ehttpd

Welcome to ehttpd 🎉

ehttpd is a HTTP server library, which can be used to create custom HTTP server applications. It also offers an optional threadpool-based server for simple applications (feature: server, disabled by default).

Threadpool-based server

The rationale behind the thread-based approach is that it is much easier to implement than async/await, subsequently requires less code, and is – in theory – less error prone.

Furthermore, it also simplifies application development as the developer cannot accidentally stall the entire runtime with a single blocking call. Since threads are managed and preempted by the OS-scheduler, they offer much stronger concurrency guarantees, and are usually more resilient against optimization issues or bugs.

Performance

While the thread-based approach is not the most efficient out there, it's not that bad either. Some wrk benchmarks:

MacBook Pro (M1 Pro, v0.12.0)

$ wrk -t 64 -c 64 http://localhost:9999/testolope
Running 10s test @ http://localhost:9999/testolope
  64 threads and 64 connections
  Thread Stats   Avg      Stdev     Max   +/- Stdev
    Latency     0.85ms   85.72us   6.62ms   92.48%
    Req/Sec     1.17k    28.34     1.25k    87.08%
  754610 requests in 10.10s, 37.42MB read
Requests/sec:  74713.82
Transfer/sec:      3.71MB

$ wrk -t 64 -c 64 http://localhost:9999/testolope-nokeepalive
Running 10s test @ http://localhost:9999/testolope-nokeepalive
  64 threads and 64 connections
  Thread Stats   Avg      Stdev     Max   +/- Stdev
    Latency     1.96ms    4.81ms  89.48ms   98.57%
    Req/Sec   303.72     62.34   353.00     90.42%
  117823 requests in 10.06s, 7.98MB read
  Socket errors: connect 64, read 0, write 0, timeout 0
Requests/sec:  11716.92
Transfer/sec:    812.40KB

Linux Machine (Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-10400F CPU @ 2.90GHz, v0.12.0)

$ wrk -t 64 -c 64 http://localhost:9999/testolope
Running 10s test @ http://localhost:9999/testolope
  64 threads and 64 connections
  Thread Stats   Avg      Stdev     Max   +/- Stdev
    Latency   188.08us  177.57us  12.10ms   90.95%
    Req/Sec     5.93k     1.03k   10.34k    77.99%
  3815863 requests in 10.10s, 189.23MB read
Requests/sec: 377809.30
Transfer/sec:     18.74MB

$ wrk -t 64 -c 64 http://localhost:9999/testolope-nokeepalive
Running 10s test @ http://localhost:9999/testolope-nokeepalive
  64 threads and 64 connections
  Thread Stats   Avg      Stdev     Max   +/- Stdev
    Latency   611.05us  225.83us   9.18ms   76.85%
    Req/Sec     1.48k    75.48     2.11k    76.26%
  951970 requests in 10.10s, 64.46MB read
Requests/sec:  94255.61
Transfer/sec:      6.38MB