Open source Java HTTP servers

While we can develop a web server using any of the technologies discussed in this chapter, another option is to use any of a number of open source Java-based HTTP servers. Such servers frequently provide a number of features, including:

• Full compliancy with HTTP standards

• Support for logging and monitoring

• Handling of virtual hosts

• Performance tuning capability

• Scalable

• Chunked data transfer

• Configurability

• Support for NIO (Grizzly)

Leveraging these systems can save you a lot of time and effort that would otherwise be devoted to building a custom server. A partial list of a few Java-based servers include the following:

• Jakarta Tomcat (http://tomcat.apache.org/)

• Jetty (http://www.eclipse.org/jetty/)

• JLHTTP (http://www.freeutils.net/source/jlhttp/)

• GlassFish (https://glassfish.java.net/)

• Grizzly (https://grizzly.java.net/)

• Simple (http://www.simpleframework.org/)

One list of open source Java servers is found at http://java-source.net/open-source/web-servers.

At a higher level...