statico-0.3.1 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

Performance

The following benchmark compares Statico against other popular HTTP servers and frameworks in a synthetic scenario where each server returns a minimal static response from memory. All servers were configured for maximum performance (no logging, CPU pinning where applicable, in-memory responses).

Performance Benchmark

Benchmark Results (requests/second)

Server	1 thread	2 threads	4 threads
statico + io_uring	270,263	593,067	1,138,319
statico	279,842	441,117	966,248
nginx (return)	286,960	379,974	832,082
HAProxy	181,127	253,796	515,162
Go net/http	69,212	168,220	366,084
Go fasthttp	172,359	273,395	605,603
Axum (Rust)	121,680	224,712	414,640
actix-web (Rust)	213,756	343,037	798,809

Notes on the benchmark setup

nginx: Configured for maximum performance with logging disabled, CPU pinning, and returning a response directly from an in-memory buffer (no disk I/O).
HAProxy: Same optimizations as nginx — no logging, CPU pinning, in-memory response.
Go net/http: A minimal HTTP server using Go's standard library, always returning 200 OK.
Go fasthttp: Same as net/http but using the high-performance fasthttp library.
Axum: A Rust web framework example using a single multi-threaded Tokio runtime (with 1, 2, or 4 worker threads).
actix-web: A Rust web framework example with configurable thread count (with 1, 2, or 4 threads).

Key observations

Statico with io_uring scales exceptionally well — at 4 threads it achieves over 1.1 million req/s, outperforming all other solutions by a significant margin.
Single-thread performance: Standard Statico and nginx perform similarly (~280k req/s), but Statico pulls ahead as thread count increases due to better multi-core scaling.
Multi-thread scaling: Statico with io_uring shows near-linear scaling (2.1x at 2 threads, 4.2x at 4 threads), while nginx and others show diminishing returns.
Rust frameworks comparison: Statico outperforms both Axum and actix-web significantly, demonstrating the benefit of its specialized architecture (per-thread Tokio runtimes + SO_REUSEPORT).
Go comparison: Even fasthttp, known for its performance, reaches only ~53% of Statico+io_uring throughput at 4 threads.

Why is Statico fast?

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
Use io_uring, achieving up to 40% better performance than the basic version on Linux

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

Option	Description
`-t, --threads <THREADS>`	Number of worker threads to spawn (default: number of CPUs)
`-p, --port <PORT>`	Port to listen on (default: 8080)
`-a, --address <ADDRESS>`	Address to listen on. If not specified, listen on all interfaces
`-s, --status <STATUS>`	HTTP status code to return (default: 200)
`-b, --body <BODY>`	Response body content (optional). Use `@filename` to load from file
`-d, --delay <DELAY>`	Delay before sending the response (e.g., `100ms`, `1s`, `500us`)
`-v, --verbose`	Increase verbosity level (can be repeated: `-v`, `-vv`, `-vvv`)
`--header <HEADER>`	Custom headers in "Name: Value" format (can be specified multiple times)
`--http2`	Enable HTTP/2 (h2c) support
`--receive-buffer-size <SIZE>`	Receive buffer size
`--send-buffer-size <SIZE>`	Send buffer size
`--listen-backlog <SIZE>`	Listen backlog queue
`--tcp-nodelay`	Set TCP_NODELAY option
`--io-uring`	Use io_uring (Linux only, requires `io_uring` feature)
`--uring-entries <SIZE>`	Size of the io_uring Submission Queue (SQ) (default: 4096)
`--uring-sqpoll <MS>`	Enable kernel-side submission polling with idle timeout in milliseconds
`-h, --help`	Print help
`-V, --version`	Print version

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 --io-uring --threads 8

With response delay (latency simulation)

# Add 100ms delay before each response
./target/release/statico --delay 100ms --body "Delayed response"

# Add 1 second delay
./target/release/statico --delay 1s

Verbose mode (request/response logging)

The -v flag controls verbosity level. Each additional v increases the detail:

Level	Flag	Description
0	(none)	No output
1	`-v`	Request/status line only
2	`-vv`	Request/status line + headers
3	`-vvv`	Request/status line + headers + body (non-printable as hex)
4+	`-vvvv`	Request/status line + headers + body (full hexdump)

When displaying the body, printable ASCII characters are shown as-is, while non-printable bytes are displayed as reversed hex codes.

# No request/response output
./target/release/statico

# Show request/status line only
./target/release/statico -v

# Show request/status line + headers
./target/release/statico -vv

# Show request/status line + headers + body (non-printable as hex)
./target/release/statico -vvv

# Show request/status line + headers + body (full hexdump)
./target/release/statico -vvvv

Example: Request with non-printable bytes in body

When a request body contains non-printable characters (e.g., binary data), they are displayed differently depending on verbosity level.

# Start server with verbose body output
./target/release/statico -vvv --body "OK"

# In another terminal, send a request with binary data:
curl -X POST --data $'Hello\x00World\x01!' http://localhost:8080

Output with -vvv (inline hex for non-printable bytes):

↩ request:
POST / HTTP/1.1
host: localhost:8080
content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

Hello00World01!

The 00 and 01 are the hex representations of the null byte (\x00) and SOH (\x01), displayed with reversed colors to distinguish them from regular text.

Output with -vvvv (full hexdump format):

↩ request:
POST / HTTP/1.1
host: localhost:8080
content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

00000000  48 65 6c 6c 6f 00 57 6f  72 6c 64 01 21           |Hello.World.!|

The hexdump format shows byte offsets, hex values, and ASCII representation (with . for non-printable characters).

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 (Linux only)

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

Compile with --features io_uring
Run with --uring flag
Configure the submission queue size with --uring-entries (default: 4096)
Enable kernel-side polling with --uring-sqpoll <timeout_ms>
Currently provides a simplified implementation (only HTTP/1.1 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

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.

statico 0.3.1