How do you build a production-ready HTTP server using Go's standard net/http package?

Go's net/http package provides a production-capable HTTP server out of the box. Unlike Node.js or Python frameworks, you rarely need a third-party framework for basic HTTP serving — the standard library handles routing, TLS, graceful shutdown, and concurrent request handling.

package main

import (
    "context"
    "log"
    "net/http"
    "os"
    "os/signal"
    "syscall"
    "time"
)

func main() {
    mux := http.NewServeMux()

    // Register handlers
    mux.HandleFunc("GET /health", healthHandler)  // Go 1.22+ method+path
    mux.HandleFunc("GET /users/{id}", getUserHandler)
    mux.HandleFunc("POST /users", createUserHandler)

    // Apply middleware chain
    handler := loggingMiddleware(requestIDMiddleware(mux))

    srv := &http.Server{
        Addr:         ":8080",
        Handler:      handler,
        ReadTimeout:  5 * time.Second,   // time to read full request
        WriteTimeout: 10 * time.Second,  // time to write full response
        IdleTimeout:  120 * time.Second, // keep-alive timeout
        MaxHeaderBytes: 1 << 20,         // 1 MB header limit
    }

    // Start server in a goroutine
    go func() {
        log.Printf("server listening on %s", srv.Addr)
        if err := srv.ListenAndServe(); err != nil && err != http.ErrServerClosed {
            log.Fatalf("server error: %v", err)
        }
    }()

    // Graceful shutdown on OS signal
    quit := make(chan os.Signal, 1)
    signal.Notify(quit, syscall.SIGINT, syscall.SIGTERM)
    <-quit
    log.Println("shutting down server...")

    ctx, cancel := context.WithTimeout(context.Background(), 30*time.Second)
    defer cancel()
    if err := srv.Shutdown(ctx); err != nil {
        log.Fatalf("forced shutdown: %v", err)
    }
    log.Println("server stopped")
}

Always set timeouts on production HTTP servers. Without them, slow clients can exhaust goroutines: ReadTimeout prevents slow request bodies, WriteTimeout prevents slow response consumption, and IdleTimeout prevents idle keep-alive connections from accumulating.

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