simple HTTP server in Java using only Java SE API

Since Java 1.6, there's a builtin HTTP server in Sun Oracle JDK (note: JDK, not JRE). The com.sun.net.httpserver package summary outlines the involved classes and contains examples.

Here's a (basic) kickoff example based on the docs, you can just copy'n'paste'n'run it on Java 1.6

package com.example;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.OutputStream;
import java.net.InetSocketAddress;

import com.sun.net.httpserver.HttpExchange;
import com.sun.net.httpserver.HttpHandler;
import com.sun.net.httpserver.HttpServer;

public class Test {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        HttpServer server = HttpServer.create(new InetSocketAddress(8000), 0);
        server.createContext("/test", new MyHandler());
        server.setExecutor(null); // creates a default executor
        server.start();
    }

    static class MyHandler implements HttpHandler {
        public void handle(HttpExchange t) throws IOException {
            String response = "This is the response";
            t.sendResponseHeaders(200, response.length());
            OutputStream os = t.getResponseBody();
            os.write(response.getBytes());
            os.close();
        }
    }

}

Execute it and go to http://localhost:8000/test and you'll see the following response:

This is the response

Note that this is, in contrary to what some naive developers think, absolutely not forbidden by the well known FAQ Why Developers Should Not Write Programs That Call 'sun' Packages. That FAQ concerns the sun.* package (such as sun.misc.BASE64Encoder) for internal usage by the Oracle JRE, not the com.sun.* package. Sun/Oracle also just develops software on top of the Java SE API themselves like as every other company such as Apache and so on.

Check out NanoHttpd

Have a look at the "Jetty" web server Jetty. Superb piece of Open Source software that would seem to meet all your requirments.

If you insist on rolling your own then have a look at the "httpMessage" class.

You may also have a look at some NIO application framework such as:

1. Netty: http://jboss.org/netty
2. Apache Mina: http://mina.apache.org/ or its subproject AsyncWeb: http://mina.apache.org/asyncweb/

I can strongly recommend looking into Simple, especially if you don't need Servlet capabilities but simply access to the request/reponse objects. If you need REST you can put Jersey on top of it, if you need to output HTML or similar there's Freemarker. I really love what you can do with this combination, and there is relatively little API to learn.

This code is better than ours, you only need to add 2 libs: javax.servelet.jar and org.mortbay.jetty.jar.

Class Jetty:

package jetty;

import java.util.logging.Level;
import java.util.logging.Logger;
import org.mortbay.http.SocketListener;
import org.mortbay.jetty.Server;
import org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHttpContext;

public class Jetty {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        try {
            Server server = new Server();
            SocketListener listener = new SocketListener();      

            System.out.println("Max Thread :" + listener.getMaxThreads() + " Min Thread :" + listener.getMinThreads());

            listener.setHost("localhost");
            listener.setPort(8070);
            listener.setMinThreads(5);
            listener.setMaxThreads(250);
            server.addListener(listener);            

            ServletHttpContext context = (ServletHttpContext) server.getContext("/");
            context.addServlet("/MO", "jetty.HelloWorldServlet");

            server.start();
            server.join();

        /*//We will create our server running at http://localhost:8070
        Server server = new Server();
        server.addListener(":8070");

        //We will deploy our servlet to the server at the path '/'
        //it will be available at http://localhost:8070
        ServletHttpContext context = (ServletHttpContext) server.getContext("/");
        context.addServlet("/MO", "jetty.HelloWorldServlet");

        server.start();
        */

        } catch (Exception ex) {
            Logger.getLogger(Jetty.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
        }

    }
} 

Servlet class:

package jetty;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.PrintWriter;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

public class HelloWorldServlet extends HttpServlet
{
    @Override
    protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest httpServletRequest, HttpServletResponse httpServletResponse) throws ServletException, IOException
    {
        String appid = httpServletRequest.getParameter("appid");
        String conta = httpServletRequest.getParameter("conta");

        System.out.println("Appid : "+appid);
        System.out.println("Conta : "+conta);

        httpServletResponse.setContentType("text/plain");
        PrintWriter out = httpServletResponse.getWriter();
        out.println("Hello World!");
        out.close();
    }
}

How about Apache Commons HttpCore project?

From the web site:... HttpCore Goals

• Implementation of the most fundamental HTTP transport aspects
• Balance between good performance and the clarity & expressiveness of API
• Small (predictable) memory footprint
• Self contained library (no external dependencies beyond JRE)