HTTP Server in C

A small static-file HTTP/1.1 server written in C, supporting both POSIX (Linux/macOS) and Windows (Winsock).

Features

• Serves static files from a configurable web root (www/ by default)
• Handles GET requests with correct Content-Type and Content-Length
• Common MIME types (HTML, CSS, JS, JSON, images, plain text)
• Basic error responses: 400, 403, 404, 405
• Directory-traversal protection (rejects paths containing ..)

Project structure

http-server-c/
├── src/
│   ├── main.c        # entry point, argument parsing
│   ├── server.c      # socket setup and the accept loop
│   ├── server.h
│   ├── request.c     # parses the HTTP request line
│   ├── request.h
│   ├── response.c    # builds responses, serves files
│   └── response.h
├── www/
│   └── index.html    # files the server will serve
├── Makefile
└── README.md

Build

Requires gcc and make.

make

On Windows, use a toolchain that provides gcc and make (e.g. MinGW-w64 or MSYS2). The Makefile links Winsock (-lws2_32) automatically.

Run

make run                 # default: port 8080, root ./www
./http-server            # same as above
./http-server 3000       # custom port
./http-server 3000 site  # custom port and web root

Then open http://localhost:8080/ in your browser.

Clean

make clean

Notes & limitations

This is an educational project. It handles one connection at a time (no threading), supports only GET, and reads just the request line. It is not intended for production use.