httpx.zig

A high-performance HTTP client and server library for Zig 0.16+, with HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, TLS, connection pooling, and pattern-based routing. Pure Zig, no external dependencies.

Originally forked from muhammad-fiaz/httpx.zig. This fork has diverged significantly with HTTP/2 production hardening, HPACK optimizations, expanded test coverage (398 tests), security hardening, and Zig 0.16 std.Io fiber-based concurrency support.

Installation

Add to your build.zig.zon:

.dependencies = .{
    .httpx = .{
        .url = "git+https://github.com/antflydb/httpx.zig.git",
        .hash = "...", // zig fetch --save will fill this
    },
},

Or fetch directly:

zig fetch --save git+https://github.com/antflydb/httpx.zig.git

Then in your build.zig:

const httpx_dep = b.dependency("httpx", .{
    .target = target,
    .optimize = optimize,
});
exe.root_module.addImport("httpx", httpx_dep.module("httpx"));

Quick Start

Client

const std = @import("std");
const httpx = @import("httpx");

pub fn main() !void {
    var gpa = std.heap.GeneralPurposeAllocator(.{}){};
    defer _ = gpa.deinit();
    const allocator = gpa.allocator();

    var client = httpx.Client.init(allocator);
    defer client.deinit();

    // GET
    var response = try client.get("https://httpbin.org/get", .{});
    defer response.deinit();

    if (response.ok()) {
        std.debug.print("Response: {s}\n", .{response.text() orelse ""});
    }

    // POST with JSON
    var post_response = try client.post("https://httpbin.org/post", .{
        .json = "{\"name\": \"John\"}",
    });
    defer post_response.deinit();
}

Server

const std = @import("std");
const httpx = @import("httpx");

fn hello(ctx: *httpx.Context) anyerror!httpx.Response {
    return ctx.json(.{ .message = "Hello, World!" });
}

pub fn main() !void {
    var gpa = std.heap.GeneralPurposeAllocator(.{}){};
    defer _ = gpa.deinit();
    const allocator = gpa.allocator();

    var server = httpx.Server.init(allocator);
    defer server.deinit();

    try server.use(httpx.logger());
    try server.use(httpx.cors(.{}));

    try server.get("/", hello);
    try server.listen();
}

Features

Feature	Description
HTTP/1.0 and HTTP/1.1	Full client and server support with chunked transfer encoding
HTTP/2	HPACK header compression (RFC 7541), stream multiplexing, flow control
HTTP/3	QPACK header compression (RFC 9204), QUIC framing (RFC 9000)
TLS 1.3	Secure connections via Zig's std.crypto.tls
Connection Pooling	Automatic TCP connection reuse with keep-alive and health checking
Pattern Routing	Dynamic path parameters (:id), route groups, wildcard routes
Middleware	CORS, logging, security headers (Helmet), request ID, custom middleware
Concurrency	Parallel request patterns: race, all, any via std.Io fibers
Streaming	Chunked responses, Server-Sent Events (SSE), trailers
Static Files	File serving with path traversal protection
Cookies	First-class cookie helpers for client and server
JSON and HTML	Built-in response helpers for JSON serialization and HTML
Interceptors	Global hooks to modify requests and responses
Retries	Configurable retry policies with exponential backoff
Zero Dependencies	Pure Zig — no C libraries, no system dependencies

Examples

The examples/ directory has runnable demos:

• Client: simple_get.zig, post_json.zig, custom_headers.zig, connection_pool.zig
• JSON Parse: simple_get_deserialize.zig
• Cookies: cookies_demo.zig
• Concurrency: concurrent_requests.zig
• Streaming: streaming.zig
• Server: simple_server.zig, router_example.zig, middleware_example.zig
• Static Files: static_files.zig
• Website: multi_page_website.zig
• Protocol: http2_example.zig, http3_example.zig

zig build run-simple_get

Testing

zig build test --summary all

398 tests covering protocol parsing, HPACK compression, HTTP/2 framing, headers, URI parsing, routing, middleware, encoding, security (path traversal, injection prevention), and more.

Requirements

Requirement	Version
Zig	0.16.0+
OS	Linux, macOS, Windows, FreeBSD

License

MIT License — see LICENSE for details.