAdmin connections on the port 8010 and secure (SSL/TLS) connections on the TCP port 9010.

To access the WebAdmin pages, the Server administrator should use the following URLs:
http://domain.com:8010

https://domain.com:9010
where domain.com is the name of the main server domain or its alias, or the IP address of the CommuniGate Pro Server.

Server configuration errors can cut you off the WebAdmin Server Interface, if all your Server IP addresses and DNS names are assigned to secondary Domains.

To access the WebAdmin Server Interface, use the following URLs:

http://sub.domain.com:8010/MainAdmin/
https://sub.domain.com:9010/MainAdmin/
where sub.domain.com is any name pointing to your Server computer or any of the Server IP addresses.

If the CommuniGate Pro Server supports several Secondary Domains, the same port can be used by the Domain Administrators to access the Secondary Domains settings and account lists.

A domain administrator should access the server using the following URL:

http://sub.domain.com:8010
https://sub.domain.com:9010
where sub.domain.com is the name of the secondary domain to administer.

The server will ask for a user (Account) name and a password, and if the specified Account has the Domain Administrator access right, the list of the Domain Accounts is displayed.

Sometimes this URL cannot be used. For example, a secondary Domain may have no DNS A-records (only MX records). To access such a Domain, its Domain Administrator should use the following URL:

http://domain.com:8010/Admin/sub.domain.com/
where:

domain.com is the name of the Main Server Domain or its alias, or the IP address of the CommuniGate Pro Server.

sub.domain.com is the name of the Domain to access.

Other Domains can specify your Domain as their Administrator Domain. The Domain Settings page of your Domains provides a list of those Domains:

Administrated Domains
node100.example.com	settings
test-dom.example.com	settings

You can open their WebAdmin Domain Interfaces using the links on this page. Remember that you should login using your full Account name (yourAccountName@yourDomainName) when accessing other Domain WebAdmin pages.

CommuniGate Pro users can connect to the CommuniGate Pro Server with any Web browser (via the HTTP protocol) to manage their Accounts, to browse their Mailboxes, to read, copy, delete, forward, and redirect messages, to move messages between Mailboxes, to compose and submit new messages, etc.
This CommuniGate Pro component is called the WebUser Interface.

Registered users and guests can also use this component to browse Mailing List archives.

By default, the HTTP User module accepts clear text TCP/IP connections on the TCP port 8100, and the secure connections - on the TCP port 9100. If your Server does not have to coexist with some other Web Server on the same computer, it is recommended to change these port numbers to 80 and 443 - the standard HTTP and HTTPS port numbers.
In this case your users will not have to specify the port number in their browsers.

CommuniGatePro users can user their Account File Storage as personal Web sites. See the File Storage section for the details.

The URL for the accountName@domainName File Storage (or personal Web site) is:

http://domainName:port/~accountName

https://domainName:port/~accountName

where port is the HTTP User ports (8100 and 9100 by default).

The list of files in that File Storage can be seen at:

http://domainName:port/~accountName/index.wssp

https://domainName:port/~accountName/index.wssp

This page is available to the Account owner only, and it can be used to manage the File Storage.

You can specify an alternative File Storage prefix using the Domain Settings. That setting can be an empty string, in this case personal Web sites can be accessed using the following URLs:

http://domainName:port/accountName/

https://domainName:port/accountName/

You can also use the CommuniGate Pro Router to access personal Web sites with domain-level URLs. See the Routing section below.

Use the WebAdmin Interface to configure the HTTP modules. Open the Services pages in the Settings realm, then open the HTTPA (Admin) and/or HTTPU (User) page.

Processing
Log Level:	Channels:	Listener
Request Size Limit:	Scan Large Requests
	Support 'Keep-Alive'

HTTP Options
Advertise 'Basic' Authentication Advertise 'Digest' Authentication
Advertise 'NTLM' Authentication Advertise 'Negotiate' Authentication

Log Level: Use this setting to specify what kind of information the HTTP module should put in the Server Log. Usually you should use the Major or Problems (non-fatal errors) levels. But when you experience problems with the HTTP module, you may want to set the Log Level setting to Low-Level or All Info: in this case protocol-level or link-level details will be recorded in the System Log as well.
The HTTP Admin module records in the System Log are marked with the HTTPA tag.
The HTTP User module records in the System Log are marked with the HTTPU tag.
Channels: This setting is used to limit the number of simultaneous TCP/IP connections the HTTP module can accept. Most browsers open several connections to load an HTML page and all embedded pictures, so do not set this limit to less than 5, otherwise some browsers may fail to download embedded graphic objects.
listener

The HTTP modules set the MIME Content-Type for every object they send. To detect the proper Content-Type for plain files, the modules use the file name extension and the following "basic" built-in table:

File Extension	MIME type
`html`	`text/html`
`txt`	`text/plain`
`gif`	`image/gif`
`jpg`	`image/jpeg`
`css`	`text/css`
`js`	`text/javascript`

There is also an "extended" built-in table, which is displayed on the WebAdmin page.

You can create your own custom extension table by specifying additional file name extensions and corresponding MIME Content-Types:

MIME types
File Extension	MIME type





doc	application/msword
eml	message/rfc822
flv	video/x-flv
htm	text/html
js	text/javascript
jss	text/javascript
mov	video/quicktime
mp3	audio/mpeg
mpg	video/mpeg
pdf	application/pdf

The extended "built-in" table is displayed under the custom table.

When a file extension is converted into a MIME type, the custom table is checked first, then the built-in tables are checked. As a result, you can redefine the built-in table values with the custom table values

.

HTTP Options
Advertise 'Basic' Authentication	Advertise 'Digest' Authentication
Advertise 'NTLM' Authentication	Advertise 'Negotiate' Authentication

The HTTP modules use the Router to process all address it receives. But unlike other Access modules, the HTTP modules often deal not with complete E-mail addresses, but with domain names only.

When the HTTP Admin module receives a request, it uses the name or the IP address specified in the URL to decide which Domain Administration pages to display.

When the HTTP User module receives a request, it uses the name or the IP address specified in the URL to decide which Domain (its login page, Mailing Lists, File Storage, etc.) to access.

In order to support all types of CommuniGate Pro Routing features (Router Table, Domain Aliases, IP Address to Domain Mapping, etc.), the HTTP module composes a complete E-mail address LoginPage@domainname (where domainname is the domain name specified in the request URL), and then it processes this address with the Router:

If the LoginPage@domainname address is routed to any module other than LOCAL, an error is returned.
If the LoginPage@domainname address is routed to the LOCAL module and local part of the resulting address is still LoginPage, then the domain part of the resulting address is used to open the proper CommuniGate Pro Domain.
If the address is routed to the LOCAL module, but the resulting username is not LoginPage, the File Storage of the addressed Account is opened. If the resulting address has a local part, then the File Storage subdirectory with that name is opened.

Samples (Router Table records, domainA.com is a CommuniGate Pro Domain):

mail2.domain.com = domainA.com: When the http://mail2.domain.com/ URL is used, the <LoginPage@mail2.domain.com> address is routed to <LoginPage@domainA.com> address, and the domainA.com Web Interface is opened.
<LoginPage@mail2.domain.com> = user@domainA.com: When the http://mail2.domain.com/ URL is used, the <LoginPage@mail2.domain.com> address is routed to LOCAL account user@domainA.com, and the user@domainA.com File Storage is opened.
<LoginPage@mail2.domain.com> = subDir@user@domainA.com.domain: When the http://mail2.domain.com/ URL is used, the <LoginPage@mail2.domain.com> address is routed to the LOCAL account user@domainA.com with the subDir local address part, and the subDir directory of the user@domainA.com File Storage is opened.

The HTTP User module can start CGI programs and scripts. To access a CGI program, the /cgi-bin/programName URL should be used, and the programName program should be placed into the CommuniGate Pro CGI Directory.

Use the WebAdmin Interface to open the HTTP User settings page:

CGI Directory

Enter the name of the server system file directory where your CGI programs are located. If that directory is inside the CommuniGate Pro base directory, then you can specify its relative name, otherwise specify the full path to that directory. The CGI Directory should not have any subdirectories.

File Extensions

While some operating systems (such as Unix) can start various interpreter-type programs/scripts by starting the proper interpreter, other operating systems require that the interpreter program is started explicitly. The CommuniGate Pro Server supports those operating systems by allowing you to specify the name of the interpreter program for certain file extensions. As a result, when the CommuniGate Pro Server needs to start a program or script with the specified extension, it forms the OS-level command line by prefixing the program/script name with the specified interpreter program name.
In the above example the Server will process the /cgi-bin/script.pl URL by executing the

Perl.exe script.pl

command.

HTTP Header Field

Use this table to specify custom, non-standard HTTP Request header fields that you want to pass to your CGI applications. If a request contains a header line with the specified field name, the line is passed to CGI applications as an environment variable with the HTTP_H_convertedFieldName name, where convertedFieldName is the field name in the uppercase letters, with all minus (-) symbols substituted with the underscore (_) symbols.

CGI programs can be used to extend functionality of the WebUser Interface. They can log into the Server via its PWD module to do some CLI/API operations and/or via the IMAP or XIMSS modules to access and modify mailbox data. To simplify these login operations, CGI programs can use the SessionID Authentication method.

The HTTP User module provides access to the Server Command Line Interface/API via the /CLI/ realm.

Text Method

Send a GET or POST request with a command parameter. The parameter value should contain the CLI command to be executed.
If the request fails, the error code is returned as an HTTP response error string.
If the request is successful, the HTTP response code is 200.
If the request produced an output, the text representation of the resulting object is sent as the HTTP response body.

SOAP Method

Send a SOAP XML request. The request should have exactly one XML element - the CLI command to exectute.
The XML element tag is the CLI command tag.
the XML element sub-elements are XML representations of parameter objects and/or key elements. The key element text body is a CLI command key.

Example:: <SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  <SOAP-ENV:Body>
    <createAccount>
      <param>newuser@domain.dom</param>
      <key>TextMailbox</key>
      <param>
         <subKey key="RealName">John Doe</subKey>
        <subKey key="Password">soappass</subKey>
      </param>
    </createAccount>
  </SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>
This request is converted into:
createAccount "newuser@domain.dom" TextMailbox {RealName="John Doe"; Password="soappass";}

If the request produces an output, its XML representation is added to the SOAP response.

Example:: <SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  <SOAP-ENV:Body>
    <getAccount>
      <param>newuser@domain.dom</param>
    </getAccount>
  </SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>
This request is converted:
getAccount "newuser@domain.dom"
and a dictionary output is produced:
{Password="\001xxxxx"; RealName="John Doe";}
This response is sent with the SOAP response:
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  <SOAP-ENV:Body>
    <response>
      <object>
        <subKey key="Password">\001fjh{\024hdfu</subKey>
        <subKey key="RealName">SOAP Test</subKey>
      </object>
    </response>
  </SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>

File Extension	Program to Start
CGI Directory:


HTTP Header Fields

HTTP Modules

WebAdmin Server Interface

WebAdmin Domain Interface

Access to the WebUser Interface

Access to Account File Storage

Configuring the HTTP modules

Routing

Common Gateway Interface (CGI)

Command Line Interface (CLI/API) Access

Text Method

SOAP Method