HTTP Server

I have developped this project in order to explore and learn more about how HTTP servers work under the hood. It is written with a focus on simplicity so on HTTP/1.1. I have licensed it under MIT License so feel free to fork it, clone it and remodel it.

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📖 Table of Contents

1. 💡 How It Works
2. 📦 Setup
3. 🚀 Usage

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💡 How It Works

RFCs

HTTP/1.1 : RFC 7230 - RFC 7231 - RFC 7232 - RFC 7233 - RFC 7234 - RFC 7235

Roadmap

A HTTP server has a basic and simple roadmap to follow.

1. Listens to a port for incoming HTTP request
   • Handling TCP/IP incoming messages

Handling TCP/IP

In order to answer to incoming HTTP requests, we have to be able to listens to an opened port via a socket to receive the messages. Via this socket, we will also send the responses.

1. Create the socket

// In order to create the socket, I used the unix standard library socket. (man socket)
int socket_fd = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0);

2. Identify the socket

// The socket is bound to a specific port (I used 4600 by default) using the bind() system call. (man bind)
bind(socket_fd, (struct sockaddr *)&address, address_len);

3. On the server, wait for an incoming connection

// Now we have to listen for incoming connections using the listen() system call. (man listen)
listen(socket_fd, LISTEN_BACKLOG);

4. Send and receive messages

// Once a connection request is detected on the listened port, we use accept to create a file descriptor and establish the connection. (man accept)
int connection_fd = accept(socket_fd, (struct sockaddr *)&address, &address_len);

// In the first scenario (commit below), I wrote a simple message as a response.
const char *message = "Hello from server!\n";
write(connection_fd, message, strlen(message));

5. Close the socket

close(connection_fd);
close(socket_fd);`

For more informations, please check out this commit (file src/main.c) :

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📦 Setup

Prerequisites

• Compiler for C code (if using the C version): gcc or equivalent.

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/Hugo-CASTELL/http-server.git && cd http-server

2. (Optional) Remove the .git:

   rm -r .git

Build

TODO Build

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🚀 Usage

TODO Usage

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🙏 Credits

Skrew Everything Beej's Guide to Network Programming