igtulm / bashttp

Bash HTTP Server

Bash Http

A web server written in Bash

Description

A simple command-line http server written in Bash. It is useful for testing and local development. It could be run everywhere where Bash is used. There is no need to install huge dependencies or programming languages.

Run

This application uses ucspi-tcp for socket listening.

Ubuntu

1. Before running execute sudo apt-get install ucspi-tcp
2. Change your directory to the application root
3. Run the application: ./app.sh start

Docker

1. Change your directory to the application root
2. Build a container docker build -t bashttp .
3. Run the application in the container: docker run --rm -ti -v $(pwd):/usr/src/app -w /usr/src/app -p 3000:3000 bashttp ./app.sh start
4. Run benchmarking in the container: docker run --rm -ti -v $(pwd):/usr/src/app -w /usr/src/app bashttp ./bench.sh

Benchmarks

Bashttp

Running 10s test @ http://127.0.0.1:3000/
  2 threads and 10 connections
  Thread Stats   Avg      Stdev     Max   +/- Stdev
    Latency    91.32ms   50.19ms 479.86ms   92.04%
    Req/Sec    45.84     18.08    80.00     73.22%
  866 requests in 10.02s, 279.98KB read
  Socket errors: connect 0, read 0, write 0, timeout 4
Requests/sec:     86.40
Transfer/sec:     27.93KB

Python embedded server

Running 10s test @ http://127.0.0.1:3001/
  2 threads and 10 connections
  Thread Stats   Avg      Stdev     Max   +/- Stdev
    Latency     6.73ms   46.63ms 837.32ms   98.58%
    Req/Sec     1.02k     0.94k    3.67k    80.50%
  20315 requests in 10.09s, 7.54MB read
Requests/sec:   2012.69
Transfer/sec:    764.59KB

PHP embedded server

Running 10s test @ http://127.0.0.1:3002/
  2 threads and 10 connections
  Thread Stats   Avg      Stdev     Max   +/- Stdev
    Latency   344.43us   98.10us   5.33ms   93.63%
    Req/Sec    13.37k   620.60    14.78k    65.84%
  268717 requests in 10.10s, 81.75MB read
Requests/sec:  26605.69
Transfer/sec:      8.09MB

node-http-server

Running 10s test @ http://127.0.0.1:3003/
  2 threads and 10 connections
  Thread Stats   Avg      Stdev     Max   +/- Stdev
    Latency   792.97us  417.15us  17.19ms   98.88%
    Req/Sec     6.49k   509.57     6.83k    96.00%
  129067 requests in 10.00s, 46.90MB read
Requests/sec:  12904.60
Transfer/sec:      4.69MB

TODO

The main idea of the project is a simple API implementation. I am moving towards this direction now.

bashttp's Issues

Feature: implement keep-alive connection type

Need keep-alive connection to be supported by the server.
Any information can be found at the link below.
https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-thomson-hybi-http-timeout-01.html

Bug: Host header MUST be required

According to RFC 2616 "19.6.1.1 Changes to Simplify Multi-homed Web Servers and Conserve IP Addresses":
"The requirements that clients and servers support the Host request-header, report an error if the Host request-header (section 14.23) is missing from an HTTP/1.1 request, and accept absolute URIs (section 5.1.2) are among the most important changes defined by this specification."

Bug: server response code is incorrect

Functions (such as 'try_route') return a code for server response. But this code is a function's own exit status which could be a 8-bit value from 0 to 255, where 0 means "success". Now it is unable to return, for example, 404 response code. Need to fix and improve that logic.

Feature: Content type for html files

Edge browser tries to download html files without correct content-type header received from bashttp.
Need to add content type for html files.

Feature: send connection close header

This server doesn't support keep-alive connection type. Before it is not implemented need to set 'Connection' header to 'close'.

Refactoring: Split functionality to modules

There is a need to split the functionality to modules as the application grows. Bash doesn't provide any convenient includes. To include different parts of the application 'source' is used. It pastes a text of a file specified to main program. So, we can have functions with the same names. To prevent this we can simulate namespaces by adding prefix, for instance, module name to each function in current module.

Feature: add packet manager to the project

https://github.com/bpkg/bpkg
Add this packet manager to the project

Bug: 404 is not returned if page is not available

If page is not available the server needs to send 404 page/message.
For the first time, it's ok to give json message to a client such as

{
  "code": 404,
  "message": "Not Found"
}

Feature: shellcheck

https://github.com/koalaman/shellcheck
Use for codestyle validation.
Format all the code using shellcheck.

Fix: check if there is no slash at the end of url

If there is no slash at the end in URL, unable to obtain a file which is in a sub-directory of served folder.

For ex:
index file in ./web/some/index.html
url: http://127.0.0.1:3000/some

we get a error:
cat: someindex.html: No such file or directory

but:
url: http://127.0.0.1:3000/some/
provides a result we are expecting