Simple C HTTP Server with Thread Pool

A minimal HTTP server written in C that serves static HTML pages. It uses a thread pool to efficiently handle multiple client connections concurrently.

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Features

• Serves static HTML pages from static-pages/ directory.
• Uses a fixed-size thread pool to handle concurrent clients.
• Proper HTTP response headers, including Content-Length and Content-Type.
• Graceful handling of file not found or read errors.
• Graceful shutdown on Ctrl+C: cleans up thread pool and closes sockets properly.
• Easy-to-extend architecture for future features (dynamic pages, MIME types, etc.).

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Project Structure

multithreaded-http-server/
├── main.c
├── Makefile
├── http-server/
│   ├── http_server.c
│   └── http_server.h
├── thread-pooler/
│   ├── thread_pooler.c
│   └── thread_pooler.h
├── worker-threads/
│   ├── worker_thread.c
│   └── worker_thread.h
├── static-pages/
│   └── index.html

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Prerequisites

• GCC compiler
• Linux / Unix-like environment
• pthread library (included with most Linux distributions)

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Build Instructions

1. Open a terminal in the project root folder.
2. Run the following commands:

make clean
make run

• make clean removes old object files and executable.
• make run compiles and runs the server.

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Usage

1. The server listens on port 8080 by default.
2. Open a web browser and go to:

http://127.0.0.1:8080

3. The server will serve static-pages/index.html.
4. Press Ctrl+C to stop the server gracefully. The thread pool will be destroyed, and all sockets will be closed properly.

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Customization

• Port number: Modify #define PORT 8080 in http_server.h.
• Static pages: Add more HTML files in the static-pages/ directory.
• Thread pool size: Adjust QUEUE_SIZE in http_server.c.

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Notes

• Currently, the server always serves index.html.
• You can extend it to parse the HTTP request and serve different pages based on the URL.
• MIME types are currently hardcoded as text/html.
• Graceful shutdown ensures no memory leaks or dangling threads when stopping the server.

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Author

Sravan Gandla GitHub