java-httpserver

It's an HTTP server, written in JAVA!

Originally a more generic version of the HTTP server used by Storyteller, httpserver is a poorly named, easy to use, and simple HTTP server, that's written in Java.

We originally wrote our own HTTP server for Storyteller because we couldn't find an easy to integrate and relatively simple (to the end user) HTTP server for Java. httpserver takes inspiration from simple microframeworks like Sinatra and Flask.

How does it work?

java-httpserver has five main components:

• HTTPServer, a really simple class that usually runs in the background, waiting for requests, and sending them off to the HTTPRequest class to get things done.

• HTTPRouter, a class that maps the path segments (the string between the first two /s in the request) to HTTPHandlers.

• HTTPRequest, a class that takes in a Socket, reads from it, and splits apart the incoming data into its component parts (provided that the incoming Socket is following the HTTP protocol).

• HTTPResponse, a class that's passed to all handling methods and filled in to send data back the the client. After an HTTPHandler fills in a Response, it sends that data back to the client.

• HTTPHandler, an abstract class whos subclasses are used to actually do things with the data, specifically filling out HTTPResponses.

There's also an HTTPException, and DeathHandler, which are used when bad things occur. Don't let bad things occur.

Demo?

A very basic demo showing off most of the features of httpserver can be found in the demo package.

If you're looking for an HTTPHandler that does interesting things, check out the tests.HandlerTest.

Helping out

If you see something fishy, or want to contribute in any way, including fixing any obvious issue (and even the non-obvious ones), please submit a pull request, or make an issue, or email me (Don Kuntz, don@kuntz.co).

Really, if you think something needs fixing, feel free to mention it, and if we agree, we'll make the fix.

Credits

java-httpserver is based on some of the work done by Don Kuntz and Michael Peterson over the summer of 2013 while working on Storyteller.

This project is licensed under the MIT License (see license.md). While not required, if you use this, we'd like to know about it, just alert us, somehow.