I had this problem recently and after having taken a look at Gisle Aas HTTP::Daemon tests, I came up with this structure.
The two main files (runWebTest.pl, localHttpServer.pl) need not to be touched.
runWebTest.pl defines a subroutine (runWebTest) which takes two parameters.
The first parameter is a reference to a test routine to execute (defined in sampletest.t). This test sub will receive the server URL as parameter.
The second one is a file which should contains a subroutine named "handler" which will receive two parameters (HTTP::Request, HTTP::Daemon::ClientConn) and must supply the HTTP server logic for our test.

Here is the code with a sample test:
File: sampletest.t

use strict;
use Test::More tests => 2;

sub test {
    my $baseUrl = shift;

    use LWP::UserAgent;
    my $ua = new LWP::UserAgent;
    my $response = $ua->get($baseUrl."sample");

    ok($response->is_success, "get ok");
    like ($response->content, qr/expected text/, "sample test");
}

require 'runWebTest.pl';
runWebTest(\&test, 'sampleHandler.pl');
[download]

File: sampleHandler.pl

sub handler {
    my ($r, $c) = @_;
    
    if ($r->method eq 'GET' and $r->url->path eq "/sample") {
        $c->send_basic_header(200);
        print $c "Content-Type: text/plain\015\012";
        $c->send_crlf;
        print $c "this is the expected text";    
    } else {
        $c->send_error(404);
    }
}

1;
[download]

File: runWebTest.pl

use strict;
use Config;

sub runWebTest {
    my ($testSub, $handlerScript) = @_;
    
    my $perl = $Config{'perlpath'};
    $perl = $^X if $^O eq 'VMS' or -x $^X and $^X =~ m,^([a-z]:)?/,i;

    open(DAEMON, "$perl localHttpServer.pl $handlerScript |") or die "
+Can't exec daemon: $!";
    my $serverUrl = <DAEMON>;
    ($serverUrl) = $serverUrl =~ /<([^>]+)>/;

    sleep(2);
    $testSub->($serverUrl);
    quitWebServer($serverUrl);
}

sub quitWebServer {
    my $baseUrl = shift;

    use LWP::UserAgent;
    my $ua = new LWP::UserAgent;
    return $ua->get($baseUrl."quit");
}

1;
[download]

File: localHttpServer.pl

use strict;

$| = 1; # autoflush
require IO::Socket;
require HTTP::Daemon;

my $handlerScript = shift || die "no handler given";
my $d = HTTP::Daemon->new() || die;

print "HTTP Server started at: <", $d->url, ">\n";
open(STDOUT, $^O eq 'VMS'? ">nl: " : ">/dev/null");

print STDERR "HTTP Server started\n";
while (my $c = $d->accept) {
    while (my $r = $c->get_request) {
        if ($r) {
            if ($r->method eq 'GET' and $r->url->path eq "/quit") {
                $c->send_error(503, "Bye, bye");
                print STDERR "HTTP Server terminated\n";
                exit;  # terminate HTTP server
            } else {
                require $handlerScript;
                handler($r, $c);
            }
        }
    }
    $c->close;        
    $c = undef;  # close connection
}
[download]

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.