Lately I’ve been struggling through the quagmire that is OpenSSL, and now that I’ve got some things working, I figure it’s a good time to make a series of blog posts about them for posterity.

This blog series consists of the following posts:

Work with smart pointers by default

The OpenSSL library has a very object-oriented design, even though it’s written in plain old C. It’s full of objects ( struct BIO , struct SSL , struct X509 ) which are “constructed” on the heap via FOO_new , “destroyed” via FOO_free , and have a bunch of “methods” accessible via various FOO_bar(foo, ...) macros. The first step in using OpenSSL from C++ should always be to wrap those objects in RAII types so that you don’t accidentally forget to FOO_free one of them due to early return or throw .

If you watched my CppCon 2019 talk “Back to Basics: Smart Pointers,” you already know how I’m going to do this.

namespace my { template<class T> struct DeleterOf; template<> struct DeleterOf<SSL_CTX> { void operator()(SSL_CTX *p) const { SSL_CTX_free(p); } }; template<> struct DeleterOf<SSL> { void operator()(SSL *p) const { SSL_free(p); } }; template<> struct DeleterOf<BIO> { void operator()(BIO *p) const { BIO_free_all(p); } }; template<> struct DeleterOf<BIO_METHOD> { void operator()(BIO_METHOD *p) const { BIO_meth_free(p); } }; template<class OpenSSLType> using UniquePtr = std::unique_ptr<OpenSSLType, my::DeleterOf<OpenSSLType>>; } // namespace my

This simple framework immediately enables me to write things like

auto ctx = my::UniquePtr<SSL_CTX>(SSL_CTX_new(TLS_client_method())); auto bio = my::UniquePtr<BIO>(BIO_new_connect("example.com:80")); if (BIO_do_connect(bio.get()) <= 0) { my::print_errors_and_exit("Error in BIO_do_connect"); }

If you’re going to be writing real code manipulating these objects, I recommend going a step further and creating your own my::SSLContext , my::Connection , and so on. These unique_ptr aliases are still important and useful, because they serve as a “glue” layer between raw libopenssl code and your own higher-level types. See “Back to Basics: Smart Pointers” for another example. However, for this series of blog posts I’m going to stick with these unique_ptr aliases, and forgo any higher-level business-logic types.

A BIO that prints to a std::string

In the code above, I used a magic function called my::print_errors_and_exit . What does that look like?

[[noreturn]] void print_errors_and_exit(const char *message) { fprintf(stderr, "%s

", message); ERR_print_errors_fp(stderr); exit(1); }

OpenSSL provides a built-in function ERR_print_errors_fp that can dump the current error stack to an arbitrary FILE* . So that’s great. But what if we wanted to throw an exception instead of just writing to stderr ? It turns out that that’s almost as simple, thanks to OpenSSL’s built-in function ERR_print_errors :

[[noreturn]] void print_errors_and_throw(const char *message) { my::StringBIO bio; ERR_print_errors(bio.bio()); throw std::runtime_error(std::string(message) + "

" + std::move(bio).str()); }

A BIO , in OpenSSL-speak, is sort of like a FILE* in C or a std::iostream in C++: it’s a two-way input/output channel. You can read from a BIO using the BIO_read(bio, buf, size) macro, and/or write to it using the BIO_write(bio, buf, size) macro. If you’re writing a network client or server, you’ll probably be reading and writing from a BIO that wraps a network socket.

There are two kinds of BIO s in OpenSSL: “source/sink BIOs” and “filter BIOs.” A source/sink BIO is like a network socket or a file descriptor: it’s a source of data to be read, and/or a sink for data that’s written. Examples include BIO_s_file and BIO_s_socket . A filter BIO is an adaptor: it sits in front of some other BIO and filters its data in some way. Examples include BIO_f_ssl and BIO_f_base64 .

How can we have so many different kinds of BIO s with only one type struct BIO ? Classical polymorphism! struct BIO itself is kind of like an “abstract base class.” Each method such as BIO_read looks up its behavior in a vtable of “BIO methods,” a pointer to which is stored within the BIO object itself. So if we want to make a new kind of BIO — a new “derived class” in C++ terms — we do it by manually creating and filling in a new vtable. The C type of a BIO vtable is BIO_METHOD .

class StringBIO { std::string str_; my::UniquePtr<BIO_METHOD> methods_; my::UniquePtr<BIO> bio_; public: StringBIO(StringBIO&&) = delete; StringBIO& operator=(StringBIO&&) = delete; explicit StringBIO() { methods_.reset(BIO_meth_new(BIO_TYPE_SOURCE_SINK, "StringBIO")); if (methods_ == nullptr) { throw std::runtime_error("StringBIO: error in BIO_meth_new"); } BIO_meth_set_write(methods_.get(), [](BIO *bio, const char *data, int len) -> int { std::string *str = reinterpret_cast<std::string*>(BIO_get_data(bio)); str->append(data, len); return len; }); bio_.reset(BIO_new(methods_.get())); if (bio_ == nullptr) { throw std::runtime_error("StringBIO: error in BIO_new"); } BIO_set_data(bio_.get(), &str_); BIO_set_init(bio_.get(), 1); } BIO *bio() { return bio_.get(); } std::string str() && { return std::move(str_); } };

Our C++ class StringBIO is not derived from struct BIO ; it’s actually an immovable wrapper that holds together a std::string buffer and a pointer to our actual “derived class” BIO. We create a new “vtable” for our BIO via BIO_meth_new(BIO_TYPE_SOURCE_SINK, "StringBIO") — the second argument is just an arbitrary human-readable name for debugging, and the poorly documented first parameter just tells whether we’re a source/sink BIO or a filter BIO. We fill in the vtable entries that will be called by ERR_print_errors . We don’t have to provide any behavior for BIO_read — we can leave that one as “pure virtual” in C++ terms (which means anyone who tries to call it will get an error). We fill in the entry for BIO_write by calling BIO_meth_set_write .

Notice my use of UniquePtr<BIO_METHOD> and UniquePtr<BIO> . The OpenSSL functions BIO_meth_new and BIO_new return owning raw pointers, and I never want to touch them with my hands. They go straight into their RAII wrappers.

Reading and writing HTTP messages (slideware version)

Suppose I have a BIO that refers to a network socket. How do I send an HTTP request over that socket? It’s super easy!

void send_http_request(BIO *bio, const std::string& line, const std::string& host) { std::string request = line + "\r

"; request += "Host: " + host + "\r

"; request += "\r

"; BIO_write(bio, request.data(), request.size()); BIO_flush(bio); }

Now I can implement an HTTP client (no SSL yet):

int main() { auto bio = my::UniquePtr<BIO>(BIO_new_connect("duckduckgo.com:80")); if (bio == nullptr) { my::print_errors_and_exit("Error in BIO_new_connect"); } if (BIO_do_connect(bio.get()) <= 0) { my::print_errors_and_exit("Error in BIO_do_connect"); } my::send_http_request(bio.get(), "GET / HTTP/1.1", "duckduckgo.com"); std::string response = my::receive_http_message(bio.get()); printf("%s", response.c_str()); }

The only complicated piece left to write is my::receive_http_message . Receiving data over a socket is always tricky (as far as I know) because recv (or BIO_read in our case) tends to block until the client sends some data, and so it’s important to know how much data you’re expecting the client to send before you actually try to read it. In the HTTP protocol, this catch-22 is handled by looking for a Content-Length: header, which will tell us how many bytes to expect in the message body.

(A non-slideware HTTP receiver would also have to deal with chunked transfer encoding and compressed/deflated/gzipped data, not to mention HTTP/2. I don’t really know anything about those things so I’m ignoring them.)

Our primitive operation here will be my::receive_some_data(bio) , which wraps a single call to BIO_read and gives back a std::string with the next packet’s worth of input (or throws, if unexpected stuff happens).

std::string receive_some_data(BIO *bio) { char buffer[1024]; int len = BIO_read(bio, buffer, sizeof(buffer)); if (len < 0) { my::print_errors_and_throw("error in BIO_read"); } else if (len > 0) { return std::string(buffer, len); } else if (BIO_should_retry(bio)) { return receive_some_data(bio); } else { my::print_errors_and_throw("empty BIO_read"); } }

To receive a single HTTP request, we first read packets until we find the end of the HTTP headers (indicated by \r

\r

). Then we parse the Content-Length: header. Then we read packets until we’ve read the expected number of bytes.

std::vector<std::string> split_headers(const std::string& text) { std::vector<std::string> lines; const char *start = text.c_str(); while (const char *end = strstr(start, "\r

")) { lines.push_back(std::string(start, end)); start = end + 2; } return lines; } std::string receive_http_message(BIO *bio) { std::string headers = my::receive_some_data(bio); char *end_of_headers = strstr(&headers[0], "\r

\r

"); while (end_of_headers == nullptr) { headers += my::receive_some_data(bio); end_of_headers = strstr(&headers[0], "\r

\r

"); } std::string body = std::string(end_of_headers+4, &headers[headers.size()]); headers.resize(end_of_headers+2 - &headers[0]); size_t content_length = 0; for (const std::string& line : my::split_headers(headers)) { if (const char *colon = strchr(line.c_str(), ':')) { auto header_name = std::string(&line[0], colon); if (header_name == "Content-Length") { content_length = std::stoul(colon+1); } } } while (body.size() < content_length) { body += my::receive_some_data(bio); } return headers + "\r

" + body; }

Notice that split_headers is extremely inefficient by C++ standards: a more C++ish interface might accept a callback with signature void cb(std::string_view) , which we’d call for each header — thus avoiding materialization of a bunch of std::string s as well as avoiding materialization of a std::vector to hold them.

Putting it all together

Here is the complete code for our very simple C++14 HTTP client. When you compile and run this code with OpenSSL 1.1.0+, it should fetch the home page of duckduckgo.com over an unencrypted HTTP connection.

Godbolt Compiler Explorer doesn’t support running programs that do networking, but you can see the code on Godbolt here anyway.

#include <memory> #include <stdexcept> #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <string.h> #include <string> #include <vector> #include <openssl/bio.h> #include <openssl/err.h> namespace my { template<class T> struct DeleterOf; template<> struct DeleterOf<BIO> { void operator()(BIO *p) const { BIO_free_all(p); } }; template<> struct DeleterOf<BIO_METHOD> { void operator()(BIO_METHOD *p) const { BIO_meth_free(p); } }; template<class OpenSSLType> using UniquePtr = std::unique_ptr<OpenSSLType, DeleterOf<OpenSSLType>>; class StringBIO { std::string str_; my::UniquePtr<BIO_METHOD> methods_; my::UniquePtr<BIO> bio_; public: StringBIO(StringBIO&&) = delete; StringBIO& operator=(StringBIO&&) = delete; explicit StringBIO() { methods_.reset(BIO_meth_new(BIO_TYPE_SOURCE_SINK, "StringBIO")); if (methods_ == nullptr) { throw std::runtime_error("StringBIO: error in BIO_meth_new"); } BIO_meth_set_write(methods_.get(), [](BIO *bio, const char *data, int len) -> int { std::string *str = reinterpret_cast<std::string*>(BIO_get_data(bio)); str->append(data, len); return len; }); bio_.reset(BIO_new(methods_.get())); if (bio_ == nullptr) { throw std::runtime_error("StringBIO: error in BIO_new"); } BIO_set_data(bio_.get(), &str_); BIO_set_init(bio_.get(), 1); } BIO *bio() { return bio_.get(); } std::string str() && { return std::move(str_); } }; [[noreturn]] void print_errors_and_exit(const char *message) { fprintf(stderr, "%s

", message); ERR_print_errors_fp(stderr); exit(1); } [[noreturn]] void print_errors_and_throw(const char *message) { my::StringBIO bio; ERR_print_errors(bio.bio()); throw std::runtime_error(std::string(message) + "

" + std::move(bio).str()); } std::string receive_some_data(BIO *bio) { char buffer[1024]; int len = BIO_read(bio, buffer, sizeof(buffer)); if (len < 0) { my::print_errors_and_throw("error in BIO_read"); } else if (len > 0) { return std::string(buffer, len); } else if (BIO_should_retry(bio)) { return receive_some_data(bio); } else { my::print_errors_and_throw("empty BIO_read"); } } std::vector<std::string> split_headers(const std::string& text) { std::vector<std::string> lines; const char *start = text.c_str(); while (const char *end = strstr(start, "\r

")) { lines.push_back(std::string(start, end)); start = end + 2; } return lines; } std::string receive_http_message(BIO *bio) { std::string headers = my::receive_some_data(bio); char *end_of_headers = strstr(&headers[0], "\r

\r

"); while (end_of_headers == nullptr) { headers += my::receive_some_data(bio); end_of_headers = strstr(&headers[0], "\r

\r

"); } std::string body = std::string(end_of_headers+4, &headers[headers.size()]); headers.resize(end_of_headers+2 - &headers[0]); size_t content_length = 0; for (const std::string& line : my::split_headers(headers)) { if (const char *colon = strchr(line.c_str(), ':')) { auto header_name = std::string(&line[0], colon); if (header_name == "Content-Length") { content_length = std::stoul(colon+1); } } } while (body.size() < content_length) { body += my::receive_some_data(bio); } return headers + "\r

" + body; } void send_http_request(BIO *bio, const std::string& line, const std::string& host) { std::string request = line + "\r

"; request += "Host: " + host + "\r

"; request += "\r

"; BIO_write(bio, request.data(), request.size()); BIO_flush(bio); } } // namespace my int main() { auto bio = my::UniquePtr<BIO>(BIO_new_connect("duckduckgo.com:80")); if (bio == nullptr) { my::print_errors_and_exit("Error in BIO_new_connect"); } if (BIO_do_connect(bio.get()) <= 0) { my::print_errors_and_exit("Error in BIO_do_connect"); } my::send_http_request(bio.get(), "GET / HTTP/1.1", "duckduckgo.com"); std::string response = my::receive_http_message(bio.get()); printf("%s", response.c_str()); }

This series continues with “OpenSSL client and server from scratch, part 2.”