Libwww - the W3C Sample Code Library
Libwww is a general-purpose Web API written in C for
Unix and Windows (Win32). With a highly extensible
and layered API, it can accommodate many different types of applications
including clients, robots, etc. The purpose of Libwww is to provide a sample
implementation of HTTP and other Internet protocols and to serve as a testbed
for protocol experiments. It comes with a lot of "plug-and-play" modules
including a rudimentary HTML parser which can do the very basics.
Nearby you can find the following sample applications that you get when you
download the libwww distribution:
Also have a look at the W3C Libwww activity statement
on support, usability etc.
@(#) $Id: Overview.html,v 1.102 1998/05/07 15:15:37 frystyk Exp $
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March 27, 1998
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Try out the latest Windows based PUT Tool - a small
Windows Widget that can be the start to something big :)
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March 25, 1998: Libwww
Version 5.1l available for HTTP/1.1
testing! Check out the
performance!
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This release is a "second generation" HTTP/1.1 implementation using persistent
connections, pipelining, smart output buffering, and persistent caching.
It is the code base that was used in the
"Network Performance
Effects of HTTP/1.1, CSS1, and PNG" paper
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Dec 24, 1997: Libwww is looking for a new
home!
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W3C is looking for volunteers to either help or to take over the maintenance
and development of the source base including libwww, the Mini Robot
(webbot), the terminal based
Line Mode Browser, and the
Command Line Tool which can be used in batch tools
etc. Interested parties can contact Henrik
for details!
What is the purpose of libwww? Can I use it as a developer tool for writing
Web applications? How is it supported? Read answers to these questions and
much more from the W3C activity statement on
libwww.
Read the detailed description or download
it directly from here:
You can see how to unpack and compile the software in the
README file, and you can find more information
on how the Library is designed in the Library
Architecture and how to use it in the User's
Guide.
Libwww is covered by the
W3C Copyright
Statement. If you are using libwww then please include in your product
documentation a link to the
copyright statement,
a link to libwww, and to the CERN
acknowledgement.
How do I get started using libwww? How can I compile it? What has changed
in the latest release. Find out by starting here!
We have a huge amount of documentation about the design of libwww and
how to use it for building applications. Often, however, the easiest is to
study the example applications which show in practice how to do tricks with
libwww. We try to keep the documentation up to date but it may not always
be the case. The best thing is to have a look the list of exported functions.
This list is generated automatically and is always up to date.
Libwww has the following set of mailing lists that you are more than welcome
to use! Please do not send mail directly to the authors - the mail load is
already rather high and you will most probably get a better response
time by using one of the following mailing lists.
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www-lib@w3.org
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A public mailing list for an open discussion of ideas, diffs,
new features etc. This is the most active list. See the
information on mailing lists for details on how
to subscribe.
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www-lib-bugs@w3.org
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A public mailing mailing list where you can
register bugs and ideas that you would like to get into the code base. Register
them here, so that we don't forget about them!
These people and many more have been involved in turning libwww into the
shape it has today.
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Henrik Frystyk Nielsen
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Designed and Implemented libwww from version 2.17 up until version 5.1
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Tim Berners-Lee and
Jean-Francois Groff
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Came up with the initial design and implementation of libwww
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Eric Prud'hommeaux
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Provided the Windows integration and asynchronous event management along
with many other features.
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Anselm Baird-Smith
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Provided lots of help through many white-board discussions, especially on
the HTTP/1.1 client side implementation.
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Jose Kahan
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Integrated libwww with Amaya and provided feedback
on client side API
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Håkon W. Lie
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Integrated libwww with Arena
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and many others for contributions and bug fixes
Henrik Frystyk Nielsen,
@(#) $Id: Overview.html,v 1.102 1998/05/07 15:15:37 frystyk Exp $