HTTP Server

A lightweight HTTP/1.1 server written in C++20 using Linux io_uring for async I/O.

Features

• io_uring based async I/O
• Trie-based URL routing
• Support for GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE methods
• Query parameter and header parsing

Requirements

• Linux kernel 5.6+ (for io_uring)
• liburing
• CMake 3.12+
• C++20 compiler

Building

cd example
cmake .
make

Usage

#include "http_server.h"

int main() {
  HTTP::ServerBuilder builder;
  builder.SetPort(8080);
  builder.SetThreads(4);
  
  builder.AddRequest(HTTP::GET, "/hello", [](const HTTP::RequestData& req) {
    HTTP::ResponseData res;
    res.status = 200;
    res.body = "Hello, World!";
    return res;
  });
  
  auto server = builder.Build();
  server.Start().Get();
}

Benchmarks

The benchmarks/ directory contains comparison tests against a Rust Tokio server.

Specs

• Policy: one io_uring per worker thread
• OS: Arch Linux, Linux 6.18.3-arch1-1
• CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) Ultra 7 155H (22 CPUs)
• RAM: 30 GiB
• Compiler: GCC 15.2.1
• liburing: 2.13

Results (C++ coroutine server vs Rust Tokio)

Run:

cd example
cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DENABLE_ASAN=OFF
cmake --build build -j

cd ../benchmarks
DURATION=30s THREADS=4 CONNECTIONS=100 ./benchmark.sh

Output (non-ASAN Release build):

GET /echo

Server	Latency avg	Latency stdev	Latency max	+/- stdev	Requests/sec	Transfer/sec
C++ coroutine server	132.16us	66.78us	4.97ms	80.82%	439792.17	29.78MB
Rust Tokio server	150.12us	119.34us	5.53ms	94.01%	506996.06	40.61MB

POST /echo

Server	Latency avg	Latency stdev	Latency max	+/- stdev	Requests/sec	Transfer/sec
C++ coroutine server	149.98us	77.14us	5.27ms	81.01%	402624.34	29.57MB
Rust Tokio server	168.98us	138.11us	5.80ms	91.79%	465844.80	39.98MB

Pull Request Checks

Pull requests targeting main or master run the CI / build-and-test GitHub Actions check. Configure both branches in GitHub branch protection or a repository ruleset with:

• Require a pull request before merging
• Require status checks to pass before merging
• Required status check: build-and-test (shown in Actions as CI / build-and-test)
• Restrict direct pushes to matching branches