Python's http.server (or SimpleHTTPServer for Python 2) is a great way of serve the contents of the current directory from the command line:
python -m http.server
However, as far as web servers go, it's very slooooow...
It behaves as though it's single threaded, and occasionally causes timeout errors when loading JavaScript AMD modules using RequireJS. It can take five to ten seconds to load a simple page with no images.
What's a faster alternative that is just as convenient?
http-server for node.js is very convenient, and is a lot faster than Python's SimpleHTTPServer. This is primarily because it uses asynchronous IO for concurrent handling of requests, instead of serialising requests.
Install node.js if you haven't already. Then use the node package manager (npm) to install the package, using the -g option to install globally. If you're on Windows you'll need a prompt with administrator permissions, and on Linux/OSX you'll want to sudo the command:
npm install http-server -g
This will download any required dependencies and install http-server.
Now, from any directory, you can type:
http-server [path] [options]
Path is optional, defaulting to ./public if it exists, otherwise ./.
Options are [defaults]:
-p The port number to listen on [8080]-a The host address to bind to [localhost]-i Display directory index pages [True]-s or --silent Silent mode won't log to the console-h or --help Displays help message and exitsSo to serve the current directory on port 8000, type:
http-server -p 8000
-g option, and did you make sure that no errors were printed during the installation? That error just means it cannot be found after the install, which seems unlikely if things went well. What platform are you on? Run a find command across your drive to find a file with name http-server. I've used this successfully on a few different Linux distros and Windows versions. –
Contaminate http-server and not node http-server? The former is correct. Can't test as I'm on Linux now. –
Contaminate http-server inspects the contents to determine MIME type. I would suspect it just goes off the file extension. What extension are you using? Probably worth opening an issue on the http-server project. This may be relevant. –
Contaminate I recommend: Twisted (http://twistedmatrix.com)
an event-driven networking engine written in Python and licensed under the open source MIT license.
It's cross-platform and was preinstalled on OS X 10.5 to 10.12. Amongst other things you can start up a simple web server in the current directory with:
twistd -no web --path=.
Explanation of Options (see twistd --help for more):
-n, --nodaemon don't daemonize, don't use default umask of 0077
-o, --no_save do not save state on shutdown
"web" is a Command that runs a simple web server on top of the Twisted async engine. It also accepts command line options (after the "web" command - see twistd web --help for more):
--path= <path> is either a specific file or a directory to be
set as the root of the web server. Use this if you
have a directory full of HTML, cgi, php3, epy, or rpy
files or any other files that you want to be served up
raw.
There are also a bunch of other commands such as:
conch A Conch SSH service.
dns A domain name server.
ftp An FTP server.
inetd An inetd(8) replacement.
mail An email service
... etc
Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install python-twisted-web (or python-twisted for the full engine)
Mac OS-X (comes preinstalled on 10.5 - 10.12, or is available in MacPorts and through Pip)
sudo port install py-twisted
Windows
installer available for download at http://twistedmatrix.com/
Twisted can also utilise security certificates to encrypt the connection. Use this with your existing --path and --port (for plain HTTP) options.
twistd -no web -c cert.pem -k privkey.pem --https=4433
sudo apt-get install python-twisted-web first. (Thanks for this answer, it's very convenient!) –
Quack twistd --help and twistd web --help. Took me a while to figure that out. –
Subjacent *twistd*.* anywhere on any of my hard drives after installing twisted. Very disappointed. –
Nilson twistd -no web -p 3003 --path=resources/public/ –
Lomeli -p 80 for setting port number with sudo (in Ubuntu run: sudo twistd -no web -p 80) –
Solleret --pidfile and --logfile to avoid clashes. Would be great if the authors could fix this. SimpleHTTPServer doesn't require this. –
Hobbism pidfile= (leaving the right side empty disables pidfile) –
Kauffmann conda install twisted –
Subjectify 
go 1.0 includes a http server & util for serving files with a few lines of code.
package main
import (
"fmt"; "log"; "net/http"
)
func main() {
fmt.Println("Serving files in the current directory on port 8080")
http.Handle("/", http.FileServer(http.Dir(".")))
err := http.ListenAndServe(":8080", nil)
if err != nil {
log.Fatal("ListenAndServe: ", err)
}
}
Run this source using go run myserver.go or to build an executable go build myserver.go
Try webfs, it's tiny and doesn't depend on having a platform like node.js or python installed.
apt-get install webfs –
Tonry brew install webfs on my Mac which resulted in 🍺 /usr/local/Cellar/webfs/1.21: 5 files, 96K, built in 15 seconds. Afterwards I could just say webfsd -F -p 3003 -r resources/public/ -f index.html to achieve the same as twistd -no web -p 3003 --path=resources/public/. It's a bit wordy so not obvious to remember but good to know as an alternative to twistd or SimpleHTTPServer. –
Lomeli If you use Mercurial, you can use the built in HTTP server. In the folder you wish to serve up:
hg serve
From the docs:
export the repository via HTTP
Start a local HTTP repository browser and pull server.
By default, the server logs accesses to stdout and errors to
stderr. Use the "-A" and "-E" options to log to files.
options:
-A --accesslog name of access log file to write to
-d --daemon run server in background
--daemon-pipefds used internally by daemon mode
-E --errorlog name of error log file to write to
-p --port port to listen on (default: 8000)
-a --address address to listen on (default: all interfaces)
--prefix prefix path to serve from (default: server root)
-n --name name to show in web pages (default: working dir)
--webdir-conf name of the webdir config file (serve more than one repo)
--pid-file name of file to write process ID to
--stdio for remote clients
-t --templates web templates to use
--style template style to use
-6 --ipv6 use IPv6 in addition to IPv4
--certificate SSL certificate file
use "hg -v help serve" to show global options
Here's another. It's a Chrome Extension
Once installed you can run it by creating a new tab in Chrome and clicking the apps button near the top left
It has a simple gui. Click choose folder, then click the http://127.0.0.1:8887 link
I found python -m http.server unreliable—some responses would take seconds.
Now I use a server called Ran https://github.com/m3ng9i/ran
Ran: a simple static web server written in Go
If you have PHP installed you could use the builtin server.
php -S 0:8080
php -S localhost:8080 –
Accompanist give polpetta a try ...
npm install -g polpetta
then you can
polpetta ~/folder
and you are ready to go :-)
Using Servez as a server
http://localhost:8080 or pick "Launch Browser"
Note: I threw this together because Web Server for Chrome is going away since Chrome is removing support for apps and because I support art students who have zero experience with the command line
Yet another node based simple command line server
https://github.com/greggman/servez-cli
Written partly in response to http-server having issues, particularly on windows.
Install node.js then
npm install -g servez
servez [options] [path]
With no path it serves the current folder.
By default it serves index.html for folder paths if it exists. It serves a directory listing for folders otherwise. It also serves CORS headers. You can optionally turn on basic authentication with --username=somename --password=somepass and you can serve https.
I like live-server. It is fast and has a nice live reload feature, which is very convenient during developpement.
Usage is very simple:
cd ~/Sites/
live-server
By default it creates a server with IP 127.0.0.1 and port 8080.
If port 8080 is not free, it uses another port:
If you need to see the web server on other machines in your local network, you can check what is your IP and use:
live-server --host=192.168.1.121
And here is a script that automatically grab the IP address of the default interface. It works on macOS only.
If you put it in .bash_profile, the live-server command will automatically launch the server with the correct IP.
# **
# Get IP address of default interface
# *
function getIPofDefaultInterface()
{
local __resultvar=$1
# Get default route interface
if=$(route -n get 0.0.0.0 2>/dev/null | awk '/interface: / {print $2}')
if [ -n "$if" ]; then
# Get IP of the default route interface
local __IP=$( ipconfig getifaddr $if )
eval $__resultvar="'$__IP'"
else
# Echo "No default route found"
eval $__resultvar="'0.0.0.0'"
fi
}
alias getIP='getIPofDefaultInterface IP; echo $IP'
# **
# live-server
# https://www.npmjs.com/package/live-server
# *
alias live-server='getIPofDefaultInterface IP && live-server --host=$IP'
miniserve . --index index.html
serve (node.js)If node.js is installed, I recommended vercel serve
# for node.js >= v14
npm install --global serve
# for node.js <= v13
npm install --global serve@13
serve
http-server (node.js)http-server latest version does not work ( see issue ), but v13 works
npm install --global http-server@13
http-server
I've been using filebrowser for the past couple of years and it is the best alternative I have found.
Features I love about it:
zip, tar.gz and etc. for transferring folders.
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git instaweb. – Contaminate