Laying the Foundations: Designing an HTTP Server

NOTE: We ran into some issue with the screen record, so please find the relevant links here :D
08:00 - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...
19:38 - Format:
[Method] [URL Path] [HTTP Version]
[Headers]

[Optional Body]
Example: GET /api/users/123 HTTP/1.1
Host: api.example.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64)
Accept: application/json
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.9
Authorization: Bearer eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIs...

22:19 - Format:
[HTTP Version] [Status Code] [Status Message]
[Headers]

[Response Body]

Example: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2025 10:30:45 GMT
Server: nginx/1.18.0
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 258
Cache-Control: max-age=3600
ETag: "33a64df551425fcc55e4d42a148795d9f25f89d4"
X-RateLimit-Limit: 1000
X-RateLimit-Remaining: 999
Connection: keep-alive

{
"id": 123,
"name": "John Doe",
"email": "john.doe@example.com",
"role": "admin",
"created_at": "2024-01-15T08:00:00Z",
"last_login": "2025-01-15T10:25:00Z"
}

In this video, we take a step back and design an HTTP server from scratch.

We start from the basics of HTTP, look at how requests and responses are structured, and break down the system design decisions needed to build a server that works reliably.

This isn’t a coding tutorial it’s about understanding the architecture:

How HTTP works on top of TCP

What a server needs to handle requests correctly

How responses are formed to follow the spec

The building blocks before we even touch implementation


If you’ve ever wanted to understand what’s happening behind the frameworks, this is where it starts.

—

📍 Part 2 will cover the actual implementation in code.

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