Web Server Implementation Checklist

1. Core Network Setup

• Create socket
• Bind to port
• Listen for connections
• Accept connections
• handle socket cleanup
• signal handling for graceful shutdown

Basic Request Handling

• Parse HTTP methods (GET/POST)
• Extract request path
• Basic request logging
• Complete POST handling
• Parse query parameters
• Parse request headers

Response Generation

• Shift to sending inlined html (in the asm) to prevent issue of missing html files
• Send basic HTTP status codes:
  • 200 OK
  • 404 Not Found
  • 403 Forbidden
  • 500 Server Error
• Include some headers:
  • Content-Type (basic)
  • Content-Length
  • Connection
• Send response body

File Operations

• Read static files
• Basic directory structure (/www)
• Default file (index.html)
• Handle file not found
• Complete MIME type detection
• Basic directory security

Essential Security (Only handling GET requests rn)

• Validate request paths
• Prevent directory traversal
• Character validation
• Path whitelist
• Basic input validation

Error Handling and Logging

• Structured logging (INFO/ERROR/DEBUG)
• Handle socket errors
• Handle file system errors
• Process forking errors
• Connection handling errors

Process Management

• Fork for each connection
• Child process cleanup
• Parent process continuation
• Signal handling

Maybe Later:

• Multiple concurrent connections
• Keep-alive connections
• Request/response compression
• Virtual hosting
• HTTPS support

Links and stuff

https://www.reddit.com/r/C_Programming/comments/kbfa6t/building_a_http_server_in_c/ https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/500