Android HTTP Server

This repository provides a basic implementation of HTTP server on Android using the HttpServer library.

Step 1: Download these 2 files and place in app/libs: http-2.2.1.jar and sun-common-server.jar

Step 2: Add these dependencies to your build.gradle:

dependencies{
...
implementation files('libs/sun-common-server.jar')
implementation files('libs/http-2.2.1.jar')
}

Step 3: Add this snippet to your onCreate method of MainActivity class:

try {
    HttpServer server = HttpServer.create(new InetSocketAddress("0.0.0.0", 8080), 0);
    server.createContext("/", new MyHandler());
    server.setExecutor(null); // creates a default executor
  server.start();
} catch (IOException e){
    Log.e("SUNServer", e.toString());
}

Separately add this class to the same file:

class MyHandler implements HttpHandler {
    public void handle(HttpExchange t) throws IOException {
        InputStream is = t.getRequestBody();
        is.read(); // .. read the request body
  String response = "Hello World";
        t.sendResponseHeaders(200, response.length());
        OutputStream os = t.getResponseBody();
        os.write(response.getBytes());
        os.close();
    }

Also add the required imports at the top:

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.OutputStream;
import java.net.InetSocketAddress;

import com.sun.net.httpserver.HttpHandler;
import com.sun.net.httpserver.HttpServer;
import com.sun.net.httpserver.HttpExchange;

See MainActivity.java for example.

Step 4: Add this permission in your AndroidManifest.xml:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />

After this build and run the application on your Android device. You should be able to see a running server at port 8080 on the device which is also accessible from the local network.

Where to go from here?

One may require to set up an Android Server for hundreds of reasons. The exact requirements may vary but this is a good starting point. To accept a POST request for an image (say to create a peer-to-peer image sharing app) for example, MyHandler class will need to change. Refer to the documentation for more.