About

This is my attempt at creating an Async HTTP Server in C, it's only planned to work on linux_x86 and only on more "modern" kernel versions (5.6+), here is a simple example on how to use it along with cJSON:

char *GetUsers(Request *req, Response *res) {
  cJSON *users_array = cJSON_CreateArray();
  for (size_t i = 0; i < users_len; i++) {
      cJSON *user_object = cJSON_CreateObject();
      cJSON_AddItemToArray(users_array, user_object);
      cJSON_AddStringToObject(user_object, "username", users[i].username);
      cJSON_AddStringToObject(user_object, "email", users[i].email);
  }

  cJSON_Delete(users_array);
  return JSON(res, 200, users_array);
}

int main(void) {
  Server server = NewServer(8080);

  ServerGet(&server, "/users", &GetUsers);

  ServerListen(&server);

  return 0;
}

TODOS

• Parse the HTTP request
• Respond to the HTTP request with some basic text
• Basic routing
• Read the headers
• Parse the HTTP
  • Status
  • Method
  • Headers
  • Body
• Abstract parsing
• Abstract getting header key
• HTTP Response creation
  • string/html
  • JSON - with some lib
• io_uring
  • Event loop
  • Async socket handling
  • Add coroutines
  • Async file reading, and file writing
  • Async optional body parsing
• Optimize io_uring, bulk complete tasks and mark as seen
• Proper error handling
  • Error logging, perror, strerror and assertions
  • Assert on invalid library user errors
• Paths should just be a vector
• Cleanup API and add missing basic stuff
• Properly free all resources
• Find errors with fuzzing
• Stress Test

Future

• Graph based routing

Resources

• https://bruinsslot.jp/post/simple-http-webserver-in-c/
• https://github.com/DaveGamble/cJSON
• https://libaco.org/docs
• https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/io_uring.7.html
• https://unixism.net/loti/tutorial/webserver_liburing.html