How to use cherrypy as a web server for static files?

Question

Is it any easy way to use CherryPy as an web server that will display .html files in some folder? All CherryPy introductory documentation states that content is dynamically generated:

import cherrypy
class HelloWorld(object):
    def index(self):
        return "Hello World!"
    index.exposed = True
cherrypy.quickstart(HelloWorld())

Is it any easy way to use index.html instead of HelloWorld.index() method?

Thigmotaxis

Answer 1

This simple code will serve files on current directory.

import os
import cherrypy

PATH = os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__))
class Root(object): pass

cherrypy.tree.mount(Root(), '/', config={
        '/': {
                'tools.staticdir.on': True,
                'tools.staticdir.dir': PATH,
                'tools.staticdir.index': 'index.html',
            },
    })

cherrypy.quickstart()

Furfural

With CherryPy 3.2, I had to change cherrypy.quickstart() to cherrypy.engine.start() and cherrypy.engine.block() before the content would be served. – Wendel

Also with CherryPy 3.6 you have to use cherrypy.engine.start() and cherrypy.engine.block() – Writeoff

Answer 2

Here is some information on serving static content with CherryPy: http://docs.cherrypy.org/stable/progguide/files/static.html

BTW, here is a simple way to share the current directory over HTTP with python:

# Python 3
$ python -m http.server [port]

# Python 2
$ python -m SimpleHTTPServer [port]

Cadastre

I know about SimpleHTTPServer, but it is very interesting to do a same thing with cherrypy. Unfortunatly, tutorial says nothing about serving any .html file as static content - only predefined .css files :( – Thigmotaxis

What kind of files you are serving should be of no consequence, it should work with html files as well. See cherrypy.org/wiki/…. Another link: nabble.com/How-do-I-serve-up-static-file-pages--td20897705.html – Cadastre

The Wiki link changed to docs.cherrypy.org/stable/progguide/files/static.html – Shifflett

The wiki link is of no help, if what you want to do is similar to the cmdline that codeape originally posted. That is, run a simple server that serves static content from a defined directory (or cwd) without having to write any code, no matter how trivial. – Erich

Answer 3

# encode: utf-8

import cherrypy
WEB_ROOT = "c:\\webserver\\root\\"

class CServer( object ) :
    @cherrypy.expose
    def do_contact(self, **params):
        pass

cherrypy.server.socket_port = 80
# INADDR_ANY: listen on all interfaces
cherrypy.server.socket_host = '0.0.0.0'
conf = { '/':
  { 'tools.staticdir.on' : True,
    'tools.staticdir.dir' : WEB_ROOT,
    'tools.staticdir.index' : 'index.html' } }
cherrypy.quickstart( CServer(), config = conf )

Thigmotaxis

what if you have a file called do_contact? That file will be impossible to download? – Furfural

That was from example, seems that i was misleaded and took 'do_contract' for some kind of internal filter method to override :) – Thigmotaxis

Answer 4

I post this new answer because the solution of the accepted answer is outdated. This simple code will serve files on current directory.

import os
import cherrypy

PATH = os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__))
class Root(object): pass

cherrypy.tree.mount(Root(), '/', config={
        '/': {
                'tools.staticdir.on': True,
                'tools.staticdir.dir': PATH,
                'tools.staticdir.index': 'index.html',
            },
    })

cherrypy.engine.start()
cherrypy.engine.block()

Of course this is only a summarization of what was already posted.

Wera