HTTP Server in Rust

In this five-session guided project, you'll build a complete HTTP server from scratch. No third-party libraries, just the Rust standard library. Along the way, you'll learn how frameworks like Axum work under the hood and gain deep, practical knowledge of network programming, macros, error handling, and multithreading.

You’ll leave with more than just a working server. You’ll walk away with a library-quality project, designed with a fun and fancy interface that other engineers (or future-you!) will appreciate.

This course is designed for intermediate Rust developers looking to deepen their backend skills, explore systems-level patterns, or build something technically impressive and a little bit unnecessary. It’s not safe for production, and that’s the point!

Whether you're building APIs, web applications, or a turbo encabulator, this course will give you the confidence to build robust systems from scratch.

What Makes It Different

• No third-party crates: Learn how things really work.
• Modular, real-world project: Structured to be both educational and genuinely useful.
• Permanent access & updates: You'll get all future improvements as the ecosystem evolves.
• Using Rust at work? You can likely expense this as professional development.

What You’ll Learn

• How to build a performant HTTP server from scratch
• The architecture behind routers and extractors (Axum-style)
• Declarative macros to eliminate boilerplate
• Error handling and unit testing in idiomatic Rust
• Multithreaded request handling using a thread pool
• (Async coming soon!)

Modules

• mod01: Basic HTTP server
• mod02: Improved HTTP parsing
• mod03: Routing & declarative macros
• mod04: Type erasure & extractors
• final: Multithreading & benchmarking (View on GitHub)

The open-source final module is yours to browse, but the full course includes detailed READMEs and guided walkthroughs for every step of the project.

About Me

I’m Tyler, a Rust educator and software engineer who’s obsessed with building things from scratch to learn how they tick. I’ve mentored 200+ hours in Rust and Python, and this project brings together everything I love: clean architecture, powerful abstractions, and helping developers level up with real-world systems.

I care about kindness, curiosity, and not burning out. If that sounds like your kind of course, I’d love to have you on board.