WebCerver

A minimal HTTP/1.1 server written in C. Features raw socket programming, and a basic request parsing pipeline.

Features

• Socket server with connection handling
• HTTP/1.1 request parsing
• Thread-per-connection model using pthreads

Limitations

• Current scope: HTTP/1.1 GET requests, static file serving, thread-per-connection concurrency.
• Test suite is incomplete.

Table of Contents

• Project Structure
• Building
• Running
• Architecture
• Dependencies

Project Structure

.
├── .github/
│   └── workflows/
│       └── release.yml           # Github actions release workflow
├── lib/
│   ├── sds/                      # SDS dynamic string library
│   │   ├── sds.h
│   │   ├── sds.c
│   │   └── sdsalloc.h
│   └── argtable3/
│       ├── argtable3.h
│       └── argtable3.c
├── src/
│   ├── main.c                    # Entry point, server loop
│   ├── http/                     # HTTP protocol handling
│   │   ├── http.c                # Request parsing (request line, headers, body)
│   │   └── http.h
│   ├── net/                      # Network layer
│   │   ├── network.c             # Socket abstraction
│   │   └── network.h
│   ├── cli/                      # CLI handling
│   │   ├── cli.c
│   │   └── cli.h
│   ├── resource/                 # Resource handling
│   │   ├── filesystem.c          # Filesystem operations
│   │   ├── filesystem.h
│   │   ├── resource_resolver.c   # Resource resolution (static files, routes)
│   │   └── resource_resolver.h
│   └── server/                   # Server core
│       ├── server.c              # Request dispatch, response building
│       └── server.h
├── tests/                        # Tests directory
│   └── test_http_parser.c        # Tests for request parsing pipeline
├── Makefile                      # Build system
├── LICENSE
└── README.md

Building

Prerequisites

• C compiler (clang or gcc)
• make
• pthreads

Build Commands

# Build debug binary (default)
make

# Clean build artifacts
make clean

# Run all tests
make test

Output binary location: ./output/WebCerver

Running

# After building
./output/WebCerver start --webroot <path> [--port <port>] 

Server listens on port 8080 by default. Test with:

curl -X GET http://localhost:[PORT]/[file-path]

Architecture

Request Flow

main.c (server loop)
    └── pthread_create → handle_connection()
            └── net/network.c → network_read_bytes()
            └── server/server.c → server_process_request()
                    ├── http/http.c → http_parse_request()
                    │       ├── split_request()
                    │       ├── parse_request_line()
                    │       ├── parse_headers()
                    │       └── parse_body()
                    ├── resource/resource_resolver.c → resolve_resource()
                    │       └── resource/filesystem.c → read
                    └── http/http.c → http_build_response_str()
                            ├── build_success_response() / build_error_response()
                            └── get_mime_type(), http_reason_phrase()
            └── net/network.c → network_send_bytes()

Module Responsibilities

Module	Responsibility
main.c	Socket setup, accept loop, thread spawning
net/network.c	Socket I/O: bind, listen, accept, read, write, close
server/server.c	Request orchestration: parse → resolve → build response
http/http.c	HTTP/1.1 parsing + response building (headers, status, body)
resource/resource_resolver.c	Path validation, traversal protection, resource mapping
resource/filesystem.c	file reading
cli/cli.c	Handling Command-Line options
sds	Dynamic string buffer (growable, binary-safe)
argtable3	CLI flag parsing

Dependencies

• SDS (bundled in lib/sds/)
• Argtable3 (bundled in lib/argtable3/)
• pthread
• Standard C library

License

The Unlicense (see LICENSE)