HTTP-from-TCP: Building HTTP from the Ground Up

A learning-focused HTTP server implementation built entirely FROM SCRATCH on top of the TCP connection. This project demonstrates how HTTP works at the protocol level by parsing TCP connections, implementing HTTP message parsing, and building a complete web server with advanced features like chunked transfer encoding and binary data serving.

🎯 Why This Project?

Understanding HTTP is fundamental to web development, but most developers only interact with high-level HTTP libraries. This project peels back the abstraction layers to show:

• How HTTP actually works over TCP connections
• Raw HTTP message parsing without libraries
• Protocol-level implementation of features like chunked encoding
• Binary data handling in text-based protocols

🚀 Quick Start

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/taham8875/http-from-tcp.git
cd http-from-tcp

# Run the server
go run ./cmd/httpserver

# Test it out!
curl http://localhost:42069/
curl http://localhost:42069/video
curl http://localhost:42069/httpbin/stream/100

Visit http://localhost:42069 in your browser to see the server in action!

🏗️ Architecture Overview

graph TB
    Client[HTTP Client] --> TCP[TCP Connection]
    TCP --> Server[HTTP Server]
    
    Server --> Parser[HTTP Request Parser]
    Parser --> Router[Request Router]
    
    Router --> HTML[HTML Responses]
    Router --> Proxy[HTTPBin Proxy]
    Router --> Video[Binary Video Handler]
    
    Proxy --> HTTPBin[httpbin.org]
    HTTPBin --> Chunked[Chunked Transfer Encoding]
    
    HTML --> Response[Response Writer]
    Video --> Response
    Chunked --> Response
    
    Response --> HTTP[HTTP Response Formatting]
    HTTP --> TCP
    
    subgraph "Core Components"
        Parser
        Router
        Response
    end

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✨ Key Features

🔧 Core HTTP Implementation

• Raw TCP connection handling with net.Listen and net.Conn
• HTTP request parsing from byte streams
• HTTP response formatting with proper headers and status codes
• Flexible response writer with state management

🌐 Advanced HTTP Features

• Chunked Transfer Encoding for streaming responses
• HTTP Trailers with SHA256 content hashing
• Binary data serving (videos, images, etc.)
• Proxy functionality to httpbin.org with real-time streaming

📁 Project Structure

├── cmd/httpserver/          # Main server application
├── internal/
│   ├── headers/            # HTTP header parsing and management
│   ├── request/            # HTTP request parsing
│   ├── response/           # HTTP response writing
│   └── server/             # TCP server implementation
├── assets/                 # Static assets (videos, etc.)
└── README.md

🎮 Available Endpoints

Endpoint	Description	Response Type
GET /	Default success page	HTML
GET /yourproblem	400 Bad Request example	HTML
GET /myproblem	500 Internal Server Error	HTML
GET /video	Streams a video file	Binary (video/mp4)
GET /httpbin/*	Proxies requests to httpbin.org	Chunked JSON