In the part 1 we’ve seen how we can use Simple Web Server (SWS) from the command line during writing or debugging web applications. While such usage should be enough for a lot of use-cases, from time to time we’ll need more control over which HTTP methods, headers, MIME types etc. That’s why in Java 18 there is a possibility to use SWS programmatically, i.e. to embed it into our applications. For that, we can use some existing classes (i.e. pre Java 18) and also some new ones. Let’s see the basic programmatic usage of Simple Web Server (SWS) in action!

A lot of developers work on writing or debugging web applications daily. Sometimes that work involves writing our application’s backend and sometimes consuming other web resources, whether they are APIs or “normal” web pages. Other programming languages recognised the need for having a “quick and dirty” way of serving resources over HTTP(S) protocol during the development. Good people that developed JDK 18 gave us the opportunity to have that in Java too so we don’t have to look at node.js, Python or PHP developers with envy any more when they brag how simple it is to start serving resources in their languages. Let’s see the basic usage of Simple Web Server (SWS) in action!