Act1_HTTP_Server

👥 Activity Partners

| Role | Name | | All | Sherie Longcob |

| Lead Coder | [Sherie Longcob - Lead Person and Documenter] |

🎯 Objective

This server was built to demonstrate fundamental socket programming in C, specifically handling simple HTTP GET requests and responding with 200 OK or 400 Bad Request status codes, compiled using MinGW and the Winsock API.

🚀 How to Run the Server (Full Documentation)

Prerequisites

1. GCC/MinGW: Installed and configured in the system PATH (verified with gcc --version).
2. Git: Installed for version control.
3. Terminal/Command Prompt: Ready to use.

Compilation

1. Navigate to the repository folder:

cd Act1_HTTP_Server

2. Compile the server.c file. The -lws2_32 flag is crucial for linking the Winsock library on Windows:

gcc server.c -o http_server.exe -lws2_32

Execution

1. Execute the compiled program:

./http_server.exe

The console will display: Server listening on port 8080...

Testing

The server is designed to test two scenarios:

A. Test 1: 200 OK (Successful GET Request)

• Action: Open a web browser (Chrome, Firefox, etc.) and go to: http://127.0.0.1:8080
• Result: The server should log the GET request, and the browser should display the "Success!" HTML body.

B. Test 2: 400 Bad Request (Invalid/Unsupported Request)

• Action: Use a terminal tool like curl to send an unsupported method (e.g., POST):

curl -i -X POST [http://127.0.0.1:8080](http://127.0.0.1:8080)

• Result: The server should log the POST request, and the terminal should show the HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request response header

🖼 Screenshots

Successful GET Request

Proof