HttpWebServer

The HttpWebServer is a C# web server implementation designed to drop-in replace Mono's HttpListener. The main goals were:

• Approximate the HttpListener implementation without the unneeded Windows parts
• Keep things simple
• Be fast

HttpWebServer runs under Mono 3.x and .NET 4.5 and above.

Building

Build from MonoDevelop or from the command line:

xbuild HttpWebServer.sln

To build in release mode execute xbuild with the additional parameter: /p:configuration=Release.

Example

It is very simple to get things started:

public static void Main(string[] args)
{
    var bindings = new HttpWebServer.Binding[] { new HttpWebServer.Binding("127.0.0.1", port, false) };
    var config = new HttpWebServer.Config();

    using (var server = new HttpWebServer(bindings, config))
    {
        server.Start(RequestCallback, RequestContinueCallback);

        Console.WriteLine("Listening on port {0}", port);

        System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(System.Threading.Timeout.Infinite);
    }
}

The Start() method accepts two delegate parameters. When a request arrives RequestCallback is invoked with HttpWebRequest and HttpWebResponse parameters. Both these types are very similar to their namesake types in System.Net. If you handled the request in the delegate then return true, otherwise return false.

RequestContinueCallback is invoked when a POST request is received with an Expect: 100-Continue header. If the delegate returns true then the web server will allow the client to continue to POST the body, otherwise the connection is closed. If the parameter passed to Start() is null then the request is always handled. For more info on 100-Continue see http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec8.html.

In the HttpWebServerExample project in the solution there is a static web server example. The code serves static files from the www sub-directory under the application root directory. To get the example running you should get a copy of MonoDevelop 5.x, open the sln and start the HttpWebServerExample in debug mode. When the web server is running you should see output on the console like this:

Listening on port 3010
GET: /index.html, 200
GET: /css/bootstrap.min.css, 200
GET: /css/bootstrap-theme.min.css, 200
GET: /css/font-awesome.min.css, 200
GET: /css/main.css, 200
GET: /js/angular-route.min.js, 200
GET: /js/bootstrap.min.js, 200
GET: /js/jquery.min.js, 200
GET: /js/angular.min.js, 200
GET: /js/main.js, 200
GET: /templates/header.html, 200
GET: /templates/footer.html, 200
GET: /partials/home.html, 200
GET: /fonts/fontawesome-webfont.woff, 304
GET: /partials/pricing.html, 304
GET: /partials/about.html, 304
GET: /partials/faq.html, 304
GET: /partials/services.html, 304

The example site is part of an AngularJS Tutorial series by Nike Kaye. You can find a complete live running instance here: http://httpwebserver.ripcordsoftware.com.

Differences and Missing Parts

• Exceptions are derived from HttpWebServerException/ApplicationException and not from the System.Net exception types
• There is currently no support for SSL
• HTTP/1.0 clients are not supported, for example pointing wget at HttpWebServer may result in chunked responses which wget doesn't know how to handle. Use curl instead - or PR 1.0 support in if it really matters to you.