C-Web – Micro HTTP Server in C

Learn real network programming in < 500 lines of actual server code.

A deliberately tiny, dependency-free HTTP/1.0 server written in standard C.
Great for students, embedded projects, or anyone who wants to understand how web servers actually work under the hood.

Why this exists

Most "learn HTTP servers" tutorials use Python or Go.
Those are great — but they hide the raw socket mechanics, threading choices, buffering issues, and protocol edge cases.

C-Web forces you to see them.

Compared to Python's http.server:

• ~20–50× faster static file serving (no interpreter overhead)
• No runtime needed — just compile and run
• You actually understand the bytes on the wire

Features

• Serves static files (HTML, CSS, JS, images, etc.) from a public/ folder
• Proper (but minimal) HTTP/1.0 request parsing & response generation
• Clean shutdown on Ctrl+C
• Heavily commented code — every non-obvious line is explained
• Single-threaded, blocking accept loop (easy to extend to threads/select/poll later)

Intentionally missing (on purpose):

• HTTP/1.1 keep-alive & pipelining
• HTTPS
• Dynamic routes / CGI / templates
• Large file sendfile() optimization
• Config file / CLI arguments

All of those are excellent follow-up exercises.

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/c-web.git
cd c-web

make run
# or
make
./bin/server

Then open:
http://localhost:9999/

Default port is 9999 (change in server.c if you want).

Project layout

c-web/
├── src/
│   ├── server.c       # main() + launch loop
│   └── http.c         # request parsing + response building
├── include/
│   └── http.h
├── public/            # put your static files here
│   ├── index.html
│   ├── style.css
│   └── img/
├── bin/               # compiled binary (gitignored)
├── Makefile
└── README.md

How to read / learn from the code

Start here:

1. src/server.c → socket(), bind(), listen(), accept() loop
2. src/http.c → reading & very basic parsing of HTTP request line + headers
3. Response path → how Content-Type is guessed, how file is sent in chunks

Good first extensions:

• Add simple route handling (/api/* → JSON, / → index.html)
• Implement directory listing
• Add very basic logging (IP + path + status)
• Switch to non-blocking I/O + select()
• Support HTTP/1.1 Connection: keep-alive

Learning resources inside the repo

• docs/LEARNING_C.md — C concepts explained with Python / JavaScript analogies
• docs/ARCHITECTURE.md — Diagrams of socket flow, request lifecycle, memory handling

Philosophy

1. Simplicity > features
2. Clarity > cleverness
3. Education > performance tricks

If the core logic exceeds ~500 lines, something probably went wrong.

License

MIT - do whatever you want.
Would appreciate a link back if you use it in a blog post or tutorial.

Acknowledgments

Inspired by classic tiny servers (Tinyhttpd, many YouTube socket tutorials) but rewritten from scratch to be clearer and more modern-C friendly.

Happy hacking — and enjoy seeing your browser talk directly to your own tiny server!