Libwww - the W3C Sample Code Library

Libwww - the W3C Protocol Library

Libwww is a highly modular, general-purpose client side Web API written in C for Unix and Windows (Win32). It's well suited for both small and large applications, like browser/editors, robots, batch tools, etc. Pluggable modules provided with libwww include complete HTTP/1.1 (with caching, pipelining, PUT, POST, Digest Authentication, deflate, etc), MySQL logging, FTP, HTML/4, XML (expat), RDF (SiRPAC), WebDAV, and much more. The purpose of libwww is to serve as a testbed for protocol experiments.

October 21, 2005:First maintenance release of the community supported version of libwww.
January 29, 2004: Results of the future of Libwww survey. W3C is handling over development of libwww to the Open Source community. Check the announcement for more info.
September 2, 2003: Future of Libwww Survey. W3C has stopped work on libwww and invites the libwww user community to participate in a Future of Libwww Survey that will help to determine its future. A public W3C account is required to complete the survey. This survey will close on September 30. Read about W3C Open Source Software.

News, Updates, and Events

October 21 2005: Packaging of the libwww 5.4.1 release. This maintenance release fixes some SSL issues, brings the configure scripts up to date and fixes a security vulnerability in HTBound.c

June 12 2002: Re-packaging of the libwww 5.4.0 release. The packages were missing the Win32 makefile files. If you had already downloaded the previous package and are missing these files, the missing files are also available in the libwww-win32.zip package. The Installation guide gives more information on how to get you set up.

June 10 2002: Release of the libwww 5.4.0 WIN32 precompiled binary package. This is a companion package to the latest libwww distribution and includes precompiled versions of the libwww DLL files, as well as most of the libwww applications, including the Web Commander..

June 7 2002: Release of libwww 5.4.0. This release includes WebDAV support, enhancements in the RDF parser and some bug fixes. Check the release notes for more information.

May 30 2002:Update of the libwww WIN32 makefiles to include the DAV package. The zip package now also includes the .def files, as the config/winConfigure.pl script seems to have problems to generate them on some platforms.

May 30 2002: Manuele Kirschpi added WebDAV support to libwww. (well, this actually happened a couple of months ago, but I had forgotten to update this page).U

December 20 2000: Release of libwww 5.3.2. This release includes enhancements in the RDF parser and many bug fixes, principally in the cache, the chunk, and the hash modules. Check the release notes for more information.

September 22 2000: libwwww survey. We're conducting a survey to try to find out who uses libwww and where should we take libwww next.
The survey has concluded, but I haven't had time to compile the results. Help is welcome.

Release of libwww 5.3.1. This release includes patches that mostly fix problems with the SSL interface and the Windows asynchronous event handler. The release notes give a more detailed change list. N.B., we decided to skip the 5.3.0 release number, as some people were already refering to the pre-release as the final release.

August 4 2000: Release of libwww 5.3.1. This release includes patches that mostly fix problems with the SSL interface and the Windows asynchronous event handler. The release notes give a more detailed change list. N.B., we decided to skip the 5.3.0 release number, as some people were already refering to the pre-release as the final release.

June 9 2000: Pre-release of libwww 5.3.0. It's been over a year since the last release. Libwww has continued to evolve and patches have been contributed. This release is a snapshot of the current state of the CVS base. In addition, thanks to a change in the US legislation, it now contains the source code for the SSL interface. As this is the first release since Henrik left, we have a testing period, to see if everything works OK, and to have time to finish upgrading the release notes. The change in the version reflects this as the first libwww user's community release of their own library (even if that sounds corny!) This code is available as usual from CVS.

Aug 29 1999:Using libwww with gtk James Henstridge: wrote up some event register/unregister functions that use the glib event loop. This makes libwww fit nicely into just about any gnome or gtk+ program. This code may be useful for other people wanting to use libwww with gtk.

Jul 7 1999: libwww-SSL library is available for testing in the US! Thanks to Jeff Schiller who have made his export controlled server available, we can distribute Olga's glue code between openSSL and libwww. It should run on both Unix and Windows - try it out!

Jun 25: 1999: Slides from libwww presentation - explains some of the why's and how's

Jun 20, 1999: Number of checkout from CVS exceeds 1700!

Apr 18, 1999: John Punin: Added RDF parser to the XML module in libwww - help testing!

Apr 17, 1999: Vladimir Kozlov has generated wintel libwww 5.2.8 binaries - available from his IDM Web site

Apr 3, 1999: Check out the libwww hall of fame - truly cool hackers!

Apr 3, 1999: Olga Antropova: SSL transport in libwww - help testing!

Apr 3, 1999: Raffaele Sena: Added HTML4.0 support in libwww HTML parser

Mar 31: 1999: Interested in helping porting to Macs? Follow the dicussions!

Mar 4, 1999: Daniel Veillard has put up a cool new version of cvsweb which provides Web access to the libwww CVS codebase

Feb 24, 1999: Release of libwww 5.2.6 with lots of new features including:

John Punin's integration with Integration James Clark's Expat XML parser,
Jose Kahan's client-side Digest Authentication implementation,
Tiny, Web browser based on libwww with only a strict minimum of HTTP and HTML in only 170K on linux (stripped) into libwww.

Feb 23, 1999: Integration of James Clark's Expat XML parser into libwww. Also check out the new XML sample application demonstrating how the integration works.

Feb 16, 1999: New set of MSVC makefiles for all of the libwww and its sample applications

Feb 9, 1999:New tiny, Web browser with only a strict minimum of HTTP and HTML committed to CVS in only 170K on linux (stripped)

Jan 6, 1999: Improved libwww HTML parser and new callback interface committed to CVS

See also the libwww timeline for past news items and events

Libwww Mailinglist

Please send all requests regarding libwww to <www-lib@w3.org> public mailing list. This list is archived at W3C and also at findmail. Note, you MUST be subscribed in order to post to the mailing list. Follow these shortcuts to quick subscribe or quick unsubscribe or see the information on mailing lists for more details.

Legal Stuff

Libwww is covered by this copyright notice as well as the full W3C license

Any IPR questions? Please check our Intellectual Property FAQ for answers

If you like to get contribute changes so that they can be incorporated into our code base then please fill out the Corrections, Modifications, and Patches form and send it to us. Otherwise we can not use the patch!

Authors

The development of libwww depends on YOU! The more people who are contributing and helping the development, the more useful the code base gets. Check out the list of libwww hackers who provide invaluable contributions to the libwww code base and find out how you can help!

Henrik Frystyk Nielsen

Designed and implemented libwww from version 2.17 up to version 5.2.8

Tim Berners-Lee and Jean-Francois Groff

Came up with the initial design and implementation of libwww

José Kahan,
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