statico 0.1.6

A High-performance HTTP webserver that serves static responses at the speed of light.
statico-0.1.6 is not a library.

Statico

A high-performance HTTP webserver implemented in Rust that serves static responses at the speed of light. Its sole purpose is to handle HTTP requests as fast as possible; as such, it is neither a full-featured HTTP server nor an HTTP router, and it is not intended for production use beyond benchmarking.

Features

  • Multi-threaded: Configurable number of worker threads
  • Single-threaded Tokio runtime per thread: Each worker thread runs its own Tokio current-thread runtime
  • SO_REUSEPORT: Multiple threads can bind to the same port for load balancing
  • Configurable responses: Set custom HTTP status codes, headers, and response body
  • File-based responses: Load response body from files using @filename syntax
  • Optional io_uring support: Experimental support for io_uring on Linux (compile-time feature)
  • Cross-platform: Works on Linux, macOS, Windows, and other Unix-like systems

Building

Standard build:

cargo build --release

With io_uring support (Linux only):

cargo build --release --features io_uring

Usage

./target/release/statico [OPTIONS]

Command Line Options

  • -t, --threads <THREADS>: Number of worker threads to spawn (default: number of CPU cores)
  • -p, --port <PORT>: Port to listen on (default: 8080)
  • -s, --status <STATUS>: HTTP status code to return (default: 200)
  • -b, --body <BODY>: Response body content (optional, default: empty). Use @filename to load from file
  • --header <HEADER>: Custom headers in "Name: Value" format (can be specified multiple times)
  • --uring: Use io_uring runtime (Linux only, requires io_uring feature)

Examples

Basic usage

Start a server on port 8080 with default settings:

./target/release/statico

Custom port and threads

./target/release/statico --port 3000 --threads 4

Serve custom content with headers

./target/release/statico \
  --status 201 \
  --body "Hello, World!" \
  --header "Content-Type: text/plain" \
  --header "X-Custom-Header: MyValue"

Serve JSON response

./target/release/statico \
  --status 200 \
  --body '{"message": "Hello from Statico!", "timestamp": "2024-01-01T00:00:00Z"}' \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --header "Cache-Control: no-cache"

Error response simulation

./target/release/statico \
  --status 404 \
  --body "Not Found" \
  --header "Content-Type: text/plain"

Load testing setup

# Start server with many threads for high concurrency
./target/release/statico \
  --threads 16 \
  --port 8080 \
  --body "OK" \
  --header "Content-Type: text/plain"

With io_uring (Linux only)

# Requires compilation with --features io_uring
./target/release/statico --uring --threads 8

Serve content from files

# Serve JSON response from file
./target/release/statico \
  --body @response.json \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json"

# Serve HTML page from file
./target/release/statico \
  --body @index.html \
  --header "Content-Type: text/html"

# Serve any file content
./target/release/statico \
  --body @data.xml \
  --header "Content-Type: application/xml"

Architecture

Threading Model

  • The main thread parses command line arguments and spawns worker threads
  • Each worker thread creates its own socket bound to the same port using SO_REUSEPORT
  • Each worker thread runs a single-threaded Tokio runtime (current_thread)
  • The kernel load-balances incoming connections across threads

Socket Reuse

  • Linux/Android: Uses SO_REUSEPORT for true load balancing across threads
  • Other Unix systems: Falls back to SO_REUSEADDR (connections handled by one thread)
  • Windows: Uses SO_REUSEADDR

io_uring Support

The io_uring feature provides experimental support for Linux's io_uring interface:

  • Compile with --features io_uring
  • Run with --uring flag
  • Currently provides a simplified implementation (only HTTP1.1 is supported)

Use Cases

  • Load testing: Generate consistent HTTP responses for testing client applications
  • Mocking services: Simulate API endpoints with specific status codes and responses
  • Static file serving: Serve static content from files without a full web server
  • Health checks: Provide simple health check endpoints
  • Benchmarking: Test HTTP client performance with minimal server overhead
  • Development: Quick HTTP server for development and testing scenarios

Performance

Statico is designed for high performance:

  • Minimal request processing overhead
  • Efficient multi-threading with SO_REUSEPORT load balancing
  • Single-threaded Tokio runtimes reduce context switching
  • Zero-allocation response serving (responses are pre-built and cached)
  • File content loaded once at startup for optimal performance
  • With io_uring support, Statico is up to 40% faster than the hyper version

Testing

Test the server with curl:

# Basic test
curl http://localhost:8080

# With verbose output to see headers
curl -v http://localhost:8080

# Load test with Apache Bench
ab -n 10000 -c 100 http://localhost:8080/

License

This project is provided as-is for educational and practical use.