http-server-ts

A handcrafted HTTP server written in TypeScript — built for exploring the guts of HTTP.

This project dives into the raw details of the HTTP protocol:

Manual header parsing

Handling persistent (keep-alive) connections

Implementing compression (gzip/deflate)

Status codes, routing, and more

✨ Features From scratch: no Express, no Koa — just net/http modules and TypeScript

Custom header parsing — learn exactly how requests are interpreted

Keep-Alive support — persistent TCP connections for multiple requests

Compression — gzip and deflate encodings implemented manually

Basic routing — enough to serve different endpoints

Logging — simple request/response logging for debugging

📦 Requirements Node.js 18+

npm, pnpm, yarn, or bun

🚀 Getting Started bash Copy Edit

1. Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/AKiranB/http-server-ts.git cd http-server-ts

2. Install dependencies

npm install

3. Run in development mode

npm run dev

4. Build & run in production

npm run build npm start 🔍 Example Usage bash Copy Edit

Default GET request

curl -i http://localhost:3000/

With gzip compression

curl -i --compressed http://localhost:3000/

Keep-alive demonstration

curl -i -H "Connection: keep-alive" http://localhost:3000/ 🗂 Project Structure plaintext Copy Edit . ├── src/ │ ├── server.ts # Entry point │ ├── parser/ # Header & request parsing │ ├── compression/ # gzip/deflate logic │ ├── routing/ # Simple router │ └── utils/ # Helper functions ├── package.json ├── tsconfig.json └── README.md 🛠 Extending Some ideas for further development:

HTTP/2 support

Chunked transfer encoding

Cookie parsing & sessions

HTTPS/TLS

Static file serving

📜 License MIT — Have fun hacking!