How to Implement Graceful Shutdown Pattern in Go

Concurrency
2026-04-17T12:05:42+00:00
Implement graceful shutdown in Go by catching OS signals, canceling a context with a timeout, and calling server.Shutdown to finish active requests.

Implement graceful shutdown by listening for OS signals, canceling a context, and waiting for goroutines to finish.

package main

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

func main() {
	mux := http.NewServeMux()
	mux.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
		w.Write([]byte("Hello, World"))
	})

	server := &http.Server{
		Addr:    ":8080",
		Handler: mux,
	}

	go func() {
		log.Println("Starting server on :8080")
		if err := server.ListenAndServe(); err != nil && err != http.ErrServerClosed {
			log.Fatalf("Could not listen on :8080: %v", err)
		}
	}()

	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(), 5*time.Second)
	defer cancel()

	if err := server.Shutdown(ctx); err != nil {
		log.Fatalf("Could not shutdown server: %v", err)
	}
	log.Println("Server exited")
}