Creating a Simple HTTP Server in Go

Abhinav Sunil

2 min read

·

Jun 26, 2026

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Go (often called Golang) is one of the most popular programming languages for building fast and reliable backend services. Thanks to its excellent standard library, creating an HTTP server requires only a few lines of code. In this article, we’ll build a simple HTTP server from scratch while keeping the project clean and organized.

project/
│── app/
│   └── application.go
│── .env
│── go.mod
└── main.go

Step 1 : Intialize a Go Module

go mod init <name_you_want_to_give>

this command creates a go.mod file, which keeps track of your project’s dependencies and module information.

Step 2 : Install the dotenv Package

To load configurations from a .env file , install the godotenv package by running:

go get github.com/joho/godotenv

Step 3 : Configure and Load Environment Variables

Now that the godotenv package is installed, let’s create a .env file to store our application’s configuration.

Inside the root of your project, create a file named .env and add the following:

PORT = 4005

Next, open your main.go file and import the required packages:

package main

import (
 "fmt"
 "log"
 "os"

 "github.com/joho/godotenv"
)

Now, load the .env file inside the main() function:

func main(){


 err:=godotenv.Load()

 if err != nil{
  log.Fatal("Error loading .env file")
 }

 PORT:=":" + os.Getenv("PORT")


}

This value will later be used when we start our HTTP server.

Step 4: Initialize the HTTP Server

To keep our project organized, we’ll separate the server logic from main.go

Create the app Package

Inside the project root, create a new folder named app. Then, create a file called application.go.

package app

import (
 "fmt"
 "net/http"
 "time"
)

type Config struct{
 Addr string
}

type Application struct{
 Config Config
}

func (app *Application) Run() error{
 server:=&http.Server{
  Addr: app.Config.Addr,
  Handler: nil,
  ReadTimeout: 10*time.Second,
  WriteTimeout: 10*time.Second,
 }
 fmt.Println("Starting server on ",app.Config.Addr)

 return server.ListenAndServe()
}

Update main.go

Now that we’ve created the Application type, we can initialize it inside main.go.

 cfg:=app.Config{
  Addr: PORT,
 }

 app:=app.Application{
  Config: cfg,
 }

 err = app.Run()
 if err != nil{
  log.Fatal(err)
 }

Full Code:

app/application.go:

package app

import (
 "fmt"
 "net/http"
 "time"
)

type Config struct{
 Addr string
}

type Application struct{
 Config Config
}

func (app *Application) Run() error{
 server:=&http.Server{
  Addr: app.Config.Addr,
  Handler: nil,
  ReadTimeout: 10*time.Second,
  WriteTimeout: 10*time.Second,
 }
 fmt.Println("Starting server on ",app.Config.Addr)

 return server.ListenAndServe()
}

main.go

package main

import (
 "AeromindGO/app"
 "fmt"
 "log"
 "os"

 "github.com/joho/godotenv"
)


func main(){


 err:=godotenv.Load()

 if err != nil{
  log.Fatal("Error loading .env file")
  fmt.Println("Unable to load .env")
 }

 PORT:=":" + os.Getenv("PORT")



 cfg:=app.Config{
  Addr: PORT,
 }

 app:=app.Application{
  Config: cfg,
 }

 err = app.Run()
 if err != nil{
  log.Fatal(err)
 }
 
}