# pg×html This is a tool to make custom web interfaces to PostgreSQL databases (aka [dynamic websites](https://defanor.uberspace.net/notes/dynamic-websites.xhtml)), using simple and standard technologies: - SQL for querying - XSLT for templating - HTML forms for user input - Optional HTTP basic authentication for PostgreSQL authentication - CGI URL query parameters are available for use from XSLTs. SQL query templates can use those too, as well as HTML form data submitted with the POST method. Request timeouts are enforced and do cancel DB queries, but otherwise it relies on PostgreSQL for access permissions and security policies, as well as for any business logic that may be needed. ## Usage ### Invocation The used environment variables are: - `TIMEOUT`: request timeout in seconds, 10 by default. - `XSLT_DIR`: a directory to read XSLT files from, current working directory by default. Regular [libpq environment variables](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/libpq-envars.html) are used for database connections. ### Templating URL query parameters are made visible to XSLTs as `xsl:param` parameters. The documents they get applied to are either the results of SQL queries (which are expected to return a single XML document, using `query_to_xml` or similar functions), or error documents (which contain error details) in case of an error. The XSLTs are taken from `XSLT_DIR`, using file name the `t` URL query parameter, with added `xsl` extension. ### Querying SQL queries provided in the `q` URL query parameter get executed, with some substitutions to handle HTML forms: - `f:` for "POST" (serialised form data in message body) parameters - `q:` for "GET" (serialised form data in URI query) parameters - `:fields` for "POST" parameter names - `:values` for "POST" parameter values (in the same order as the names) `:fields` and `:values` are unnecessary, but are provided for convenience of insert/upsert operations. SQL queries get tokenized by splitting into words and reassembled afterwards, hence some whitespace separation is needed. HTTP methods (and corresponding conventions) are currently ignored, since they are of little use with HTML 5 forms. ### Authentication Presence of `auth=on` in the URL query requires HTTP basic authentication, and the provided credentials are used directly for PostgreSQL authentication. HTTP authentication also gets requested if a database connection failure was password-related. ### Web server This is intended to be used with an HTTP server, which would take care of encryption, compression, static files, redirects, and so on, while pgxhtml only focuses on providing a web interface to a database. ### Security checklist - Regular privileges (see [GRANT](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-grant.html)) should be set appropriately. - [Row Security Policies](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/ddl-rowsecurity.html) should be defined and enabled. - [Constraints](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/ddl-constraints.html) are useful for data validation. - [REVOKE CREATE ON SCHEMA public FROM PUBLIC](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/ddl-schemas.html) would likely be desired (perhaps granting `CREATE` just to the database owner/administrators). - Possibly web server rules (such as nginx rewrites), if it's desired to strictly limit available queries. ## See also - [PostgREST](http://postgrest.org/), "a standalone web server that turns your PostgreSQL database directly into a RESTful API". - [automatic-api](https://github.com/dbohdan/automatic-api/), a list of tools for automatic HTTP-based API generation.