httpVirt

httpVirt is a tool for creating virtual machines and using them through a HTTP and WebSocket interface.

You can

Deploy httpVirt to a physical machine
Create resource-constrained VMs using physical machine resources
Send shell commands to these VMs via HTTP and WebSocket requests

Installation

Install VirtualBox.
Install Vagrant 1.8.6 or 1.8.5.
Download the repo and run the httpVirt server:

$ git clone https://github.com/kvu787/httpVirt.git

Start the httpVirt server

$ cd httpVirt
$ vagrant up

The latter command starts a server on http://127.0.0.1:10411 . It takes a long time to run.

Create a VM and run a command

With an HTTP GET

Use cURL with the HTTP API:

$ id=`curl -w '\n' 'http://127.0.0.1:10411/create'`
8ebc3265a715ab0854fcb74c8305911e74c740471fa50f3a1b99949de43a9c0a
$ curl "http://127.0.0.1:10411/command/$id?command=ls%20-a"
.  ..  .bashrc  .profile

With a WebSocket

Use client-side Javascript with the WebSocket API:

Visit http://127.0.0.1:10411 in your browser.
Open the JavaScript console.
Copy/paste and run the following code:

// Vanilla JS GET: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/247483/http-get-request-in-javascript
function httpGetAsync(theUrl, callback) {
    var xmlHttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
    xmlHttp.onreadystatechange = function() {
        if (xmlHttp.readyState == 4 && xmlHttp.status == 200)
            callback(xmlHttp.responseText);
    }
    xmlHttp.open('GET', theUrl, true); // true for asynchronous
    xmlHttp.send(null);
}

// create a VM
httpGetAsync('http://127.0.0.1:10411/create', function (containerID) {
  // open a WebSocket to the VM
  var webSocket = new WebSocket(`ws://127.0.0.1:10411/session/${containerID}`);

  // handler called for each incoming message
  webSocket.onmessage = function(e){
     var message = e.data;
     console.log('Message received: ' + message);
  }

  webSocket.onopen = function () {
    // when websocket is ready, send command as outgoing message
    webSocket.send('ls -a');
  }

  // onmessage handler will print output
});

You should see Message received: <command output> in the console.

Shutdown httpVirt and clean up associated resources

$ cd httpVirt
$ vagrant destroy -f

Run the xterm demo

Make sure httpVirt is running and open demo/index.html in your web browser.

Updating httpVirt

When you make or pull new changes, destroy the currently running httpVirt VM with vagrant destroy -f and restart it with vagrant up.

kvu787 / httpVirt