Coding a HTTP server in C

Programming a basic HTTP server in C. Making use of cURL for testing purposes and sending requests to the server written in a bash script which can and will be modified with any required tests going forward. After cloning the repo to run the code first navigate to /src directory and compile code with the makefile by:

cd src 
make

This will compile the as of now one file into server binary which can be ran with ./server.

Testing

Testing was conducted with the bash script server_test.sh which can be run by calling ./server_test.sh in the parent directory: 'HTTP server'. This should run the tests and compare the HTTP response obtained to the expected result and output the ammount of tests passed as well as the server logs. Tests can be added directly to the script in the tests array by adding a filepath to be tested then an expected response both as strings.

For manual testing first run the server with ./server while it is compiled in the /src directory. Then send any HTTP request to the selected port defined in HTTP.c.

To-Do

1. Serve CSS/JS files

• Serving files so that a website can be accessed properly.
• Also adding support for photos and other binary files.

2. Silent mode

• Allowing the program to be run in silent mode where no logs are output to the terminal.

3. Allowing peer to peer communication

• Obtaining POST requests from clients and verifying content then distributing to other clients.

4. Final Chat app

Environment

Development was done with VScode 1.91.0 running on WSL ubuntu 22.04 compiling with gcc version 11.4.0.

Caution

This server is not to be used for commercial uses. (Not that it has many uses)