Big list of http static server one-liners

web-servers.md

Each of these commands will run an ad hoc http static server in your current (or specified) directory, available at http://localhost:8000. Use this power wisely.

Discussion on reddit.

Python 2.x

$ python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000

Python 3.x

$ python -m http.server 8000

Twisted _^(Python)

$ twistd -n web -p 8000 --path .

Or:

$ python -c 'from twisted.web.server import Site; from twisted.web.static import File; from twisted.internet import reactor; reactor.listenTCP(8000, Site(File("."))); reactor.run()'

Depends on Twisted.

Ruby

$ ruby -rwebrick -e'WEBrick::HTTPServer.new(:Port => 8000, :DocumentRoot => Dir.pwd).start'

Credit: Barking Iguana

Ruby 1.9.2+

$ ruby -run -ehttpd . -p8000

Credit: nobu

adsf _^(Ruby)

$ gem install adsf   # install dependency
$ adsf -p 8000

Credit: twome

No directory listings.

Sinatra _^(Ruby)

$ gem install sinatra   # install dependency
$ ruby -rsinatra -e'set :public_folder, "."; set :port, 8000'

No directory listings.

Perl

$ cpan HTTP::Server::Brick   # install dependency
$ perl -MHTTP::Server::Brick -e '$s=HTTP::Server::Brick->new(port=>8000); $s->mount("/"=>{path=>"."}); $s->start'

Credit: Anonymous Monk

Plack _^(Perl)

$ cpan Plack   # install dependency
$ plackup -MPlack::App::Directory -e 'Plack::App::Directory->new(root=>".");' -p 8000

Credit: miyagawa

Mojolicious _^(Perl)

$ cpan Mojolicious::Lite   # install dependency
$ perl -MMojolicious::Lite -MCwd -e 'app->static->paths->[0]=getcwd; app->start' daemon -l http://*:8000

No directory listings.

http-server _^(Node.js)

$ npm install -g http-server   # install dependency
$ http-server -p 8000

Note: This server does funky things with relative paths. For example, if you have a file /tests/index.html, it will load index.html if you go to /test, but will treat relative paths as if they were coming from /.

node-static _^(Node.js)

$ npm install -g node-static   # install dependency
$ static -p 8000

No directory listings.

PHP _{^{(>= 5.4)}}

$ php -S 127.0.0.1:8000

Credit: /u/prawnsalad and MattLicense

No directory listings.

Erlang

$ erl -s inets -eval 'inets:start(httpd,[{server_name,"NAME"},{document_root, "."},{server_root, "."},{port, 8000},{mime_types,[{"html","text/html"},{"htm","text/html"},{"js","text/javascript"},{"css","text/css"},{"gif","image/gif"},{"jpg","image/jpeg"},{"jpeg","image/jpeg"},{"png","image/png"}]}]).'

Credit: nivertech (with the addition of some basic mime types)

No directory listings.

busybox httpd

$ busybox httpd -f -p 8000

Credit: lvm

webfs

$ webfsd -F -p 8000

Depends on webfs.

IIS Express

C:\> "C:\Program Files (x86)\IIS Express\iisexpress.exe" /path:C:\MyWeb /port:8000

Depends on IIS Express.

Credit: /u/fjantomen

No directory listings. /path must be an absolute path.

Meta

If you have any suggestions, drop them in the comments below or on the reddit discussion. To get on this list, a solution must:

1. serve static files using your current directory (or a specified directory) as the server root,
2. be able to be run with a single, one line command (dependencies are fine if they're a one-time thing),
3. serve basic file types (html, css, js, images) with proper mime types,
4. require no configuration (from files or otherwise) beyond the command itself (no framework-specific servers, etc)
5. must run, or have a mode where it can run, in the foreground (i.e. no daemons)

while : ; do ( echo -ne "HTTP/1.1 200 OK\r\n" ; cat index.html; ) | nc -l -p 8080 ; done

lol

Mercurial:

hg serve

In WordPress /w WP-CLI:

wp server

python -m aiohttp.web -H localhost -P 8080 package.module:init_func

https://docs.aiohttp.org/en/stable/web_quickstart.html

UCSPI and publicfile

These serve up the ./127.0.0.1/ or ./::1/ subdirectory, because that is how publicfile does virtual hosting. Make those a symbolic link to . to make the current directory the one served. Also note that Bernstein publicfile does an unconditional chroot() and thus requires superuser privileges. One can substitute other UCSPI server programs for it, that do not.

For GOPHER+ and FTP instead, similarly substitute djbwares's gopherd or Daniel J. Bernstein's ftpd.

UCSPI-TCP and publicfile, IP version 4

• Daniel J. Bernstein's tcpserver and httpd:

tcpserver -H -R -P 127.0.0.1 8000 httpd .

• nosh toolset's tcpserver and Bernstein httpd:

tcpserver 127.0.0.1 8000 httpd .

• nosh toolset's tcp-socket-listen, tcp-socket-accept, and Bernstein httpd:

tcp-socket-listen 127.0.0.1 8000 tcp-socket-accept httpd .

• Laurent Bercot's s6-tcpserver4 and Bernstein httpd:

s6-tcpserver4 127.0.0.1 8000 httpd .

• Gerrit Pape's tcpsvd and Bernstein httpd:

tcpsvd 127.0.0.1 8000 httpd .

UCSPI-SSL and publicfile

• Erwin Hoffmann's sslserver and Bernstein httpd:

sslserver -H -R -P ::1 8000 httpd .

UCSPI-TCP and publicfile, IP version 6

• Erwin Hoffmann's tcpserver and Bernstein httpd:

tcpserver -H -R -P ::1 8000 httpd .

• nosh toolset's tcp-socket-listen, tcp-socket-accept, and Bernstein httpd:

tcp-socket-listen ::1 8000 tcp-socket-accept httpd .

• or for both IPv4 and IPv6:

tcp-socket-listen --systemd-compatibility ::1 8000 tcp-socket-listen --systemd-compatibility 127.0.0.1 8000 tcp-socket-accept httpd .

• Laurent Bercot's s6-tcpserver6 and Bernstein httpd:

s6-tcpserver6 ::1 8000 httpd .

It still oneliner :)
golang
echo 'package main\nimport "net/http"\nfunc main() {fs := http.FileServer(http.Dir("."))\nhttp.Handle("/", fs)\nhttp.ListenAndServe(":8000", nil)}' > main.go; go run main.go; rm main.go

./asmttpd ./web_root 8080

https://github.com/nemasu/asmttpd

I'm kinda surprised that websocketd hasn't been mentioned so far. It can serve static directories plus lots of awesome on top :)

D'oh, maybe I should've added the actual one-liner:

websocketd --staticdir=. --port=8080 

newLISP

newlisp -http -d 8080 -w /usr/home/www/httpdocs &

twistd seems to have changed to twistd -n web --port tcp:port=8000 --path .

Browser-sync:

$ npm install -g browser-sync   # install dependency
$ browser-sync start -s -f . --no-notify --port 8000

• Automatically opens a new tab on the browser and serves the website.
• Watches for changes in any file on the directory from which the command was issued and live-reloads the website.
• Provides internal and external urls so other devices in the same network can check the website as well.
• Provides internal and external console urls for further configuration of the server.
• -s for --server
• -f for --files, file paths to watch.
• --no-notify entirely optional. It just disables the little browser-sync pop-ups.

Is there a one liner that adds the header Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

EDIT: Found this for http-server and browser-sync, still needs npm install though:

npm install -g http-server
http-server static_files/ --port 9000 --cors

npm install -g browser-sync
browser-sync start --serveStatic static_files/ --no-open --server --port 9001 --cors

tags: same-origin, cross-origin

Rust:
https://github.com/kettle11/devserver
https://crates.io/crates/devserver

Scala

coursier
coursier launch com.softwaremill.sttp.livestub:livestub-app_2.13:0.1.4-SNAPSHOT -- -p 8081

or using docker:
docker run -p 8081:7070 softwaremill/sttp.livestub

More info: https://github.com/softwaremill/livestub

Deno

deno install -f --allow-net --allow-read file_server https://deno.land/std/http/file_server.ts && ~/.deno/bin/file_server --port 8000

JavaScript, but at least does nice directory listings:

$ yarn global add serve
$ serve

Node.js

Live reload and directory listings:

npm install -g live-server
live-server

https://www.npmjs.com/package/live-server

Caddy v2:

caddy file-server

Will serve files from the current working directory, and does not require any configuration to do this.

Reference: https://caddyserver.com/docs/command-line#caddy-file-server

Referenced link has some additional details with some optional arguments that you can provide to it.

twisted changed a bit:

$ twistd -n web -p "tcp:port=8000" --path .

twisted changed a bit:

$ twistd -n web -p "tcp:port=8000" --path .

Run command in the terminal

wget google.com|php -S localhost:4444

go to http://localhost:4444

**From India**

ClojureScript build tool Shadow-CLJS:

npx shadow-cljs serve

This is awesome! One note though, re: http-server:

Note: This server does funky things with relative paths. For example, if you have a file /tests/index.html, it will load index.html if you go to /test, but will treat relative paths as if they were coming from /.

That should be true for any of these. That's just how HTTP/HTML works. If you go to /test/ (note the trailing slash), then relative URLs will be relative to /test/. Relative URLs are always relative to the last slash in the URL.

The server can't control that; resolving relative URLs is the browser's job, and the browser doesn't know that /test is meant to be a directory. What some servers will do for you is redirect to the trailing-slash URL automatically, which other servers listed here may do—I'm not sure.

Thank you @Peeja, that explains why I couldn't reproduce those funky things 😉

Copying @moshe, I pushed a BaSh web server abache. I also prefer to copy it here: this list helped me a lot for a class (on sockets)

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# BaSh server with Netcat
#
# Home: https://github.com/tinmarino/abache
# Thanks: moshe


# Define HTTP header <- windows like and finish with 2 newlines
HEADER="HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Cache-Control: no-cache
Connection: close
Server: Abache
Date: $(date)
"

# Hardcode the html <head> tag
read -r -d '' HEAD <<'EOF'
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
  <title>BFS: Bash FileServer</title>
  <meta name="description" content="BaSh HTTP FileServer like python -m http.server\nFor teaching purpose">
  <meta name="author" content="Tinmarino">
</head>
EOF

serve_file(){
  # <- FILEPATH -> CONTENT
  if command -v bat &> /dev/null &&  command -v ansi2html &> /dev/null; then
    CONTENT="$(bat --style plain --theme "ansi-dark" --color always --pager "" "$FILEPATH" | ansi2html)"
  else 
    CONTENT="<pre>$(cat "$FILEPATH" < /dev/null)</pre>"
  fi
}

serve_dir(){
  # <- FILEPATH -> CONTENT
  # shellcheck disable=SC2086  # Double quote to prevent globbing
  read -r -d '' CONTENT <<EOF
$HEAD
<body>\n<table>\n
<tr>\n<td>Name</td><td>Size (bytes)</td></tr>
<tr>\n<td><a href="..">..</a></td><td></td></tr>
$(stat --printf='<tr>\n<td><a href="/%n">%n<a/></td><td>%s</td></tr>\n' $FILEPATH/*)
</tr>\n</table>\n</body>\n</html>\n
EOF
}

# Get port <- command line
if [[ -n "$1" ]]; then PORT=$1 ; else PORT=8080 ; fi
echo "Abache listening on port $PORT"

# Create FIFO (alias NamedPipe)
FIFO_FILE=/tmp/abache
[[ -p $FIFO_FILE ]] && rm $FIFO_FILE
mkfifo $FIFO_FILE

# Serve always
while true; do
  # shellcheck disable=SC2002  # Useless cat
  cat "$FIFO_FILE" | nc -l $PORT | while read -r line; do
    # Log
    echo "Get: at $(date)  $line"

    # Clause: Only respond to GET
    if ! echo "$line" | grep -q '^GET '; then continue; fi

    FILEPATH=$(echo "$line" | awk '{print $2}'| sed 's/%20/ /')
    FILEPATH=${FILEPATH:1}

    [[ -z "$FILEPATH" ]] && FILEPATH="."
    CONTENT="Error 404: Bad URL <= $FILEPATH"

    # Send file or direcotry content
    if [[ -e "$FILEPATH" ]];  then
      if [[ -f "$FILEPATH" ]]; then serve_file; else serve_dir; fi
    fi
    echo -e "$HEADER$CONTENT" > $FIFO_FILE
    break
  done
done

function http-static-caddy() {
    caddy file-server -browse -listen "0.0.0.0:${1:-8000}"
}

bash one liner using nc:

nc -klp 8080 -c 'read get file http ; echo "HTTP/1.1 200 OK" ; echo ; cat ".$file"'

caddy file-server -root e:\the-path -listen 0.0.0.0:8000 -browse 

///

caddy
v2.2.1 h1:Q62GWHMtztnvyRU+KPOpw6fNfeCD3SkwH7SfT1Tgt2c=

There is netcat in almost any *nix OS

Good bonus of using netcat for this is that is that you see all of the request headers, which is useful if studying integration with regard to SSO mechanisms.

With a 7MB docker image:

docker run -u `id -u` -p 8043:8043 -v $PWD:/srv/http pierrezemb/gostatic