OGProxy: Open GRiD Project's Proxy

The source code is mostly for developers, as the functionality of the proxy is not yet very extensive.

The code was developed during an early stage of the Open GRiD project in particular to see how and whether additional funcionality can be provided for existing browsers by a proxy that filters all HTML documents adding its own functionality menu to all displayed documents.

This code has been then substantially architecturally redesigned into the OpenGRiD project's code.
(Note that the latter does not yet contain an application whose functionality subsumes that of the OGProxy.)

Features:

• The proxy works as HTTP/HTTPS proxy.
• The proxy works with both MSIE and Netscape and compiles on Linux, Windows, SunOS, and other Unix'es.
• A special control panel is added to all top-level html documents to facilitate access to the functions of the proxy. (The panel is automatically blocked for frames, so that frame-sets are displayed correctly. Also the panel can be easily switched on and off manually or using an URI-pattern for a particular page.)
• Most proxy parameters can be (remotely) changed on the fly using a Web browser.
• The user can easily get the information about the recent and active requests: the request headers and how the requests were processed.
• Proxy authorization can be enforced to enhance security (the proxy is essentially state-full and manipulates some user data - its options for now).
• It (for now) unconditionally filters out Java Script and Java code as well as META-set-cookie HTML code from html's passing through it.
• It can also intercept refresh directives and reload headers.
• It can forward requests to another proxy.
  Currently it is advised to use caching proxy such as Squid for a UNIX-like system or WebCelerator for a Windows-based system after the Open GRiD proxy as the proxy is lacking any persistent cache and forces fast expiration of the data it gives to the browser.
• Some rudimentary memory-only cache functionality is present.
• Java Script interface enhancements can be used.
• Welcome screen and other navigation documents are produced.
• All error messages of the proxy also can be viewed (remotely) using a browser.

The provided Web-specific library functionality includes:

• Some manipulations with strings.
• Core proxy functionality, using a uni-process data-driven model based on the select() call.
• Flexible filtering of (HTML) streams.
• Parsing and other manipulations with HTML and HTTP elements.
• Creation and handling of forms enabling to change a set of options of different types; the options can also be saved to and read from a file.
• Html-generation facilitating classes.
• Generic least-recently-used cache classes.
• Classes for managing lists of regular expression patterns.

The provided general C++ library functionality includes:

• Flexible compilable-out debugging messages and runtime checks.
• Very good memory leaks and other memory errors detection support:
  • memory leaks can be traced after program execution back to the place of allocation including 3 stack frames of function call history (you will need gdb for this).
  • fields around allocated objects are added to help detect out-of bounds memory accesses
  • new memory is garbage-initialized to help catch use of uninitialized fields
  • freed memory is garbage-cleaned and kept around for a while to help catch the use of dangling pointers
• Facilitation of runtime checks for objects of different classes.
• Performs hierarchical initializations and "finalizations" of "modules".
• Class wrappers to make the use of STL containers more efficient.
• One can use MODULA-like syntax in C++.

• It should compile out of the box under Linux, SunOS and other Unix'es; as well as on MS Windows (95,98,NT) with CygWin Beta 20 (hopefully it can also compile on Be-OS).
• You will need a sufficiently modern C++ compiler (e.g. g++ v2.7.2 will not do).
• You should not need any extra libraries unless you want to develop the code.

• OGProxy-0.1.2.tgz (423K; as of August 1999) is the latest stable release.
• These are binary-only distributions for OGProxy-0.1.2:
  • OGProxy-linux-0.1.2.tgz (137K; as of August 1999; compiled on RedHat 6.0)
  • OGProxy-sunos-0.1.2.tgz (164K; as of August 1999; compiled on SunOS 5.6)
  • OGProxy-cygwin-0.1.2.zip (547K; as of August 1999; compiled with CygWin Beta 20 on MS Windows 98)
• Old versions:
  OGProxy-0.1.1.tar.gz (147K; as of June 1999)
  OGProxy-0.1.0.tar.gz (89K; as of May 1999)

• Proxy Functionality:
  • Now works equally well with MSIE (at least v4.01) and Netscape (at least v4.61 and v3.04).
  • Added refresh interception.
  • Added support for anchors.
  • Added reload blocking.
  • Control panel now can be made a part of the document or an extra frame on per-URI (pattern) basis. (Using a Yes/No/Inline panel pattern list.)
  • Options structure reorganized.
  • Easy access to the unfiltered version of the document.
  • More Java Script interface enhancements.
• Web-specific libraries:
  • Now binary files claimed to be text/html can be passed fine through the proxy and then saved as they are.
  • Fixed a bug regarding reading empty option value.
  • Added new module: PattLists (Classes for managing lists of regular expression patterns.)
  • Java Script removal now also eliminates links of the form javascript:some_code.
  • Added optional HTML body META-set-cookie and META-refresh blocking.
  • Now option reading is more tolerant to option structure reorganization.
  • Backups of the options file are now created.
• Now includes a version of STL and GNU regex.
• Autoconf configuration scripts have been added.
• Now compiles fine under egcs-c++-1.1.2 also compiles out of the box under SunOS 5.6 with g++ v2.8.1 (or higher) and under MS Windows with CygWin Beta 20.
• Bug fixes.