About Hodhod

Hodhod is a Gemini server, capable of serving multiple capsules. Apart from static content, it also supports serving dynamic content through CGI scripts.

Hodhod is still far from being battle-tested and feature complete. Check the "Completion Status" section to find out more.

Completion Status

The following features are planned for Hodhod.

• Serve static content
• Serve dynamic content through CGI
• Serving multiple capsules using SNI
• Prefix routes
• URL routes
• Write a more complete documentation available on Gemini
• Client certificates
• Redirects

And maybe later:

• Regex routes
• Longest match pattern matching

Installation

You can install hodhod by running:

go install git.sr.ht/~elektito/hodhod@latest

Config File

Hodhod uses a json formatted configuration file. Here's an example:

{
    "listen": "0.0.0.0:1965",

    "match_options": {
        "query_params": "remove",
        "trailing_slash": "esnure"
    },

    "routes": [
        {
            "prefix": "gemini://example.org/blog/",
            "backend": "gemlog"
        },
        {
            "url": "gemini://example.com/search",
            "backend": "search"
        },
        {
            "prefix": "gemini://example.org",
            "backend": "home"
        }
    ],
    
    "backends": [
        {
            "name": "gemlog",
            "type": "static",
            "location": "/srv/gemini/gemlog/",
            "file_ext": "strip"
        },
        {
            "name": "search",
            "type": "cgi",
            "script": "/var/cgi/search.cgi"
        },
        {
            "name": "home",
            "type": "static",
            "location": "/srv/gemini/example.org/",
            "file_ext": "strip"
        }
    ],

    "certs": [
        {
            "cert": "/etc/certs/example.com.cer",
            "key": "/etc/certs/example.com.key"
        },
        {
            "cert": "/etc/certs/star.example.org.cer",
            "key": "/etc/certs/star.example.org.key"
        }
    ]
}

Routes

Routes are patterns that match urls to backends. Each route must have a backend key specifying the name of the backend config, as well as a pattern that can be specified by one of the following keys:

• prefix: The url prefix to match. Including the gemini:// scheme is not mandatory.
• url: The full url to match. Including the gemini:// scheme is not mandatory.
• hostname: The hostname to match.

Query parameters are normally ignored when matching. If you want to change this behavior, you can set the global match_options.query_params field to one of these values:

• remove: The default behavior. The query part of the URL is removed before pattern matching.
• include: The query part of the URL is included when pattern matching.

When matching urls against patterns, a trailing slash is by default added if not present, so that /page/ and /page can be treated the same. If you don't want this behavior, you can use the global match_options.trailing_slash field. The following values are allowed for this field:

• ensure: The default behavior. The trailing slash is added to all request URLs that don't have one, before pattern matching.
• remove: The trailing slash, if present, is always removed from the request URL before pattern matching.
• ifpresent: Hodhod will not add or remove trailing slashes. The trailing slash, if present, will be part of the URL when matching for patterns.

Backends

Each backend specifies a source of gemini pages. The following fields are mandatory for all backends:

• name: The name by which we refer to this backend in the routes.
• type: The type of the backend. Can be either static or cgi.

Each backend type has its own set of other fields that can specify its behavior.

For static backends, the following fields are available:

• location: Mandatory. The location to serve static content from. Must point to a valid directory.
• file_ext: Optional. Can be set to strip or include. If set to strip (the default behavior), /page.gmi can be accessed as /page. If set to include, the filename in the request path must be the same as the filename on the file system.

For cgi backends, the following fields are available:

• script: The path to the CGI script.

Certificates

The certs key contains a list of certificates to be used by Hodhod. The appropriate certificate will be chosen and served based on the request SNI value.

• cert: The certificate file.
• key: The certificate key file.