I'm thinking to start a side project to learn how HTTP servers are built.
I started searching for it and came to know that the specifications are mentioned in RFC documents.
But there are over 8200 RFCs as of August 2017.
Further searching about it got me specific RFC to use for HTTP i.e., RFC2616 on software engineering stackexchange here. There is a comment that says "In 2014, RFC2616 was replaced by multiple RFCs (7230-7237)."
So, do we need to abandon RFC2616 completely and read RFCs(7230-7237)?
We can clearly see on RFC2616 that Obsoleted by RFC 7230, RFC 7231, RFC 7232, RFC 7233, RFC 7234, RFC 7235.
So, what are the RFCs for building HTTP server? Should I only read the documents mentioned as Obsoleted by?
Yes, you just need RFCs 7230..7236 (for HTTP/1.1) and RFC 7540+7541 (for HTTP/2).