civetweb on Android

Introduction

This is a small guide to help you run civetweb on Android. Currently it is tested on the HTC Wildfire. If you have managed to run it on other devices as well, please comment or drop an email in the mailing list.

Note : You dont need root access to run civetweb on Android.

Steps

• Download the source from the Downloads page.
• Download the Android NDK from here
• Make a folder (e.g. civetweb) and inside that make a folder named "jni".
• Add civetweb.h, civetweb.c and main.c from the source to the jni folder.
• Make a new file in the jni folder named "Android.mk". This is the make file for ndk-build.

Android.mk

LOCAL_PATH := $(call my-dir)
include $(CLEAR_VARS)

LOCAL_MODULE    := civetweb
LOCAL_SRC_FILES := main.c civetweb.c

include $(BUILD_EXECUTABLE)

• Run `./ndk-build -C /path/to/civetweb/'

This should generate civetweb/lib/armeabi/civetweb

• Using the adb tool, push the generated civetweb binary to /data/local folder on device.
• From adb shell, navigate to /data/local and execute ./civetweb.

To test if the server is running fine, visit your web-browser and navigate to 127.0.0.1:8080 You should see the Index of / page.

Here's a screenshot

Notes

• jni stands for Java Native Interface. Read up on Android NDK if you want to know how to interact with the native C functions of civetweb in Android Java applications.
• Download android-sdk for the adb tool.
• TODO: A Java application that interacts with the native binary or a shared library.
• There is a [known issue] (http://code.google.com/p/civetweb/issues/detail?id=217) with CGI on Android