One of the exciting new features coming to the Ceylon SDK in M5 is the HTTP server contributed by Matej Lazar. The HTTP server forms part of the module ceylon.net and is based on Undertow, a fairly new project that will serve up HTTP in future versions of JBoss.

The API is still evolving, but I can give you a taste of it with a little hello world program.

import ceylon.net.httpd { createServer, Endpoint, Response, Request }

void runServer() {
    //create a HTTP server
    value server = createServer {
        //an endpoint, on the path /hello
        Endpoint { 
            path = "/hello";
            //handle requests to this path
            service(Request request, Response response) =>
                    response.writeString("hello world");
        }
    };

    //start the server on port 8080
    server.start(8080);
}

Or, if you're the kind of person who gets their kicks out of squeezing things into one line:

import ceylon.net.httpd { createServer, Endpoint, Response, Request }

void runServer() => 
        createServer { Endpoint("/hello", 
                (Request request, Response response) =>
                        response.writeString("hello world")) }
        .start(8080);

(No, FTR, I would never write it like that.)

Oh, I almost forgot, you'll also need to import ceylon.net in your module descriptor:

module hellohttp '1' {
    import ceylon.net '0.5';
}

Of course, what you don't need is any kind of XML metadata or build script to package stuff up into deployment archives or copy archives to a deployment directory.

And it starts up in an instant, right from the commandline or IDE.