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.
- 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
- A BSD-based system (FreeBSD, macOS) — Linux may work via libkqueue
- A C++23-capable clang compiler
makeon macOS;gmakeon FreeBSD
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
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) |
$ 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...
Apache License v2.0. See LICENSE file.
Ramsey Kant — https://github.com/RamseyK/httpserver