BHTTP-1

PROTOTYPE

A binary, HTTP-like protocol over persistent TCP, written in Go with a spec, server, client and chaos proxy.

Personal project · Sep 2026

THE PROBLEM

Learn what HTTP does for you by designing a small binary protocol and making its parser survive hostile input.

A 12-byte frame header (length, type, flags, stream id) with request, response, data and error frames.
A reference server (bserve), a client (bcurl), a chaos proxy (bchaos) that splits reads to one byte and injects unknown frames, and independent Python interop clients.

Frame length is validated before any allocation, and unknown frame types are skipped by their length. reader.go ↗
Four fuzz targets, and the Go test suite (about 370 test runs) passes.
Written spec, wire-format document and an annotated hexdump of a real captured exchange.

After sending ERROR, half-close and drain input for at most 1 s and 64 KiBADOPTED
TestDrainIsBoundedInSizeAndTime (an endless sender and a silent peer, over net.Pipe, which has no CloseWrite, so the FIN step is not exercised there) and TestServerStopsTalkingToAPeerThatKeepsSending (real TCP) pin...
A file that shrinks mid-transfer ends in ERROR(3), never a clean END_STREAMADOPTED
TestFileThatShrinksMidTransferEndsWithAnErrorNotASilentTruncation creates a 48 MiB file, holds the client back so the server blocks mid-file, truncates it to zero, and asserts an ERROR frame with code PROTOCOL_ERROR...