This application is written as a challenge to create a simple HTTP server. I thought it was a good idea to brush up my Windows API skill.

The server runs with full Graphical User Interface because nobody cares about "Command Line" back in the 90's. This is a naive implementation where it can only serve one client at a time.

This program is built using Visual Studio 97, Visual Studio 6, and Visual Studio 2005. It can runs on Windows 95 OSR 2 with Winsock2 Update to Windows 11.

The resulting binary is ~30KB for full fledged server. This includes the pretty icon. Without icon, it'll take maybe ~15KB of EXE.

Workstation to build this program

• Pentium 166 MMX
• 16 MB of RAM
• Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 6 and Windows 98 SE.

Other than making a point that programmer nowadays needs beefy computer just to create a 'command line' hello world with 1000x the power of my old workstation, this program also showcases:

• How to program Windows GUI in pure C.
• How to programmatically build UI using code like real programmer. No designers, or bloated "UI toolkit" involved.
• How to use thread synchronisation in Windows with CreateThread.
• How to send message from one thread to another using PostMessage and SendNotifyMessage.
• A single binary that can run on every Windows from the 90's to 2022 and probably still runs 20+ years later. Microsoft is 'da king' of API compatibility.
• To prove that Windows API is the most successful API, because you can even run this using Wine.

I plan to add enhancements

• Multiple client using thread.
• Windows 9x vs NT detection.
• HTTP 1.0 compliant.
• TLS 1.2 with mbedTLS.
• JSON parser.
• Thread pool with semaphore for Win9x.
• Thread pool with IO Completion Ports for Windows NT.
• Better UI design.
• Ability to be run as a Windows Service.
• Ability to dynamically dispatch function in DLL as HTTP Handler. CGI be damned.
• Portability on the socket part with Linux and macOS.

When will those be done? I don't know. If you feel like it, please contribute. The only hard requirement is this program should be able to run on Windows 95 and NT 4.0. So most likely, if you want fancy features, you'd need to do that by using LoadLibrary.

All code in this repository is licensed under BSD 2-clause license.

BSD 2-Clause License

Copyright (c) 2022 Didiet Noor

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modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

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