Skip to content

overview.md

Latest commit

 

History

History
24 lines (16 loc) · 1.88 KB

overview.md

File metadata and controls

24 lines (16 loc) · 1.88 KB
Raw

Custom C HTTP Server - Overview

Welcome to the Custom C HTTP Server! This server was built from scratch in C to demonstrate the foundational concepts of networking, concurrent architectures, and the HTTP protocol.

Capabilities

This server is highly capable and supports the following features:

  • Static File Serving: Serves HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JSON, and images directly from the public/ directory.
  • Dynamic MIME Type Mapping: Automatically detects file extensions and serves the correct Content-Type header to ensure browsers render assets accurately.
  • Concurrent Thread Pool: Built with a highly scalable POSIX threads (pthreads) architecture. A pool of worker threads efficiently processes thousands of concurrent requests without the heavy overhead of fork().
  • CGI (Common Gateway Interface): Capable of executing dynamic scripts on the fly! Any request to /cgi-bin/ will spawn a secure process, execute the script (e.g., Python, Bash), and pipe the standard output back to the client.
  • POST Request Support: Can parse and handle arbitrary HTTP headers and fully read Content-Length payloads for POST requests (try the /echo endpoint!).
  • Security: Includes built-in path traversal protection to prevent malicious actors from accessing sensitive files outside of the designated public/ root folder.

How to Use It

Using the server is incredibly simple:

  1. Start the Server: Simply run the http-server executable from your terminal. It will bind to port 8080.
  2. Accessing the Site: Open your web browser and navigate to http://localhost:8080/. You will be served the public/index.html file.
  3. Running Scripts: Place executable scripts in public/cgi-bin/ (e.g., hello.py). You can execute them by navigating to http://localhost:8080/cgi-bin/hello.py.

Enjoy a blazing-fast, lightweight HTTP server that you have complete control over!