See httpserver.h for API documentation

Description

httpserver.h is a single header C library for building event driven non-blocking HTTP servers

Supports Linux with epoll and BSD/Mac with kqueue.

Example

#defineHTTPSERVER_IMPL#include"httpserver.h"#defineRESPONSE "Hello, World!"
voidhandle_request(structhttp_request_s*request) {
structhttp_response_s*response=http_response_init();
http_response_status(response, 200);
http_response_header(response, "Content-Type", "text/plain");
http_response_body(response, RESPONSE, sizeof(RESPONSE) -1);
http_respond(request, response);
}
intmain() {
structhttp_server_s*server=http_server_init(8080, handle_request);
http_server_listen(server);
}

See full documentation in httpserver.h

Benchmark

I ran some micro-benchmarks with httpserver.h and NGINX serving a simple Hello, World! The purpose here was just to get a performance reference point, not to try and make any statement of superiority since httpserver.h is not a competitor or replacement for NGINX.

With keep-alive

ab -k -c 200 -n 100000 http://localhost:8080/

NGINX 74441.26 requests/sec

Server Software: nginx/1.14.0
Server Hostname: localhost
Server Port: 8000
Document Path: /
Document Length: 13 bytes
Concurrency Level: 200
Time taken for tests: 1.343 seconds
Complete requests: 100000
Failed requests: 0
Keep-Alive requests: 99052
Total transferred: 20995260 bytes
HTML transferred: 1300000 bytes
Requests per second: 74441.26 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 2.687 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 0.013 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 15262.83 [Kbytes/sec] received
Connection Times (ms)
min mean[+/-sd] median max
Connect: 0 0 17.8 0 1029
Processing: 0 2 8.8 1 148
Waiting: 0 2 8.8 1 148
Total: 0 3 21.4 1 1150
Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
50% 1
66% 2
75% 2
80% 2
90% 2
95% 2
98% 3
99% 35
100% 1150 (longest request)

httpserver.h 123907.91 requests/sec

Server Software: Server Hostname: localhost
Server Port: 8080
Document Path: /
Document Length: 13 bytes
Concurrency Level: 200
Time taken for tests: 0.807 seconds
Complete requests: 100000
Failed requests: 0
Keep-Alive requests: 100000
Total transferred: 13400000 bytes
HTML transferred: 1300000 bytes
Requests per second: 123907.91 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 1.614 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 0.008 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 16214.51 [Kbytes/sec] received
Connection Times (ms)
min mean[+/-sd] median max
Connect: 0 0 0.1 0 4
Processing: 1 2 0.3 2 6
Waiting: 1 2 0.3 2 6
Total: 1 2 0.4 2 6
Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
50% 2
66% 2
75% 2
80% 2
90% 2
95% 2
98% 3
99% 3
100% 6 (longest request)

With Connection: close

ab -c 200 -n 100000 http://localhost:8080/

NGINX 15773.47 requests/sec

Server Software: nginx/1.14.0
Server Hostname: localhost
Server Port: 8000
Document Path: /
Document Length: 13 bytes
Concurrency Level: 200
Time taken for tests: 6.340 seconds
Complete requests: 100000
Failed requests: 0
Total transferred: 20500000 bytes
HTML transferred: 1300000 bytes
Requests per second: 15773.47 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 12.680 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 0.063 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 3157.77 [Kbytes/sec] received
Connection Times (ms)
min mean[+/-sd] median max
Connect: 0 4 40.6 3 1123
Processing: 1 8 46.7 4 508
Waiting: 1 7 46.7 3 508
Total: 3 12 64.5 6 1460
Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
50% 6
66% 7
75% 7
80% 8
90% 8
95% 9
98% 10
99% 503
100% 1460 (longest request)

httpserver.h 27605.45 requests/sec

Server Software: Server Hostname: localhost
Server Port: 8080
Document Path: /
Document Length: 13 bytes
Concurrency Level: 200
Time taken for tests: 3.622 seconds
Complete requests: 100000
Failed requests: 0
Total transferred: 12900000 bytes
HTML transferred: 1300000 bytes
Requests per second: 27605.45 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 7.245 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 0.036 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 3477.64 [Kbytes/sec] received
Connection Times (ms)
min mean[+/-sd] median max
Connect: 2 3 0.5 3 6
Processing: 1 4 0.7 4 8
Waiting: 1 3 0.8 3 7
Total: 4 7 0.6 7 11
Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
50% 7
66% 7
75% 8
80% 8
90% 8
95% 8
98% 9
99% 9
100% 11 (longest request)

NGINX conf

worker_processes 1;
http {
server {
listen 8000;
location / {
add_header Content-Type text/plain;
return 200 'Hello, World!';
}
}
}