BGI Budget Gateway Interface

Created by Ethan Joachim Eldridge
License: MIT

What is this?

BGI is a static website with a CGI backend powered by C. You might ask: "Why C?" The short answer is: I love C, the slightly longer answer is that: I wanted to see if I could.

How do I use it?

Install qdecoder
You need to install qdecoder in order to be able to parse and handle the CGI requests. qDecoder was chosen after reviewing the various libraries listed here. To install it, download the tarball and untar it tar -xzvf <tarballname> then run ./configure and make install, you may need to run the make command as your super user.

Setup WebServer
Next, setup Apache for CGI. An example configuration might look like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
         ServerName www.bgi.dev
         DocumentRoot /home/user/programs/bgi/www
         <Directory />
                 Options Indexes
                 AllowOverride None
         </Directory>
         Alias /bgi /home/user/programs/bgi/bin
         <Directory />
                 AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
                 AllowOverride None
                 Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
                 Order allow,deny
                 Allow from all
         </Directory>
 
        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.cgi.log
        LogLevel warn

</VirtualHost>

Note that it is important to setup both static front end (www) and the CGI directory (bgi). One of the biggest 'gotchas' is the permissions on the data directory. If after attempting to create an account the data directory does not exist or repeatedly fails, then you should check the permissions of the place specified by the config.h file and make sure it is writable by apache. One of the best guides for doing so is contained in this S.O. question

Setup Your Config file
A sample config file is included in the headers, the best way to setup a config file is to copy this file, edit it, and rename it to config.h. If you do not want to do this manually, you can run make config and it will save you the grunt work of typing the commands to do so. Note that if a config file already exists it will be moved to config.h.bak

Compile the Scripts
All you need to do is run make from the root of the repository.

Compile the WebSite
What you say? Compile the website? Yes. The HTML is generated via HarpJs and you'll need to have that installed. Simply update the harp.json file with the proper domain name and run a harp compile. It shouldn't take long and then you'll have the front end setup and ready.

Setup your hosts file (if local)
On most linux systems the hosts file is at /etc/hosts, on windows it is in system32 I believe (it's been a while since I've been on windozer). Add in the name that you have placed into your config's BASE_URL definition pointing to127.0.0.1

Technologies used

• HarpJs
• Chart.js
• Leaflet.js
• qdecoder
• C
• My Brain

Use it!