HTTP Request Handling

Coming Soon

This lesson will teach you how to build a basic HTTP server in pure Erlang to handle web requests and WebSocket upgrades. You’ll learn how to:

• Parse HTTP requests and extract headers
• Generate proper HTTP responses
• Handle different HTTP methods (GET, POST, OPTIONS)
• Implement content negotiation and MIME types
• Prepare for WebSocket protocol upgrades

What You’ll Build

By the end of this lesson, you’ll have implemented:

• A basic HTTP server with request parsing
• HTTP response generation with proper headers
• Static file serving for your chat client
• CORS handling for cross-origin requests
• Foundation for WebSocket upgrade handshakes

Key Concepts Preview

% HTTP request parsing
parse_request(Data) ->
    [RequestLine | Headers] = string:split(Data, "\r\n", all),
    [Method, Path, Version] = string:split(RequestLine, " ", all),
    ParsedHeaders = parse_headers(Headers),
    {Method, Path, Version, ParsedHeaders}.

This lesson builds on the TCP socket programming from Lesson 13 and prepares you for the WebSocket protocol implementation we’ll explore in Lesson 15.

This lesson is currently under development. Check back soon for the complete content!