diff --git a/src/Makefile b/src/Makefile
index c58bff4..4c369b4 100644
--- a/src/Makefile
+++ b/src/Makefile
@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ $(TARGET): $(OBJ)
 
 main.o: include/tcp.h
 tcp.o: include/tcp.h include/http.h
-http.o: include/http.h
+http.o: include/http.h include/file.h
 file.o: include/file.h
 
 .PHONY: clean
diff --git a/src/http.c b/src/http.c
index 253061b..8f778e4 100644
--- a/src/http.c
+++ b/src/http.c
@@ -3,22 +3,7 @@
 #include <stdio.h>
 
 #include "include/http.h"
-
-// what we want to do here is start parsing the http message
-
-// GET / HTTP/1.1
-// Host: localhost:8080
-// User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:134.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/134.0
-// Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
-// Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5
-// Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br, zstd
-// Connection: keep-alive
-// Upgrade-Insecure-Requests: 1
-// Sec-Fetch-Dest: document
-// Sec-Fetch-Mode: navigate
-// Sec-Fetch-Site: none
-// Sec-Fetch-User: ?1
-// Priority: u=0, i
+#include "include/file.h"
 
 http_method_t str_to_http_method(char* input)
 {
@@ -132,11 +117,70 @@ const char* http_status_code_to_str(http_status_code_t code)
 	}
 }
 
+void init_general_headers(struct general_headers* headers)
+{
+	headers->cache_control = "";
+	headers->connection = "";
+	headers->date = "";
+	headers->pragma = "";
+	headers->trailer = "";
+	headers->transfer_encoding = "";
+	headers->upgrade = "";
+	headers->via = "";
+	headers->warning = "";
+		
+}
+
+void init_http_request(http_request* request)
+{
+	init_general_headers(&(request->general_headers));
+	
+	request->request_headers.accept = "";
+	request->request_headers.accept_charset = "";
+	request->request_headers.accept_encoding = "";
+	request->request_headers.accept_language = "";
+	request->request_headers.authorization = "";
+	request->request_headers.expect = "";
+	request->request_headers.from = "";
+	request->request_headers.host = "";
+	request->request_headers.if_match = "";
+	request->request_headers.if_modified_since = "";
+	request->request_headers.if_none_match = "";
+	request->request_headers.if_range = "";
+	request->request_headers.if_unmodified_since = "";
+	request->request_headers.max_forwards = "";
+	request->request_headers.proxy_authorization = "";
+	request->request_headers.range = "";
+	request->request_headers.referer = "";
+	request->request_headers.te = "";
+	request->request_headers.user_agent = "";
+}
+
+void init_http_response(http_response* response)
+{
+	init_general_headers(&(response->general_headers));
+
+	response->response_headers.accept_ranges = "";
+	response->response_headers.age = 0;
+	response->response_headers.etag = "";
+	response->response_headers.location = "";
+	response->response_headers.proxy_authenticate = "";
+	response->response_headers.retry_after = "";
+	response->response_headers.server = "";
+	response->response_headers.vary = "";
+	response->response_headers.www_authenticate = "";
+}
+
 void free_http_request(http_request* request)
 {
 	free(request->request_line.request_uri);
 }
 
+void free_http_response(http_response* response)
+{
+	free(response->message_body);
+}
+
 void parse_request_line(char** line, http_request_line* request)
 {
 	char *tok, *ver, *num;
@@ -228,3 +272,10 @@ void parse_http_request(char** buffer, http_request* request)
 	}
 	*/
 }
+
+void create_http_response(http_request* request, http_response* response)
+{
+	get_file_from_uri(&(request->request_line.request_uri), &(response->message_body));
+	
+	response->message_len = strlen(response->message_body);
+}
diff --git a/src/include/http.h b/src/include/http.h
index 274d9af..76ec619 100644
--- a/src/include/http.h
+++ b/src/include/http.h
@@ -56,8 +56,8 @@ typedef struct {
 
 typedef struct {
 	http_status_line status;
-	struct general_headers general;
-	struct response_headers response;
+	struct general_headers general_headers;
+	struct response_headers response_headers;
 	size_t message_len;
 	char* message_body;
 } http_response;
@@ -70,6 +70,15 @@ const char* http_status_code_to_str(http_status_code_t code);
 
 void parse_request_line(char** line, http_request_line* request);
 
+void init_general_headers(struct general_headers* headers);
+void init_http_request(http_request* request);
+void init_http_response(http_response* response);
+
+void free_http_request(http_request* request);
+void free_http_response(http_response* response);
+
 void parse_http_request(char** buffer, http_request* request);
 
+void create_http_response(http_request* request, http_response* response);
+
 #endif
diff --git a/src/main.c b/src/main.c
index 829bda1..13ac8df 100644
--- a/src/main.c
+++ b/src/main.c
@@ -16,6 +16,16 @@
  * but eventually i would like to start implementing headers
  *
  * file config for port, file location, etc
+ *
+ * send INTERNAL SERVER ERROR for failures instead of exiting the thread
+ *
+ * send 404 for if the file couldnt be found (use errno for this)
+ *
+ * setup the http_request parser to fill the request struct
+ *
+ * set the init_response to fill the required default headers (e.g. date)
+ *
+ * TODO: see where content-length is supposed to be ?
  */
 
 
diff --git a/src/tcp.c b/src/tcp.c
index 1a53838..e2727fe 100644
--- a/src/tcp.c
+++ b/src/tcp.c
@@ -92,6 +92,7 @@ void* connection_handler(void* arg)
 {
 	int client_socket = *(int*) arg;
 	http_request request;
+	http_response response;
 	//http_request_line request;
 	char* buffer = NULL;
 	int err;
@@ -119,7 +120,8 @@ void* connection_handler(void* arg)
 
 	// create payload
 	
-	// get the file
+	create_http_response(&request, &response);
+	free_http_request(&request);
 	
 
 	// send payload