simple HTTP server in Java using only Java SE API

Question

How can we create HTTP server (supporting only GET/POST) in Java using just the Java SE API, without writing code to manually parse HTTP requests and manually format HTTP responses? The Java SE API nicely encapsulates the HTTP client functionality in HttpURLConnection, but is there an analog for HTTP server functionality?

Answer 1

The com.sun.net.httpserver solution is not portable across JREs. Its better to use the official webservices API in javax.xml.ws to bootstrap a minimal HTTP server...

import java.io._
import javax.xml.ws._
import javax.xml.ws.http._
import javax.xml.transform._
import javax.xml.transform.stream._

@WebServiceProvider
@ServiceMode(value=Service.Mode.PAYLOAD) 
class P extends Provider[Source] {
  def invoke(source: Source) = new StreamSource( new StringReader("<p>Hello There!</p>"));
}

val address = "http://127.0.0.1:8080/"
Endpoint.create(HTTPBinding.HTTP_BINDING, new P()).publish(address)

println("Service running at "+address)
println("Type [CTRL]+[C] to quit!")

Thread.sleep(Long.MaxValue)

You can also try this code:

import java.io.*;
import javax.xml.ws.*;
import javax.xml.ws.http.*;
import javax.xml.transform.*;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.*;

@WebServiceProvider
@ServiceMode(value = Service.Mode.PAYLOAD)
public class Server implements Provider<Source> {

    public Source invoke(Source request) {
        return  new StreamSource(new StringReader("<p>Hello There!</p>"));
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {

        String address = "http://127.0.0.1:8080/";
        Endpoint.create(HTTPBinding.HTTP_BINDING, new Server()).publish(address);

        System.out.println("Service running at " + address);
        System.out.println("Type [CTRL]+[C] to quit!");

        Thread.sleep(Long.MAX_VALUE);
    }
}