Http Server from TCP

A minimal HttpServer, developed in order to dive deeper into HTTP protocol, and deal with the challenges of the process of handling request/response cycle practically, and get a better understanding of how does web/http servers and Backend/API frameworks work internally.

NOTE : This HttpServer is not even close to real-world web serves, and it doesn't support many of advanced HTTP features! (Generally I developed this project just for educational purposes! 🙃)

content

• Overview of Features
• Directory Layout
• How It Works (Server Architecture and Work Cycle)
• Setup and Test

Overview of Features

• Graceful shutdown handling
• Concurrent connections handling (one goroutine for each TCP connection)
• Parsing raw bytes (coming from TCP connection) to meaningful HTTP request
• Handling parsed HTTP requests and using its headers to direct server's behavior; for example:
  • managing response body compression, using Accept-Encoding header
  • managing decompression for possibly compressed request bodies, using Content-Encoding and Transfer-Encoding headers
  • handling keep-alive behavior using Keep-Alive header, request HTTP Version, and Content-Length header (reading incoming bytes as much as Content-Length Value, then stop and wait for next incoming request bytes, to prevent EOF and force closing connection)

Directory Layout

.
├── cmd/main.go          # server bootstrap and run
├── config/config.go     # configuration initialization
├── logging/logger.go    # logger setup
│
├── http/                # http components implementation (Request, Response, Header, ...)
│
├── server
│   ├── compression.go   # Compression & Decompression utils
│   ├── conn_handler.go  # Connection Handler: handle tcp connections & request/response cycles
│   ├── req_handler.go   # Request Handler: handle parsed request & prepare response
│   ├── req_parser.go    # Request Parser: parse incoming raw bytes into http request
│   ├── resp_encoder.go  # Response Encoder: encode a response object to raw bytes
│   └── server.go        # main server implementation (based on TCP listener)
│
├── tests/               # tests and testing helpers
└── ...

How It Works (Server Architecture and Work Cycle)

Main Work Cycle

TCP Server: After accepting each connection, spawns a goroutine of Connection Handler to handle that connection

Connection Handler:

1. Parse raw request bytes into meaningful HTTP request using Request Parser
2. Handle parsed HTTP request to generate proper HTTP response using Request Handler
3. Encode generated HTTP response to raw bytes using Response Encoder
4. Send encoded response bytes to TCP connection
5. Keep alive connection and wait for the next incoming request bytes (and go to step 1) / or Close connection

Setup and Test

First clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/hamidgh01/HttpServer-from-TCP.git

or download the zip file, and unzip

Docker Setup

Requirements: Docker

Build image:

cd HttpServer-from-TCP
docker build -t httpserver:0.1.0 .

Base Images: golang:1.27-alpine for build, and alpine:3 for runtime

Run a container from built image:

docker run -d -p 8000:8000 --name my-httpserver httpserver:0.1.0
# or
docker run -d -P --name my-httpserver httpserver:0.1.0
docker port my-httpserver  # to check port mapping

Local Setup

Requirements: Go Language

There is'nt any dependency and env/configuration setup for this project!

Just go to project's root directory and run the server:

cd HttpServer-from-TCP

go run ./cmd
# or
go build -o httpserver ./cmd/main.go
./httpserver

But you can change default configurations using CLI flags. use -help flag to see options:

go run ./cmd -help
./httpserver -help

Test HTTP-Server Manually:‍‍

curl -v http://localhost:8000
curl -v http://127.0.0.1:8000
curl -v http://127.0.0.1:8000/home
curl -v http://127.0.0.1:8000/optional/path

Or, just open your browser and enter:

http://localhost:8000
http://127.0.0.1:8000
http://127.0.0.1:8000/home
http://127.0.0.1:8000/optional/path

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE File for more details.

Developed by hamidgh01