HTTP Handle (http-handle)

A Rust-based HTTP server for serving static websites.

• Website • Documentation • Report Bug • Request Feature • Contributing Guidelines

Architectural Overview

Use http-handle to serve static content fast, then scale to production policies without rewriting your core server path.

Follow this critical path:

1. Build and configure a server (Server / ServerBuilder).
2. Parse incoming HTTP requests into typed request data.
3. Generate and emit policy-aware HTTP responses.

Feature List

• Core Serving: Static file routing, MIME detection, custom 404 pages, and request/response primitives.
• Operational Safety: Directory traversal protection, graceful shutdown, and configurable timeout handling.
• Performance Paths: Sync + async serving, precompressed asset negotiation (br / gzip / zstd), and high-performance runtime mode.
• Protocol Growth: HTTP/2 support and HTTP/3 profile/fallback policy primitives.
• Enterprise Controls: TLS/mTLS policy, API key/JWT auth hooks, RBAC/ABAC adapters, and runtime config reload patterns.
• Scale Features: Distributed rate limiting, tenant isolation, observability hooks, and runtime auto-tuning.

Platform Support Matrix

http-handle is validated with portability conformance tests and CI coverage across Unix-like targets.

Installation

Add this to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
http-handle = "0.0.4"

Minimum supported Rust version (MSRV): 1.88.0.

Quick Start

Start with Server::new. Move to ServerBuilder when you need explicit policy controls.

use http_handle::Server;

fn main() -> std::io::Result<()> {
    let server = Server::new("127.0.0.1:8080", "./public");
    server.start()
}

The server listens on 127.0.0.1:8080 and serves files from ./public.

Documentation

Primary API docs: docs.rs/http-handle
GitHub Pages mirror: https://sebastienrousseau.github.io/http-handle/

Local docs rendering (with docs.rs feature-gate badges):

RUSTDOCFLAGS="--cfg docsrs" cargo +nightly doc --open --all-features

Supporting docs:

• Portability matrix: docs/PORTABILITY_MATRIX.md
• Protocol support: docs/PROTOCOL_SUPPORT.md
• Tutorials: docs/TUTORIALS.md
• Architecture diagrams: docs/ARCHITECTURE.md
• Benchmark reproducibility: docs/BENCHMARK_REPRODUCIBILITY.md
• Benchmark claim governance: docs/BENCHMARK_CLAIM_GOVERNANCE.md
• Security findings SLA policy: docs/SECURITY_SLA_POLICY.md
• SLO/SLI and error-budget release policy: docs/SLO_SLI_POLICY.md
• OpenTelemetry pipeline policy: docs/OTEL_PIPELINE_POLICY.md
• Error causes and recovery: docs/ERRORS_AND_RECOVERY.md
• Deprecation and migration policy: docs/DEPRECATION_POLICY.md
• LTS and lifecycle policy: docs/LTS_POLICY.md
• Supply chain and scorecard policy: docs/SLSA_POLICY.md, docs/SCORECARD_POLICY.md
• Container hardening: docs/CONTAINER_SECURITY_POLICY.md
• Distributed rate limiting: docs/DISTRIBUTED_RATE_LIMITING.md
• Tenant isolation: docs/TENANT_ISOLATION.md
• Runtime auto-tuning: docs/RUNTIME_AUTOTUNE.md
• Release transition plan: docs/RELEASE_TRANSITION_v0.0.3.md
• Next milestone execution plan: docs/EXECUTION_PLAN_v0.0.4.md
• Branch issue progress tracker: docs/ISSUE_PROGRESS.md
• Migration guide: docs/MIGRATION_GUIDE.md
• Recipes: docs/RECIPES.md
• Changelog: CHANGELOG.md

Release Publication

crates.io publishing is tag-driven. After merge to main, publish by pushing a v* tag (for example v0.0.4) or by manually running the publish workflow.

Examples

Run any example:

cargo run --example example_name

Start with these examples:

• server_example: Build a server and serve a document root.
• server_builder_example: Apply headers, CORS, and timeout policies.
• feature_async_server: Run the async accept path.
• feature_http2_server: Start the HTTP/2 path behind the http2 feature.
• feature_enterprise_authorization: Enforce RBAC authorization for an HTTP request.
• feature_runtime_autotune: Derive runtime limits from host profile.

Examples index: docs/EXAMPLES.md.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

This project is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to all contributors who have helped build the http-handle library.