HTTP Server from Scratch (Rust)

A lightweight, multi-threaded HTTP server implementation built purely in Rust without using high-level web frameworks like Actix, Axum, or Rocket.

This project focuses on understanding the low-level details of the HTTP/1.1 protocol, TCP handling, and concurrent connection management.

🚀 Features implemented

• TCP Connection Handling: Binds to a port and listens for incoming TCP streams.
• Request Parsing:
  • Extracts URL paths and HTTP methods.
  • Reads and parses HTTP headers.
  • Reads request bodies.
• Response Generation:
  • Constructs valid HTTP/1.1 status lines and headers.
  • Sends text and file bodies.
• File Server: capable of serving static files from a directory.
• Concurrency: Handles multiple client connections simultaneously using a thread pool/threading.

🛠 Progress Tracker

• Extract URL path
• Respond with body
• Read header
• Concurrent connections
• Return a file
• Read request body
• HTTP Compression (Gzip)
• Persistent Connections (Keep-Alive)

💻 How to Run

1. Ensure you have Rust installed.
2. Clone the repository.
3. Run the server:

   # Defaults to localhost:4221 (or your configured port)
   cargo run
   

4. Test with curl:

curl -v [http://127.0.0.1:4221/](http://127.0.0.1:4221/)

🧩 Technical Stack & Architecture

• Language: Rust (2021 Edition)
• Architecture: Multi-threaded, Blocking I/O

Core Modules (std):

• std::net: Raw TCP socket management (TcpListener, TcpStream).
• std::io: Buffered reading/writing (BufReader) for efficient protocol parsing.
• std::sync: Atomic Reference Counting (Arc) for safe state sharing across threads.
• std::thread: Spawning threads for concurrent connection handling.

External Dependencies:

• flate2: Implements the Gzip compression algorithm (DEFLATE).