LITH - Light HTTP Server

LITH is a minimalist, high-performance, multi-threaded HTTP server implemented in standard C11. Built to be exceptionally lightweight and portable, it provides native support for both Windows (via MinGW-w64 and Winsock2) and Linux systems. It is engineered with security and performance in mind, offering full protection against common web vulnerabilities like directory traversal.

Features

• Multi-threaded Architecture: Utilizes pthreads to handle multiple simultaneous client connections efficiently.
• Static File Delivery: Automatically serves HTML, web assets, and documents directly from the dedicated public/ web root directory.
• Cross-Platform Compatibility: Complete compilation compatibility with Windows and POSIX-compliant Linux environments using platform-specific socket abstractions.
• Directory Traversal Protection: Includes built-in path canonicalization security checks to intercept and block malicious relative path attempts.
• Embedded Logger: Real-time terminal logging mechanism detailing timestamps, severity levels, and client transaction records.
• Zero Dependencies: Relies exclusively on standard C library wrappers, maintaining a minimal binary footprint.

Run

Prerequisites

To build LITH from source, you need:

• A GCC compiler toolchain (MinGW-w64 for Windows setups, or standard GCC for Linux distribution suites).
• GNU Make utility.

Usage Instructions

1. Deploy Web Content: Place your static files (such as index.html) inside the public/ directory at the project root.

2. Launch the Executable: Execute the compiled binary from your command-line interface:

   bin\lith

3. Specify a Custom Port (Optional): By default, the server initializes on port 8080. You can override this behavior by passing a custom port number as a command-line argument:

   bin\lith 8005

4. Access the Application: Open any compatible web browser application and navigate to http://localhost:8005.

Repository Architecture

The codebase follows a modular design pattern to keep concerns separated:

• src/: Core logic implementation files containing socket handling, server lifecycle management, HTTP parsing, and logger routines (.c).

• include/: Global structure declarations, networking macro bindings, definition constants, and platform configuration headers (.h).

• public/: The localized sandbox serving as the server web root directory.

• bin/: The target output directory reserved for compiled binaries and operational executables.

Server Settings

Default server configurations are managed statically via macros located within include/server.h and include/common.h:

• DEFAULT_PORT: 8080

• BUFFER_SIZE: 4096 bytes

• BACKLOG: 10 pending connection limits

• LITH_VERSION: 1.0.1

License

This software is distributed under the terms of the FomaDev Public License (FPL). Under this license, personal and educational use of compiled binaries is free, including within corporate environments. Commercial republication, direct source-code integration into competitive proprietary tools, or maintaining standalone independent forks is strictly restricted without explicit commercial authorization. For complete licensing terms, consult the accompanying LICENSE file.