Web Design

Static Web Server – high-performance and asynchronous web server

Static Web Server (or SWS abbreviated) is a tiny and fast production-ready web server suitable to serve static web files or assets.

It is focused on lightness and easy-to-use principles while keeping high performance and safety powered by The Rust Programming Language.

Written on top of Hyper and Tokio runtime, it provides concurrent and asynchronous networking abilities and the latest HTTP/1 – HTTP/2 implementations.

This is free and open source software.

Key Features

  • Built with Rust, which focuses on safety, speed and concurrency.
  • Memory-safe and significantly reduced CPU and RAM overhead.
  • Blazing fast static files-serving and asynchronous powered by the latest Hyper, Tokio and a set of awesome crates.
  • Single 4MB (uncompressed) and fully static binary with no dependencies (Musl libc). Suitable for running on any Linux distro or Docker container.
  • Optional GZip, Deflate, Brotli or Zstandard (zstd) compression for text-based web files only.
  • Compression on-demand via Accept-Encoding header.
  • Partial Content Delivery support for byte-serving of large files.
  • Optional Cache-Control headers for assets.
  • Termination signal handling with graceful shutdown ability and grace period.
  • HTTP/2 and TLS support.
  • Security headers for HTTP/2 by default.
  • HEAD and OPTIONS responses.
  • Lightweight and configurable logging via tracing crate.
  • Customizable number of blocking and worker threads.
  • Optional directory listing with sorting and JSON output format support.
  • CORS with preflight requests support.
  • Basic HTTP Authentication.
  • Customizable HTTP response headers for specific file requests via glob patterns.
  • Fallback pages for 404 errors, useful for Single-page applications.
  • Run the server as a Windows Service.
  • Configurable using CLI arguments, environment variables or a TOML file.
  • Default and custom error pages.
  • Built-in HTTP to HTTPS redirect.
  • GET/HEAD Health check endpoint.
  • Support for serving pre-compressed (Gzip/Brotli/Zstd) files directly from disk.
  • Custom URL rewrites and redirects via glob patterns with replacements.
  • Virtual hosting support.
  • Multiple index files.
  • Maintenance Mode functionality.
  • Available as a library crate with opt-in features.
  • First-class Docker support. Scratch, latest Alpine Linux and Debian Docker images.
  • Ability to accept a socket listener as a file descriptor for sandboxing and on-demand applications (e.g. systemd).
  • Cross-platform. Pre-compiled binaries for Linux, macOS, Windows, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Android (x86/x86_64, ARM/ARM64) and WebAssembly (via Wasmer).

Website: github.com/static-web-server/static-web-server
Support:
Developer: Jose Quintana
License: MIT License or Apache License v2.0

Static Web Server is written in Rust. Learn Rust with our recommended free books and free tutorials


Related Software

Static Web Servers
miniserveCLI tool to serve files and dirs over HTTP
serveStatic file serving and directory listing
binserveFast production-ready static web server
SuperstaticEnhanced static web server
darkhttpdA simple web server written in C; only serves static content
simple-http-server Simple static file server written in Rust
Static Web ServerHigh-performance and asynchronous web server
webfsSimple http server for mostly static content.
quarkSmall and simple HTTP GET/HEAD-only web server for static content
Websitino Lightweight static file server for local development
static-file-serverTiny, simple static file server

Read our verdict in the software roundup.


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