I wrote my own web server from scratch last year the exact same reasons: starting from scratch with Apache and NGINX is too painful for my needs.
Here are my learnings:
* TLS (HTTPS) can be easily enabled by default, but it requires certificates. This requires a learning curve for the application developer but can be automated away from the user.
* The TLS certs will not be trusted by default until they are added to the OS and browser trust stores. In most cases this can be fully automated. This is most simple in Windows, but Firefox still makes use of its own trust store. Linux requires use of a package to add certs to each browser trust store and sudo to add to the OS. Self signed certs cannot be trusted in OSX with automation and requires the user to manually add the certs to the keychain.
* Everything executes faster when WebSockets are preferred over HTTP. An HTTP server is not required to run a WebSocket server allowing them to run in parallel. If the server is listening for the WebSocket handshake message and determines the connection to instead be HTTP it can allow both WebSocket and HTTP support from the same port.
* Complete user configuration and preferences for an HTTP or WebSocket server can be a tiny JSON object, including proxy and redirection support by a variety of addressable criteria. Traffic redirection should be identical for WebSocks and HTTP both from the users perspective as well as the internal execution.
* The server application can come online in a fraction of a second. New servers coming online will also take just milliseconds if not from certificate creation.
> TLS (HTTPS) can be easily enabled by default, but it requires certificates. This requires a learning curve for the application developer but can be automated away from the user.
Yeah, these certificates can be obtained from Let's Encrypt automatically.
> Everything executes faster when WebSockets are preferred over HTTP. An HTTP server is not required to run a WebSocket server allowing them to run in parallel. If the server is listening for the WebSocket handshake message and determines the connection to instead be HTTP it can allow both WebSocket and HTTP support from the same port.
Here are my learnings:
* TLS (HTTPS) can be easily enabled by default, but it requires certificates. This requires a learning curve for the application developer but can be automated away from the user.
* The TLS certs will not be trusted by default until they are added to the OS and browser trust stores. In most cases this can be fully automated. This is most simple in Windows, but Firefox still makes use of its own trust store. Linux requires use of a package to add certs to each browser trust store and sudo to add to the OS. Self signed certs cannot be trusted in OSX with automation and requires the user to manually add the certs to the keychain.
* Everything executes faster when WebSockets are preferred over HTTP. An HTTP server is not required to run a WebSocket server allowing them to run in parallel. If the server is listening for the WebSocket handshake message and determines the connection to instead be HTTP it can allow both WebSocket and HTTP support from the same port.
* Complete user configuration and preferences for an HTTP or WebSocket server can be a tiny JSON object, including proxy and redirection support by a variety of addressable criteria. Traffic redirection should be identical for WebSocks and HTTP both from the users perspective as well as the internal execution.
* The server application can come online in a fraction of a second. New servers coming online will also take just milliseconds if not from certificate creation.