MVDServer

An open source secure web server that supports HTTP and HTTPS out of the box.

MVDServer runs in any operating system (Linux, Window or macOS) and does not require complex configurations.

You can integrate MVDServer in your own Java code as a library or use it from the command line to serve your web site.

Get the source code from GitHub and use the jar files included in lib folder in your Java project.

Running MVDServer

Follow these steps to launch MVDServer with its default configuration:

Download the appropriate package for your operating system and decompress it.
Open a terminal and navigate to the directory where you decompressed MVDServer.
Run .\server.bat or ./server.sh
- If you use Windows, it will ask your permission for running Java. Allow the program to run.
- You may need to open port 8080 in your firewall.
Open your browser and navigate to http://localhost:8080

On success, MVDServer will create a folder named www with a default index.html page. You should see this in your browser:

MVDServer Default Page

Stopping the Server

To stop the server, visit this link: http://localhost:8080/stop?key=halt

Your browser will tell you that it can't connect and the terminal used to start MVDServer will notify you that the program stopped.

Customizing MVDServer

By default, MVDServer runs with these settings:

HTTP server enabled and listening on port 8080
HTTPS disabled
Content served from www subfolder
Key word used to stop the server is halt

To customize MVDServer, edit the provided config.json file or create a new one with the same fields. Default configuration looks like this:

{
    "hostName": "mysite.com",
    "httpPort": 8080,
    "httpsPort": 8443,
    "keystore": "",
    "password": "",
    "webDir": "www",
    "stopWord": "halt"
}

Parameter	Description
`hostName`	The domain name of the server. Required for HTTP/1.1 and used for redirecting to HTTPS.
`httpPort`	Port where the HTTP server listens to requests. Default is `8080`.
`httpsPort`	Port where the HTTPS server listens to requests. Default is `8443`.
`keystore`	Location of the Java keystore that contains the certificates used with the HTTPS server.
`password`	Password for the Java keystore that contains the certificates
`webDir`	Directory containing the content to serve. Default is `www`
`stopWord`	Code used for stopping the server using a browser. Default is `halt`.

To use your own configuration file, simply run the server like this:

sh server.sh -config myConfig.json

.\server.bat -config myConfig.json

The HTTPS server is automatically enabled when the configuration file has a valid Keystore location and password.

You can use MVDServer binaries to create and manage a keystore. see the TLS/SSL Certificates tutorial for more details.

Default Ports

The standard port for HTTP protocol is 80 and the port for HTTPS is 443. MVDServer uses other ports by default because most operating systems will not let an unprivileged user or application work with ports 80 and 443.

When using MVDServer on Linux, you can redirect the requests from standard ports to the ports used by MVDServer using iptables as root like this:

iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-port 8080 
iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 443 -j REDIRECT --to-port 8443

Permanent Redirects

To permanently redirect a moved page to its new location, add a JSON file named redirects.json to the root of your web site. Add an entry for each moved page using the old relative address as key and the new absolute address as value. A redirected entry should look like this:

{
    "/tools.html": "https://mvdsoftware.com/tools/index.html"
}

Download MVDServer Binaries

Select the appropriate package from the drop-down list and click on Download button.