mHttp

Low footprint fully managed C# HTTP/1.1 server library (.NET 4.5.2 and .Net Standard 1.4) for standing up RESTful services.

This version has been modified from upstream to support .Net Standard 1.4 and includes some other fixes to socket handling. It retains its Mono compatibility (currently tested against 5.19.0) but sacrifices the BCL HTTP listener.

Demo

Check out the sample project

How to build

IDE: Open and build mHttp.sln

Command-line: Otherwise, to build on the command-line in *nx environment with Mono installed:

$ xbuild /p:Configuration=Release mHttp.sln

To produce the mHttp.dll artifact under the mHttp/bin/Release directory.

Hello World

This example uses the Mono C# command-line REPL.

1. Start a C# REPL session, loading the mHttp.dll assembly:

$ csharp -r:mHttp.dll
Mono C# Shell, type "help;" for help

Enter statements below.

2. Import the m.Http namespace:

csharp> using m.Http;

3. Instantiate the route table with a single route:

csharp> var routeTable = new RouteTable(
      >   Route.Get("/").With(request => new TextResponse("Hello " + request.Headers["User-Agent"]))
      > );

4. Instantiate and start the server backend listening on port 8080:

csharp> var server = new HttpBackend(System.Net.IPAddress.Any, 8080);
csharp> server.Start(routeTable);

5. Hit the endpoint:

$ curl -v http://localhost:8080
> GET / HTTP/1.1
> User-Agent: curl/7.35.0
......
> 
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Content-Type: text/plain
......
< 
Hello curl/7.35.0

See the sample project for a more involved example.

Performance

A quick ab sampling of the sample project at its trivial /plaintext endpoint as of 22/7/2016 with the following setup:

• Server: i7-3770K; 32gb ram; Xubuntu 14.04.4 LTS
• Client: i5-3210M; 16gb ram; Xubuntu 14.04.4 LTS
• Network: Direct GB-nic connection
• Tuning: ulimit -n at 65535 (everything else distro default)
• Runtime: Mono 4.4.1

Server Process

10.0.0.1:~$ MONO_GC_PARAMS="nursery-size=128m,max-heap-size=1024m,major=marksweep" mono --server --gc=sgen mHttp.Sample.exe

Client ab run

10.0.0.2:~$ ab -n 1024000 -c 1024 http://10.0.0.1:8080/plaintext

Results

Concurrency Level:      1024
Time taken for tests:   59.683 seconds
Complete requests:      1024000
Failed requests:        0
Total transferred:      166912000 bytes
HTML transferred:       12288000 bytes
Requests per second:    17157.18 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       59.683 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       0.058 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          2731.07 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:        0   29 180.2      0    3009
Processing:     1   30  29.0     25    1635
Waiting:        1   29  29.0     25    1635
Total:          3   59 183.0     27    3054

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
  50%     27
  66%     38
  75%     43
  80%     46
  90%     56
  95%     62
  98%   1013
  99%   1030
 100%   3054 (longest request)

Client ab run with Keep-Alive

10.0.0.2:~$ ab -k -n 1024000 -c 1024 http://10.0.0.1:8080/plaintext

Results

Concurrency Level:      1024
Time taken for tests:   18.470 seconds
Complete requests:      1024000
Failed requests:        0
Keep-Alive requests:    1014115
Total transferred:      202315453 bytes
HTML transferred:       12288000 bytes
Requests per second:    55441.22 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       18.470 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       0.018 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          10697.00 [Kbytes/sec] received