Python Web Server

• The goal of this project is to demystify the magic behind web backends by stripping away complex third-party wrappers and dealing directly with low-level network sockets, protocol specifications, and process management.
• The system operates as a classic structural pipeline connecting a web client all the way through to a modern web application framework:

Architecture Pipeline

           [ Web Client ]
                 │
                 ▼
   │─────────────────────────────│
   │      Custom Web Server      │
   │      (Parent Process)       │
   │─────────────────────────────│
                 │
        ┌────────┴────────┐
        ▼                 ▼
  [Child Proc A]    [Child Proc B]   ... (Scales per incoming request)
        │                 │
        ▼                 ▼
   [WSGI App]        [WSGI App]     (Flask / Django / Pyramid)

Requirements & Installation

• Operating System: Linux, macOS, or WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). Note: The multi-processing layer uses UNIX system calls (fork) which are natively unsupported on Windows cmd/PowerShell.
• Python: Python 3.7+ (Uses native socket, sys, and os standard libraries).

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/2radu3/web-server.git
   cd web-server

2. Set up a virtual environment to install a framework to test the WSGI layer. Tested with Flask, Django, Pyramid

   python3 -m venv venv
   source venv/bin/activate
   pip install Flask
   pip install Django
   pip install Pyramid

How to Run & Test

• Running the Basic Server:

  python3 webserver1.py

• Open a separate terminal window and verify the raw HTTP response headers using curl:

  curl -i http://localhost:8888/

• Running the Concurrent WSGI Server:

  Start the WSGI server by pointing it directly to your Flask application instance (flaskapp:flask_app):

  python3 wsgi_server.py app:flask_app

• Running the concurrent server:

  python3 concurrent_server.py flaskapp:flask_app

  Test it with a specific amount of clients:

  python3 clients.py --max-clients 128