Multithreaded HTTP Server

A concurrent web server implemented in C that utilizes a worker-thread pool architecture to handle multiple HTTP client requests simultaneously. This project demonstrates advanced systems programming concepts, including manual socket management, thread-safe synchronization, and atomic file I/O.

Core Components

• Thread-Pool Architecture: Uses a dispatcher thread to accept connections and a pool of worker threads to process requests (GET and PUT).
• Thread-Safe Queue: A custom FIFO queue using mutexes and condition variables to manage workload distribution.
• Atomic File Access: Implements advisory file locking (flock) to prevent race conditions during concurrent read/write operations.
• Manual HTTP Parsing: Custom-built request parsing logic to handle URIs, methods, and headers without external libraries.

Building and Running

Build

make

Usage

./httpserver [-t threads] <port>

• -t threads: Set the number of worker threads (default is 4).
• : The port the server will listen on.

Technical Details

• Languages: C
• Libraries: Pthreads (POSIX Threads)
• Concurrency Model: Producer-Consumer