C library for OWASP Coraza Web Application Firewall

Welcome to libcoraza, the C library for OWASP Coraza Web Application Firewall. Because Coraza was made in Go, if you want to embed it in any kind of C application, you will need this library.

Prerequisites

• A C compiler:
  • gcc or
  • clang
• Go compiler v1.25+
• libtool
• autotools
• make

Download

Download the library source:

git clone https://github.com/corazawaf/libcoraza libcoraza

Install from PPA (Ubuntu)

Prebuilt packages are available from a Launchpad PPA: https://launchpad.net/~pierrepomes/+archive/ubuntu/libcoraza

# add-apt-repository lives in software-properties-common on minimal images
sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pierrepomes/libcoraza
sudo apt update
sudo apt install libcoraza1      # runtime library
sudo apt install libcoraza-dev   # headers, for building connectors

Built for Ubuntu 22.04 (jammy), 24.04 (noble), 26.04 (resolute) and 26.10 (stonking).

Build

Build the source:

cd libcoraza
./build.sh
./configure
make
sudo make install

Run tests

Run the full test suite (Go tests with race detection + C test validation):

make check

Build offline or different branch/commit

If you want to compile the library from a different branch/commit than main or HEAD, or want to make a package offline, get the code and use it as vendor:

go get -u github.com/corazawaf/coraza/v3@HASH-ID
go mod vendor
go mod tidy
./build.sh
./configure
make

If you didn't install the built library (skipped the sudo make install step), set the library path before running your application:

# Linux
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=../:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

# macOS
export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=../:$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH

SWIG language bindings

libcoraza ships a SWIG interface file (coraza.i) that allows generating bindings for a wide range of languages including Python, Ruby, Java, PHP, Perl, and many others.

Prerequisites

• SWIG 4.0 or later

Install on Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt install swig

Install on macOS (Homebrew):

brew install swig

Ready-made examples

The examples/ directory contains fully working examples with their own Makefiles:

# Python
make -C examples/python      # build
make -C examples/python run  # build and run

# Java (requires JAVA_HOME to be set)
make -C examples/java        # build
make -C examples/java run    # build and run

Each example exercises the full API including error and debug log callbacks.

Building bindings for other languages

First build the library:

./build.sh
./configure
make

Then invoke SWIG directly against coraza.i:

# Ruby example
swig -ruby -o coraza_wrap.c coraza.i
gcc -shared -fPIC coraza_wrap.c $(ruby -rrbconfig -e 'puts RbConfig::CONFIG["CFLAGS"]') \
    -L. -lcoraza -o coraza.so

Notes

• Callbacks — coraza_set_error_callback and coraza_set_debug_log_callback are provided as language-specific trampolines for Python and Java (see coraza.i and the example directories). For other languages, refer to the SWIG documentation on %callback or director classes.
• coraza_matched_rule_get_error_log returns a string owned by the caller. The generated wrapper takes ownership automatically so the target language runtime frees it when the object is garbage collected.