HTTP Server

A high-performance, single-threaded, event-driven HTTP/1.1 server written in C++23, built on kqueue. Intended as a learning tool for kqueue-based socket management and the HTTP/1.1 protocol on BSD systems.

Features

• Efficient event-driven I/O via kqueue
• Optional privilege dropping (drop_uid / drop_gid) after binding
• Self-contained HTTP/1.1 parser built on the ByteBuffer library
• Clean, documented code
• Tested on FreeBSD and macOS

Requirements

• A BSD-based system (FreeBSD, macOS) — Linux may work via libkqueue
• A C++23-capable clang compiler
• make on macOS; gmake on FreeBSD

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/RamseyK/httpserver.git
cd httpserver
make                       # produces ./bin/httpserver
mkdir htdocs               # document root
$EDITOR server.config      # see Configuration below
./bin/httpserver

Configuration

server.config is read from the working directory. Lines starting with # are ignored. Format: key=value, one per line.

Key	Required	Description
vhost	yes	Comma-separated list of host aliases to serve
port	yes	TCP port (1–65535)
diskpath	yes	Path to document root (must exist)
drop_uid	no	UID to drop to after binding (must be set with drop_gid)
drop_gid	no	GID to drop to after binding (must be set with drop_uid)

Example

$ cat server.config
vhost=10.0.10.86,acme.local
port=8080
diskpath=./htdocs

$ ./bin/httpserver
Primary port: 8080, disk path: ./htdocs
vhost: 10.0.10.86
vhost: acme.local
Server ready. Listening on port 8080...

License

Apache License v2.0. See LICENSE file.

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Ramsey Kant — https://github.com/RamseyK/httpserver