Q: Web-server on ARM Linux, Webkit, backend C++ and more..

[ProsjektX]

Hello all!

I'm (just..) a hardware and embedded firmware developer but for a new project I have the follow scenario and wonder if I'm on the right track. I will not do most things myself but need to come up with a plan:

1. Need a web-server running under Linux on an ARM Cortex A9 embedded board. I've come across nginx which seems a good fit

2. This board has a local touch screen and I see perhaps using QT Webkit running borderless/fullscreen on this device to run the GUI as a web app (transparent to the user)

3. Need to access this device remotely and present the same (or similar) GUI via web browsers on e.g. cell phones, tablets, laptops, you name it, running everything from Android to Windows.

4. Based on 2 and 3 I have come to the conclusion to use jquery and some GUI lib like jquery mobile or other extensions to present both the local and remote display. This way there's minimal overhead to support and maintain any platform with a single piece of code.

5. A critical main application will manage the functionality of the system. This will be written in C++

6. This main application will need to receive messages from the web served GUI and to push messages out when there are events that need to be presented on the display (locally or remotely).

7. As far as I have learned FastCGI might be a suitable method for application to web-server communication. And I found a library called FastCGI++ (http://www.nongnu.org/fastcgipp/)

The big question then; Am I on the right track for my scenario? And in particular regarding the communication between the main application and the web-server through FastCGI? Would this be the best method in this case? I guess QT Webkit should be the least problem..? I understand there doesn't exist a FastCGI library for QT?

Any comments? Other things I should look at regarding any aspect? I guess many have done something similar. Any good documents or application notes in this respect to dig into?

Thanks alot!

[mrdebug]

I think is not so difficult to do. I work in this scenario for my job with freepascal on i386 device.
In arm - qt scenario I suggest to use qml for the gui, ssh for remote device management, vnc for remote display.
Some month ago I have wrote a web server in qt - c++ with base64 authentication (no session support, only four files). In this mode you can query the remote application with http - xml query. Is very easy to do.
With a remote web application written in qt on arm and a management application in your laptot you can do everything.

[chiefbox]

Hi ProsjektX,
My name is Andre, I'm working at a start up in Orange County, Southern California on a product that also runs a web server on ARM. I was interested in your posting regarding running a web server on ARM, and I would like to chat with you for few minutes my email is andre@arkami.com.

Thanks,
Andre

[quote author="ProsjektX" date="1344684886"]Hello all!

I'm (just..) a hardware and embedded firmware developer but for a new project I have the follow scenario and wonder if I'm on the right track. I will not do most things myself but need to come up with a plan:

1. Need a web-server running under Linux on an ARM Cortex A9 embedded board. I've come across nginx which seems a good fit

2. This board has a local touch screen and I see perhaps using QT Webkit running borderless/fullscreen on this device to run the GUI as a web app (transparent to the user)

3. Need to access this device remotely and present the same (or similar) GUI via web browsers on e.g. cell phones, tablets, laptops, you name it, running everything from Android to Windows.

4. Based on 2 and 3 I have come to the conclusion to use jquery and some GUI lib like jquery mobile or other extensions to present both the local and remote display. This way there's minimal overhead to support and maintain any platform with a single piece of code.

5. A critical main application will manage the functionality of the system. This will be written in C++

6. This main application will need to receive messages from the web served GUI and to push messages out when there are events that need to be presented on the display (locally or remotely).

7. As far as I have learned FastCGI might be a suitable method for application to web-server communication. And I found a library called FastCGI++ (http://www.nongnu.org/fastcgipp/)

The big question then; Am I on the right track for my scenario? And in particular regarding the communication between the main application and the web-server through FastCGI? Would this be the best method in this case? I guess QT Webkit should be the least problem..? I understand there doesn't exist a FastCGI library for QT?

Any comments? Other things I should look at regarding any aspect? I guess many have done something similar. Any good documents or application notes in this respect to dig into?

Thanks alot![/quote]

[qxoz]

If you want a Qt solution look at "QtWebApp":http://stefanfrings.de/qtwebapp/index-en.html