Minimal JSON HTTP server in python

README.md

A minimal HTTP server in python. It sends a JSON Hello World for GET requests, and echoes back JSON for POST requests.

python server.py 8009
Starting httpd on port 8009...

curl http://localhost:8009
{"received": "ok", "hello": "world"}

curl --data "{\"this\":\"is a test\"}" --header "Content-Type: application/json" http://localhost:8009
{"this": "is a test", "received": "ok"}

Adapted from this Gist, with the addition of code for reading the request body taken from this article.

Please be careful when using a server like this on production environments, because it lacks many important features (threading to name one). You can consult the python documentation about BaseHTTPServer to learn something useful to improve it.

If you are on Ubuntu, you can install this code as a service with an init script (hopefully, with some modifications that make it actually do something useful). Just modify the include server.conf to suit your needs (possibly renaming it and redirecting output to some log files instead of /dev/null), and copy it into /etc/init/. You can then start/stop/restart the server with the usual service command:

sudo service server start

server.conf

description "Example JSON HTTP server"
author      "nitaku - [email protected]"

start on started mountall
stop on shutdown

respawn
respawn limit 99 5

script
  exec sudo -u www-data /usr/bin/python /data/examples/python_minimal_http/server.py 8009 >> /dev/null 2>> /dev/null

end script

post-start script
end script

server.py

from BaseHTTPServer import BaseHTTPRequestHandler, HTTPServer
import SocketServer
import json
import cgi

class Server(BaseHTTPRequestHandler):
    def _set_headers(self):
        self.send_response(200)
        self.send_header('Content-type', 'application/json')
        self.end_headers()
        
    def do_HEAD(self):
        self._set_headers()
        
    # GET sends back a Hello world message
    def do_GET(self):
        self._set_headers()
        self.wfile.write(json.dumps({'hello': 'world', 'received': 'ok'}))
        
    # POST echoes the message adding a JSON field
    def do_POST(self):
        ctype, pdict = cgi.parse_header(self.headers.getheader('content-type'))
        
        # refuse to receive non-json content
        if ctype != 'application/json':
            self.send_response(400)
            self.end_headers()
            return
            
        # read the message and convert it into a python dictionary
        length = int(self.headers.getheader('content-length'))
        message = json.loads(self.rfile.read(length))
        
        # add a property to the object, just to mess with data
        message['received'] = 'ok'
        
        # send the message back
        self._set_headers()
        self.wfile.write(json.dumps(message))
        
def run(server_class=HTTPServer, handler_class=Server, port=8008):
    server_address = ('', port)
    httpd = server_class(server_address, handler_class)
    
    print 'Starting httpd on port %d...' % port
    httpd.serve_forever()
    
if __name__ == "__main__":
    from sys import argv
    
    if len(argv) == 2:
        run(port=int(argv[1]))
    else:
        run()
        

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