Http Server in Lua

Here’s the translation of the HTTP Server example from Go to Lua, formatted in Markdown suitable for Hugo:

Our HTTP server example demonstrates how to create a basic server using Lua and the luasocket library.

local socket = require("socket")
local http = require("socket.http")

-- A fundamental concept in HTTP servers is handlers. In Lua, we can implement
-- handlers as functions that take a client socket as an argument.

function hello(client)
    -- Functions serving as handlers take a client socket as an argument.
    -- The handler is responsible for sending the HTTP response.
    -- Here our simple response is just "hello\n".
    client:send("HTTP/1.1 200 OK\r\nContent-Type: text/plain\r\n\r\nhello\n")
end

function headers(client)
    -- This handler does something a little more sophisticated by reading
    -- all the HTTP request headers and echoing them into the response body.
    local response = "HTTP/1.1 200 OK\r\nContent-Type: text/plain\r\n\r\n"
    for line in client:receive("*l") do
        if line == "" then break end
        response = response .. line .. "\n"
    end
    client:send(response)
end

-- Create a TCP server
local server = assert(socket.bind("*", 8090))

print("Server listening on port 8090...")

while true do
    -- Wait for a client connection
    local client = server:accept()
    
    -- Receive the request
    local request = client:receive()
    
    if request then
        -- Parse the request to get the path
        local _, _, method, path = string.find(request, "(%w+)%s+(.-)%s+HTTP")
        
        -- Route the request to the appropriate handler
        if path == "/hello" then
            hello(client)
        elseif path == "/headers" then
            headers(client)
        else
            -- Default response for unknown routes
            client:send("HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found\r\n\r\n")
        end
    end
    
    -- Close the client connection
    client:close()
end

To run the server:

$ lua http-server.lua

You can then access the server using curl:

$ curl localhost:8090/hello
hello

$ curl localhost:8090/headers
GET /headers HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:8090
User-Agent: curl/7.68.0
Accept: */*

This Lua implementation provides similar functionality to the original example. It sets up a basic HTTP server that can handle requests to /hello and /headers paths. The server listens on port 8090 and uses a simple routing mechanism to direct requests to the appropriate handler function.

Note that this implementation uses a synchronous, single-threaded approach, which is suitable for demonstration purposes but may not be ideal for high-performance scenarios. For a production environment, you might want to consider using a more robust HTTP server library or implementing concurrency.

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Http Server in Lua