IDF httpd vs libesphttpd

[Skedaddles]

Hello,

We are porting a project based on the ESP8266 non-OS SDK over to the ESP32 IDF. The old project had a pretty extensive web interface that used Sprite's excellent libesphttpd. We were quite satisfied with the performance and other characteristics. There appears to be a forked project with support for the ESP32-IDF: https://github.com/chmorgan/libesphttpd

I'm wondering if anyone has experience in using the new libesphttpd, and how it compares to the HTTPD included with the IDF.

Areas of interest:
- What are the performance differences?
- Is there a difference in the ability to handle different network interfaces simultaneously? (eg, Ethernet, Wi-Fi STA, and Wi-Fi AP)
- HTTPS support

Any other thoughts or comments on these options and their trade-offs would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[ESP_Sprite]

Hi! Really happy to hear you still like the little project I started years ago. I abandoned it some years ago and cmorgan took it over, as you noted, so my info isn't entirely up to date anymore, but here's something:

* One of the main differences between libesphttpd and the ESP_IDF httpd is the way dynamic pages are handled: in httpd, you have a function that writes to a socket generating the page as it goes. In libesphttpd, the function gets called every time it needs to send a new chunk of data. This makes httpd easier to use, but you can only serve one file at a time (other requests won't get data); libesphttpd can serve multiple files simultaneously at the cost of page generating functions being more complex.
* Another difference is that libesphttpd uses dynamic memory, while httpd uses static memory only. This means the httpd memory usage is pretty much constant, while libesphttpds memory usage will vary.
* Libesphttpd is (well, was, it may have changed) written around... let's say my loose interpretation of the HTTP specs. I'm sure it works 99.9% of the time, but there may be incompatibilities. From what I can tell, httpd uses the ngix http_parser for most of the things it does, which is likely to be more compatible/tested.
* Both work on the basis of Posix sockets on the base level, so I imagine both can work on multiple network interfaces.
* I think both support HTTPS.
* I have no clue wrt performance, sorry.

[Deouss]

I am actually looking for a very very light-weight HTTP IoT server. It doesn't need any TLS protocols and it would be nice to have REST WebAPI/Json comunication included
Thanks

[Skedaddles]

Thanks for the response Sprite, that is some useful information. We've made good use of that "little project" over the years. If we somehow cross paths we definitely owe you a beverage

@Deouss: you could also check out https://github.com/me-no-dev/ESPAsyncWebServer. It appears to be a solid choice, but we are avoiding the Arduino core and licensing on our projects for now.