[cs631apue] Final Project URI question

[Jan Schaumann]

jphillip <jphillip at stevens.edu> wrote:

> Is it acceptable for our web server to assume that if the URI begins  
> with a / that it is an absolute path in the file system starting at the  
> root of the file system?

No, that's wrong.

> I.  In this case the server would check  if
> /doc/root/some/path/to/file existed and send that.

That's the correct behaviour.  Any pathname requested is to be resolved
as under the document root (with the exception of the cgi requests as
previously discussed).  What's more, as we discussed in class as well,
you need to make sure that requests cannot "break out" of the document
root (for example by specifying "..").

-Jan