Pistache is a modern and elegant HTTP and REST framework for C++. It is entirely written in pure-C++14 and provides a clear and pleasant API.

We are still looking for a volunteer to document fully the API. In the mean time, partial documentation is available at http://pistache.io. If you are interested in helping with this, please open an issue ticket.

Pistache is released under the Apache License 2.0. Contributors are welcome!

Pistache was originally created by Mathieu Stefani, but he is no longer actively maintaining Pistache. A team of volunteers has taken over. To reach the original maintainer, drop a private message to @octal in cpplang Slack channel.

For those that prefer IRC over Slack, the rag-tag crew of maintainers idle in #pistache on Freenode. Please come and join us!

The Launchpad Team administers the daily and stable Ubuntu pre-compiled packages.

If you have no need to modify the Pistache source, you are strongly recommended to use precompiled packages for your distribution. This will save you time.

We have submitted a Request for Packaging downstream to Debian. Once we have an official Debian package maintainer intimately familiar with the Debian Policy Manual, we can expect to eventually see it become available in Debian and all derivatives (e.g. Ubuntu and many others).

But until then currently Pistache has partially compliant upstream Debianization. Our long term goal is to have our source package properly Debianized downstream by a Debian Policy Manual SME. In the mean time consider using our PPAs to avoid having to build from source.

Currently Pistache is built and tested on a number of architectures. Some of these are suitable for desktop or server use and others for embedded environments. As of this writing we do not currently have any MIPS related packages that have been either built or tested. The ppc64el builds are occasionally tested on POWER9 hardware, courtesy of IBM.

• amd64
• arm64
• armhf
• i386
• ppc64el
• s390x

The project builds daily unstable snapshots in a separate unstable PPA. To use it, run the following:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pistache+team/unstable
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install libpistache-dev

Currently there are no stable release of Pistache published into the stable PPA. However, when that time comes, run the following to install a stable package:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pistache+team/stable
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install libpistache-dev

Package maintainers, please insert instructions for users to install pre-compiled packages from your respective repositories here.

If you would like to automatically have your project's build environment use the appropriate compiler and linker build flags, pkg-config can greatly simplify things. It is the portable international de facto standard for determining build flags. The development packages include a pkg-config manifest.

To use with the GNU Autotools, as an example, include the following snippet in your project's configure.ac:

    # Pistache...
    PKG_CHECK_MODULES(
        [libpistache], [libpistache >= 0.0.2], [],
        [AC_MSG_ERROR([libpistache >= 0.0.2 missing...])])
    YOURPROJECT_CXXFLAGS="$YOURPROJECT_CXXFLAGS $libpistache_CFLAGS"
    YOURPROJECT_LIBS="$YOURPROJECT_LIBS $libpistache_LIBS"
    

To use with a CMake build environment, use the FindPkgConfig module. Here is an example:

    cmake_minimum_required(2.8 FATAL_ERROR)
    project("MyPistacheProject")
    
    # Tell CMake to add support for pkg-config, then use it to find the library...
    include(FindPkgConfig)
    pkg_search_module(PISTACHE REQUIRED libpistache>=0.0.2)
    
    include_directories(${PISTACHE_INCLUDE_DIRS})
    add_executable(${PROJECT_NAME} main.cpp)
    target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} ${PISTACHE_LIBRARIES})

To use within a vanilla makefile, you can call pkg-config directly to supply compiler and linker flags using shell substitution.

    CFLAGS=-g3 -Wall -Wextra -Werror ...
    LDFLAGS=-lfoo ...
    ...
    CFLAGS+= $(pkg-config --cflags libpistache)
    LDFLAGS+= $(pkg-config --libs libpistache)

To download the latest available release, clone the repository over github.

    $ git clone https://github.com/oktal/pistache.git

Then, init the submodules:

    $ git submodule update --init

Now, compile the sources:

    $ cd pistache
    $ mkdir -p {build,prefix}
    $ cd build
    $ cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" \
        -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
        -DPISTACHE_BUILD_EXAMPLES=true \
        -DPISTACHE_BUILD_TESTS=true \
        -DPISTACHE_BUILD_DOCS=false \
        -DPISTACHE_USE_SSL=true \
        -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$PWD/../prefix \
        ../
    $ make -j
    $ make install

If you chose to build the examples, then perform the following to build the examples.

    $ cd examples
    $ make -j

Optionally, you can also build and run the tests (tests require the examples):

    $ cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" -DPISTACHE_BUILD_EXAMPLES=true -DPISTACHE_BUILD_TESTS=true ..
    $ make test test_memcheck

Be patient, async_test can take some time before completing. And that's it, now you can start playing with your newly installed Pistache framework.

Some other CMAKE defines:

It is important that all patches pass unit testing. Unfortunately developers make all kinds of changes to their local development environment that can have unintended consequences. This can means sometimes tests on the developer's computer pass when they should not, and other times failing when they should not have.

To properly validate that things are working, continuous integration (CI) is required. This means compiling, performing local in-tree unit tests, installing through the system package manager, and finally testing the actually installed build artifacts to ensure they do what the user expects them to do.

The key thing to remember is that in order to do this properly, this all needs to be done within a realistic end user system that hasn't been unintentionally modified by a developer. This might mean a chroot container with the help of QEMU and KVM to verify that everything is working as expected. The hermetically sealed test environment validates that the developer's expected steps for compilation, linking, unit testing, and post installation testing are actually replicable.

There are different ways of performing CI on different distros. The most common one is via the international DEP-8 standard as used by hundreds of different operating systems.

On Debian based distributions, autopkgtest implements the DEP-8 standard. To create and use a build image environment for Ubuntu, follow these steps. First install the autopkgtest(1) tools:

$ sudo apt install autopkgtest

Next create the test image, substituting eoan or amd64 for other releases or architectures:

$ autopkgtest-buildvm-ubuntu-cloud -r eoan -a amd64

Generate a Pistache source package in the parent directory of pistache_source:

$ cd pistache_source
$ sudo apt build-dep pistache
$ ./debian/rules get-orig-source
$ debuild -S -sa

Test the source package on the host architecture in QEMU with KVM support and 8GB of RAM and four CPUs:

$ autopkgtest --shell-fail --apt-upgrade ../pistache_(...).dsc -- \
      qemu --ram-size=8192 --cpus=4 --show-boot path_to_build_image.img \
      --qemu-options='-enable-kvm'

#include <pistache/endpoint.h>

using namespace Pistache;

struct HelloHandler : public Http::Handler {
  HTTP_PROTOTYPE(HelloHandler)
  void onRequest(const Http::Request&, Http::ResponseWriter writer) override{
    writer.send(Http::Code::Ok, "Hello, World!");
  }
};

int main() {
  Http::listenAndServe<HelloHandler>(Pistache::Address("*:9080"));
}