StaticHTTPServer

This is a lightweight HTTP server that was created for teaching purposes.

You can clone the project with the following shell command:

git clone https://github.com/jgutie2r/StaticHTTPServer.git

or you can do it from Eclipse if you have a git plugin installed.

This HTTP server responds to GET requests asking for a particular resource.

The directory where resources are located, the maximum number of concurrent requests and the port number are specified in the config.ini file. Also you can configure the prefix of resources that require user/password and the name of the file in that path that stores that user/password information.

This is the config.ini file included in the project:

PATH=/var/web/resources
NUM_THREADS=500
SERVER_PORT=8080
AUTH_PREFIX=private
CREDENTIALS=.creds

This means that:

1. The resources are located in the path /var/web/resources
   If the URI is http://server:8080/path/resource
   then there should exists /var/web/resources/path/resource
   in order to have a 200 OK response with the resource

2. The server can deal with 500 concurrent requests.

3. The server listen in port 8080

4. If the path starts with private then the server sends to the client a 401 message asking for user and password.
   Sample URL that triggers this behaviour:
   http://server:8080/privateSite1/index.html

5. This is the file name that stores the user and password. This should be a text file that has a single line with the format:
   user;password

   So in the previous URL example it is assumed that there exists the following file:
   /var/web/resources/privateSite1/.creds
   

   Each path can have its own .creds file storing different user/password.

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This is part of a teaching subject in Server Side Web Applications Programming.

This code serves as starting point to add more features such as:

• CGI like behaviour

• Servlet like behaviour using Reflection API

So it is posible to have basic static HTTP server + CGI + Servlet like behaviour in a very small jar file (around 20 kb).

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Juan Gutierrez Aguado (PhD)
Departamento de Informatica - Computer Science Department
Universidad de Valencia - Valencia University
Spain