HTTP Server in Rust (Built from Scratch)

A minimal HTTP/1.1 server implemented from scratch in Rust using raw TCP sockets.

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Features

• Manual HTTP/1.1 request parsing
• Manual response construction
• Thread-per-connection concurrency
• Persistent connections (keep-alive)
• Gzip compression (when Accept-Encoding: gzip is sent)
• Static file serving
• File upload via POST
• Content-Length handling
• Proper CRLF formatting

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Supported Routes

Route	Method	Description
/	GET	Returns 200 OK
/echo/{text}	GET	Returns {text}
/user-agent	GET	Returns the User-Agent header
/files/{filename}	GET	Serves file from directory
/files/{filename}	POST	Writes body to file

Unknown routes return 404 Not Found.

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Run

Start the server:

cargo run

Serve files from a directory:

cargo run -- --directory ./public

Server runs on:

127.0.0.1:4221

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Example

curl http://localhost:4221/echo/hello
curl -X POST --data "data" http://localhost:4221/files/test.txt
curl -H "Accept-Encoding: gzip" http://localhost:4221/echo/hello

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Project Structure

.
├── main.rs
├── server.rs
├── handlers.rs
├── utils.rs
└── http/
    ├── request.rs
    └── response.rs

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Tests

Run tests:

cargo test

Educational Purpose

This project was built to understand TCP networking and HTTP/1.1 internals by implementing a server without external frameworks.

Challenge by CodeCrafters: https://codecrafters.io

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License

MIT License — see the LICENSE file.