C Web Server from Scratch

Instead of just spinning up a Python or Express server, I wanted to build one from the ground up in C on Linux (WSL) to see what's actually happening at the OS level.

No external libraries or frameworks—just raw C and POSIX socket system calls.

How It Works

When you hit localhost:8080 in your browser, here's the exact lifecycle:

1. socket() – Asks the kernel to allocate an IPv4 TCP socket (gives back File Descriptor 3).
2. bind() – Ties that socket handle to 0.0.0.0:8080 using struct sockaddr_in (and htons() so network byte order doesn't flip the port).
3. listen() – Tells the OS to start listening for incoming connections with a backlog queue of 10.
4. accept() – Pauses execution until a connection arrives, then spawns a dedicated client handle (4) for that line.
5. read() & write() – Captures the raw HTTP request header sent by the browser, then streams back an HTTP/1.1 200 OK header with an HTML response.

Running It

You'll need gcc installed in a Linux environment or WSL.

1. Clone the repo:

   git clone [https://github.com/Ctrl-Yam/c-web-server.git](https://github.com/Ctrl-Yam/c-web-server.git)
   cd c-web-server