HTTP Over TCP is a minimal HTTP/1.1 implementation written from scratch in Go, built directly on top of raw TCP sockets.

Instead of using Go’s built-in net/http package, this project manually handles:

• TCP connections
• Request parsing (request line, headers, body)
• Response writing (status line, headers, body, chunked encoding)
• Basic server abstraction similar to a mini framework

This project is designed for learning and experimentation with networking and HTTP internals.

• Parse HTTP/1.1 request lines, headers, and body

• Validate and manage headers

• Response writer with:

  • Status codes (200, 400, 500, …)
  • Static file serving
  • Streaming (chunked transfer encoding)

• Simple server abstraction (server.Serve)

• Two runnable demos:

  • tcplistener: raw TCP listener that prints parsed requests
  • httpserver: a full HTTP server with routes

.
├── cmd/
│   ├── httpserver/         # Example HTTP server with routes & responses
│   │   └── main.go
│   └── tcplistener/        # Raw TCP listener that parses HTTP requests
│       └── main.go
│       
├── internal/
│   ├── headers/            # Header parsing & management
│   │   ├── headers.go
│   │   └── headers_test.go
│   ├── request/            # HTTP request parsing state machine
│   │   ├── request.go
│   │   └── request_test.go
│   ├── response/           # HTTP response writer
│   │   └── response.go
│   └── server/             # Server abstraction (Serve, Close, etc.)
│       └── server.go
├── message.txt             # Sample data for testing
└── Readme.md

git clone https://github.com/suhasdeveloper07/httpovertcp.git
cd httpovertcp

This simply prints the incoming HTTP request structure:

go run ./cmd/tcplistener

Then in another terminal:

curl -v http://localhost:42069/

This version demonstrates actual responses:

go run ./cmd/httpserver

• / → 200 OK HTML page
• /yourproblem → 400 Bad Request
• /myporblem → 500 Internal Server Error
• /video → serves assets/vim.mp4
• /httpbin/stream/<n> → streams data from httpbin.org

You can build custom handlers using server.Serve:

server, _ := server.Serve(42069, func(w *response.Writer, req *request.Request) {
    body := []byte("Hello from custom handler!")
    h := response.GetDefaultHeaders(len(body))
    h.Replace("Content-Type", "text/plain")

    w.WriteStatusLine(response.StatusOk)
    w.WriteHeaders(*h)
    w.WriteBody(body)
})
defer server.Close()

This project is not meant for production use. Instead, it is a step-by-step exploration of how HTTP really works:

• From raw TCP streams → structured HTTP requests
• From status lines → full HTTP responses
• From simple listeners → a mini HTTP server

MIT License © 2025 suhasdeveloper07