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)

Elixir:

elixir --no-halt --app inets -e ":inets.start(:httpd,[{:server_name,'s'},{:document_root,'.'},{:server_root,'.'},{:port,8000}])"

docker run -it --rm --name python-web -p 8000:8000 -v "$PWD":/usr/src/myapp -w /usr/src/myapp python:3 python -m http.server

Slight change to the powershell:

When requesting http://localhost:800/server/shutdown, the listener will now close, preventing you from having to kill powershell.exe

Add-Type -AssemblyName "System.Web";$Hso=New-Object Net.HttpListener;$Hso.Prefixes.Add("http://localhost:8000/");$Hso.Start();While ($Hso.IsListening){$HC=$Hso.GetContext();$HRes=$HC.Response;if($HC.Request.RawUrl -eq '/server/shutdown'){$Hso.Stop()};$HRes.Headers.Add("Content-Type",[System.Web.MimeMapping]::GetMimeMapping($HC.Request.RawUrl));$Stream=[System.IO.File]::OpenRead((Join-Path $Pwd ($HC.Request.RawUrl)));$HRes.ContentLength64=$Stream.Length;$Stream.CopyTo($HRes.OutputStream);$Stream.Close();$HRes.Close()};

Using Algernon (written in Go):

algernon -x 8000

Or for port 3000, just:

algernon -x

I create a collection here: https://github.com/imgarylai/awesome-webservers

(comment removed)

Sorry, I removed your comment (a base64-encoded powershell command). I took a look through the decoded command and didn't find anything bad, but I don't want to encourage people to get into the habit of running encoded powershell commands they got off the internet.

I can recommend HTTP Bin by Kenneth Reitz. You can run it locally with Docker:

docker run -p 8000:80 kennethreitz/httpbin

It doesn't log requests in stdout unfortunately, but you can run Ngrok to see them in its web UI:

ngrok http localhost:8000

hugo server -D

Two (nix + haskell) versions

nix-shell -p haskellPackages.hserv --command hserv

or if you want to install it globally nix-env -iA nixos.haskellPackages.hserv

hserv

---

nix-shell -p haskellPackages.wai-app-static --command warp

or if you want to install it globally nix-env -iA nixos.haskellPackages.wai-app-static

warp

---

There are many you could use this way. darkhttpd or serve (from npm) work just as well.

nix-shell -p darkhttpd --command "darkhttpd ."

nix-shell -p nodePackages.serve --command serve

Many examples above can be one liners with no install if you use nix. Because nix is universal.

nix-shell -p caddy --command "caddy browse"

nix-shell -p ruby --command "ruby -run -e httpd"

nix-shell -p busybox --command "busybox httpd -d -p 8080"

nix-shell -p python --command "python -m SimpleHTTPServer"

nix-shell -p python3 --command "python -m http.server"

nix-shell -p php --command "php -S 127.0.0.1:8080"

Ruby, from http://phrogz.net/simplest-possible-ruby-web-server

ruby -run -e httpd -- -p 8000 .

# Needs sudo since it defaults to port 80
sudo ruby -rwebrick -e 'WEBrick::HTTPServer.new.start'

Pure NodeJS static server:

require('http').createServer((req,res)=>{require('fs').readFile(req.url.substr(1),(err,e)=>{res.write(e);res.end()})}).listen(8000)

-->

http://localhost:8000

npx serve?

There is netcat in almost any *nix OS
Serve one file over http as text/html:

echo -ne "HTTP/1.0 OK\n\n"; cat  < index.html; } | nc -q0 -vlp 5000;

Serve binary file:

{ echo -ne "HTTP/1.0 OK\nContent-Type:application/octet-stream\n\n"; cat  < video.avi; } | nc -q0 -vlp 5000

Serve files continuously:

  while true; do echo -ne "HTTP/1.0 OK\n\n"; cat  < index.html; } | nc -q0 -vlp 5000; done

For Golang https://github.com/snwfdhmp/simplehttp

$ go get github.com/snwfdhmp/simplehttp #install
$ simplehttp
INFO[0000] Serving ./ over 0.0.0.0:8080... Stop with ^C

Hi, your list is missing an entry for Java.

I am the author of a HTTP server that fits your requirements. You can install it as a single jar with:

curl https://jcenter.bintray.com/com/athaydes/rawhttp/rawhttp-cli/1.0/rawhttp-cli-1.0-all.jar -o rawhttp.jar

Then, run with:

java -jar ./rawhttp.jar serve . -p 8000

Works with Java 8+ including latest Java 11 versions.

Documentation
Sources

Consider adding lite-server for Node.js:

npm i lite-server --save-dev
lite-server

Checkout Lama.sh

curl lama.sh | sh

chrome has https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-server-for-chrome/ofhbbkphhbklhfoeikjpcbhemlocgigb/related

Nginx: https://gist.github.com/asterite3/4b9159b8bfcdf9ad8def88168d28b60e

T=`mktemp` P=`mktemp` && bash -e -c "exec 3<$T && exec 4>$P && rm $P && echo -e 'daemon off;worker_processes auto;pid /dev/null;error_log /dev/stderr;events {} http {  access_log /dev/stdout; include /etc/nginx/mime.types; server { listen 127.0.0.1:8000; location / { autoindex on; autoindex_exact_size off; root .;} }}' > $T && rm $T && exec nginx -p . -c /dev/fd/3"

Consider adding dotnet-serve for .NET Core users (all platforms, not just Windows).

dotnet tool install --global dotnet-serve
dotnet serve -p 8000

For dartlang:

pub global activate dhttpd
[if not in PATH: pub global run] dhttpd

For Crystal

crystal eval 'require "http/server"; HTTP::Server.new([HTTP::StaticFileHandler.new(".")]).listen(8000)'

All you need is JAVA 1.6+

./httpServer.sh

/opt/java_1.6/bin/javac HTTPServer.java
/opt/java_1.6/bin/java HTTPServer $1

HTTPServer.java

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.OutputStream;
import java.net.InetAddress;
import java.net.InetSocketAddress;
import java.util.Date;
import com.sun.net.httpserver.HttpExchange;
import com.sun.net.httpserver.HttpHandler;
import com.sun.net.httpserver.HttpServer;

public class HTTPServer {
	static int port = 8000;
	public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
		if(args.length > 0) try {
			port = Integer.parseInt(args[0]);
		} catch (Exception e) {System.out.println("Invalid port number "+args[0]);}
		HttpServer server = HttpServer.create(new InetSocketAddress(InetAddress.getLocalHost(), port), 5);
		System.out.println("Server is listening at "+server.getAddress());
		server.createContext("/", new MyHandler());
		server.setExecutor(null); // creates a default executor
		server.start();
	}
	static class MyHandler implements HttpHandler {
		@Override
		public void handle(HttpExchange t) throws IOException {
			String response = "This is the response"; //TODO construct your own response
			t.sendResponseHeaders(200, response.length());
			OutputStream os = t.getResponseBody();
			os.write(response.getBytes());
			os.close();
		}
	}
}

Apache Webserver:

port="${1:-8080}"

apache2 -DFOREGROUND -d. -f/dev/null \
    -C"PidFile `mktemp -u`" \
    -C"ServerName localhost" \
    -C"LoadModule authz_core_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_authz_core.so" \
    -C"LoadModule mpm_event_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_mpm_event.so" \
    -C"LoadModule dir_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_dir.so" \
    -C"Listen $port" \
    -C"TransferLog /dev/stdout" \
    -C"ErrorLog /dev/stdout" \
    -C"DirectoryIndex index.html" \
    -C"DocumentRoot `pwd`" \
    -e debug

Phusion Passenger (Nginx based):

port="${1:-8080}"
passenger start --static-files-dir . -p $port

A script, which just starts the first solution available on the machine:

#!/bin/bash
port="${1:-8080}"

if [ "$(command -v apache2)" != "" ]; then
  apache2 -DFOREGROUND -d. -f/dev/null \
    -C"PidFile `mktemp -u`" \
    -C"ServerName localhost" \
    -C"LoadModule authz_core_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_authz_core.so" \
    -C"LoadModule mpm_event_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_mpm_event.so" \
    -C"LoadModule dir_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_dir.so" \
    -C"Listen $port" \
    -C"TransferLog /dev/stdout" \
    -C"ErrorLog /dev/stdout" \
    -C"DirectoryIndex index.html" \
    -C"DocumentRoot `pwd`" \
    -e debug
elif [ "$(command -v passenger)" != "" ]; then
  passenger start --static-files-dir .  -p $port
elif [ "$(command -v ruby)" != "" ]; then
  ruby -run -e httpd . -p $port
elif [ "$(command -v php)" != "" ]; then
  php -S localhost:$port
elif [ "$(command -v ~/.pub-cache/bin/dhttpd)" != "" ]; then
  ~/.pub-cache/bin/dhttpd -p $port
elif [ "$(command -v python)" != "" ]; then
  python -m SimpleHTTPServer $port
elif [ "$(command -v python3)" != "" ]; then
  python3 -m http.server $port
elif [ "$(command -v busybox)" != "" ]; then
  echo "Serving HTTP (Busybox) on 0.0.0.0 port $port"
  busybox httpd -f -p $port
else
  echo "No http-server available on this machine"
fi

Notice that starting in Python 3.8, only on some machines - the default binding is to IPv6.

So, to force IPv4, use the following:

$ python -m http.server 8000 -b 0.0.0.0
or
$ python -m http.server 8000 --bind 0.0.0.0

Documentation source:
https://docs.python.org/3/library/http.server.html

go get -u github.com/ribtoks/servedir

Just servedir will serve current directory on http://localhost:8080 but you can specify directory, http path and port.

Clojure (without leiningen tool)

clj -Sdeps '{:deps {nasus {:mvn/version "0.1.5"}}}' -m http.server

Specify custom port:
clj -Sdeps '{:deps {nasus {:mvn/version "0.1.5"}}}' -m http.server 8001

It's recommended to add an alias in clojure config file after that the command will be shorter:
clj -A:http.server

A star for you

this is very cool
https://github.com/benrady/shinatra/blob/master/shinatra.sh

A blazing fast lightweight command-line based micro webserver https://isurfer21.github.io/Suxm/

crystal eval 'require "http/server"; HTTP::Server.new(8000, HTTP::StaticFileHandler.new(".")).listen'

Update to the Crystal version - the Server constructor changed, and needs to be bound to a TCP port separately. For 0.32.0:
crystal eval 'require "http/server"; server = HTTP::Server.new(HTTP::StaticFileHandler.new(".")); server.bind_tcp(8080); server.listen'

Bozohttpd is an minimalist webserver with no config file, its main feature is the lack of features.

It ships with NetBSD. To run in the foreground and serve files on port 8080 in the current directory:

/usr/libexec/httpd -I 8080 -f -b -X .

You can also get it from Pkgsrc and possibly other package managers but will need to invoke it as "bozohttpd":
/usr/pkg/libexec/bozohttpd -I 8080 -f -b -X .

Java 1.7+

NOTE: Tested in Linux with OpenJDK.

You can use the following in a directory of your choosing:

echo -e 'import java.net.*;import java.nio.file.*;public class M{public static void main(String[] args)throws Exception{byte[]b=new byte[16777215];ServerSocket s=new ServerSocket(3333);for(;;)try{Socket c=s.accept();c.getInputStream().read(b);c.getOutputStream().write(("HTTP/1.1 200 OK\\r\\n\\r\\n"+new String(Files.readAllBytes(Paths.get(new String(b).split(" ")[1].substring(1))))).getBytes());c.getOutputStream().flush();c.close();}catch(Exception e){}}}'>M.java;javac M.java;java M

Then use your browser to access 127.0.0.1:3333/<your_file>.

Configuration

• Port can be changed by editing 3333
• Max file size can be changed by editing 16777215 (must be larger than the largest expected client header and file to be handled, limited by max size of Java integer)

Known Limitations

• Only one client at time can serviced
• Expects a well formed header response
• Some browsers could get very upset with the malformed response

Likely Limitations

• Probably vulnerable to directory traversal attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directory_traversal_attack (Seems to pass basic tests)
• Probably vulnerable to Slowloris attacks (timeout not set) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slowloris_(computer_security)

Here's a Rust based static file server: https://github.com/jsdw/weave

Basic usage:

weave 8080 to ./path/to/files

To install the single binary on Linux, run:
curl -L https://github.com/jsdw/weave/releases/download/v0.4.1/weave-v0.4.1-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz | tar -xz

For Golang

go get github.com/vwochnik/gost

And then

gost

Rust has http:

Also miniserve!

sudo apt-get install servefile
servefile -p 8000 -l .

here's another one..

$ go get github.com/goware/webify
$ webify

output:

================================================================================
Serving:  /home/peter
URL:      http://0.0.0.0:3000
Cache:    off
================================================================================

FYI, -help will show flags like -dir, -port, -host, -cache. The default -dir flag is to serve current working directory

There's two versions for Node but both need an extra dependency.

Here's a one-liner with no dependency:

node --eval "var fs = require('fs'), http = require('http'); http.createServer(function (req, res) { fs.readFile(__dirname + req.url, function (err,data) { if (err) { res.writeHead(404); res.end(JSON.stringify(err)); return;}res.writeHead(200);res.end(data); });}).listen(8000);"

One with GNU awk

gawk '@load"filefuncs";@load"readfile";func send(s,e,d,t,b){print"HTTP/1.0 "s" "e|&S;print"Content-Length: "b|&S;print"Content-Type: "t|&S;print d|&S;close(S);}func cf(x){split(x,y,"/");for(z in y){print "FOUND "y[z];if(y[z]==".."){return 0;}}return 1;}func mt(f){c="file -b --mime-type "f;r="";while((c|getline z)>0){r=r z;}close(c);return r;}BEGIN{if(ARGV[1]!=""){if(chdir(ARGV[1])){print "Failed to chdir to "ARGV[1];exit;}ARGC=1;}RS=ORS="\r\n";while(1){S="/inet/tcp/8080/0/0";while((S|&getline l)>0){split(l,f," ");if(f[1]=="GET"){p=substr(f[2],2)}if(p==""){p="index.html"}stat(p,s);if(cf(p)&&s["type"]=="file"){m=mt(p);o=readfile(p);send(200,"OK",o,m,s["size"]);break;}n="<html>Not Found</html>";send(404,"Not Found",n,"text/html"RS,length(n));break;}}}'

For the node versions that have dependencies, you can do it without (explicitly) installing the dep:

$ npx node-static -p 8000

that example doesn't require node-static to be installed first - it will download it, install it in a tmpdir, and run it. npx ships with node since.... 8.16.0, maybe?

npx serve - nodejs, with directory listing

You all are aware that the rules above also apply to just using nginx, apache or lighttpd?

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

httpster (npm i -g httpster)

Browser Sync
npm install -g browser-sync
browser-sync start
Many options for watching and reloading on file change, serving directories etc.

+1 for https://httpbin.org/:

Run locally: $ docker run -p 80:80 kennethreitz/httpbin

Haskell :

ciao : https://github.com/ocramz/ciao

Install : stack install

Serve CWD on default port 3000 : ciao -d ${CWD}
" on port 80 (must run as root): ciao -p 80 -d ${CWD}

socat

socat -v TCP-LISTEN:8080,crlf,reuseaddr,fork 'SYSTEM:echo HTTP/1.0 200;echo Server\: socat hack;echo Content-Type\: text/plain;echo;echo ok'

This a good one @vandot
edited below, works with semicolons

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

ucspi-tcp text://protocol server.

# tcpserver -v -c42 -o -D -H -P -l 0 -R 127.0.0.1 1961 timeout 1 ../../bin/publictext

https://github.com/textprotocol/publictext

@lethalman

I'd like to request a bash http server using /dev/tcp, anybody has a one-liner for that?

https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/49947

replace all of the npm install with npx for a oneliner, e.g. npx superstatic -p 8000

PowerShell

$Hso=New-Object Net.HttpListener;$Hso.Prefixes.Add("http://+:8000/");$Hso.Start();While ($Hso.IsListening){$HC=$Hso.GetContext();$HRes=$HC.Response;$HRes.Headers.Add("Content-Type","text/plain");$Buf=[Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes((GC (Join-Path $Pwd ($HC.Request).RawUrl)));$HRes.ContentLength64=$Buf.Length;$HRes.OutputStream.Write($Buf,0,$Buf.Length);$HRes.Close()};$Hso.Stop()

PowerShell from cmd.exe

PowerShell.exe -nop -enc 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

What a handy one-liner!

Note that if you want to share something with another machine, most of the solutions that bind to localhost or 127.0.0.1 won't work. Normally if you change localhost or 127.0.0.1 to 0, it will listen on all interfaces so you can download something from another machine.

E.g. change:

php -S 127.0.0.1:8000

to:

php -S 0:8000

npx serve

Yep, this is probably the easiest

npx serve

Yep, this is probably the easiest

With serverino:

npx serverino --port 8000

Use --secure to automatically generate a certificate and serve on SSL (at https://localhost:8000).

With Sergio - a Kestrel wrapper using Argu:

sergio

This will serve the current directory at https://[::]:8080.

To specify listener details:

sergio --listener localhost 8080

To display all options:

sergio --help

Tcl

You will need Tcl 8.6 with Tcllib 1.19 or later.

echo 'package require httpd 4; ::httpd::server create HTTPD port 8000 myaddr 127.0.0.1 doc_root [pwd]; vwait forever' | tclsh

Credit to @rkeene.

C99

klange/cgiserver

websocat can serve specific explicit list of files on explicit URLs with explicit Content-Types.

websocat -s 1234 -F /index.html:text/html:./index.html -F /script.js:text/javascript:/path/to/thescript.js

There is no ability to automatically include more files based on existence on the filesystem, but sometimes 100% explicit approach may be beneficial.

docker run --rm --volume "$(pwd):/www:ro" --publish 80:80 docker.io/p3terx/darkhttpd:1.13 /www

docker image ls --format 'table {{.Repository}}:{{.Tag}}\t{{.Size}}' p3terx/darkhttpd:1.13
REPOSITORY:TAG          SIZE
p3terx/darkhttpd:1.13   91.7kB

---

docker run --rm --volume "$(pwd):/usr/share/nginx/html:ro" --publish 80:80 docker.io/library/nginx:1.20.0-alpine

docker image ls --format 'table {{.Repository}}:{{.Tag}}\t{{.Size}}' nginx:1.20.0-alpine
REPOSITORY:TAG        SIZE
nginx:1.20.0-alpine   22.6MB

Lwan can be used as an one-liner web server, too: lwan -r /path/to/files/to/serve.

Surprised that the once most universal thttpd wasn't even mentioned given how simple and convenient it is:

$ thttpd
$ netstat -ltnp | grep thttpd
tcp6       0      0 :::8080                 :::*                    LISTEN      25130/thttpd        

A listening socket is exactly the type of thing I wouldn't want to see in a web browser!

Node serve https://www.npmjs.com/package/serve much more professional that the other listed node.js options at this time.

Note that npm doesn't require you to install the package, so a true one-liner would be:

npx serve  --listen 8000
npx node-static -p 8000
npx http-server -p 8000

Thanks for the page!

@nilslindemann:

@wtarreau why?

Browsers' security is extremely brittle, and it's already extremely hard for them to protect themselves from abuses by rogue sites and fake ads or limiting the impact of poorly written plugins that always risk to be used to steal user information. By opening them to the outside world using an incoming connection, you're suddenly bypassing a lot of the isolation efforts made in the browser by immediately exposing the process to the outside world. You just need a small bug in the server or a small overlook in the isolation between the server and the rest of the browser and your browser's sensitive info such as passwords, cookies, certificates, or history can immediately leak, or some dummy certs and cookies, or trojans can be inserted.

For a ColdFusion / CFML powered web server in the current directory you can use commandbox:

box server start port=8123

The box binary (dependency) can be installed by running brew install commandbox or via several other methods: https://commandbox.ortusbooks.com/setup/installation

Winstone, a wrapper around Jetty. Install:

mvn dependency:get -Dartifact=org.jenkins-ci:winstone:5.20 -DremoteRepositories=https://repo.jenkins-ci.org/public/

and run

java -jar ~/.m2/repository/org/jenkins-ci/winstone/5.20/winstone-5.20.jar --webroot=.

Another option in go is goshs

Just found nws which supports basepath:

If you want all requests to resolve to a base path (i.e. http://localhost:3030/basepath) without having to place all files into a src/basepath sub-directory, use the -b flag:

nws -b basepath

In Java 18:

jwebserver -p 8080

When running in docker compose along with nominatim-docker

FROM nginx:1.21-alpine

RUN wget https://github.com/osm-search/nominatim-ui/releases/download/v3.2.4/nominatim-ui-3.2.4.tar.gz &&\
    tar -xvf nominatim-ui-3.2.4.tar.gz --strip-components=1 &&\
    cp -r dist/* /usr/share/nginx/html/ &&\
    sed -i 's/http:\/\/localhost\/nominatim\//http:\/\/nominatim:8080\//g' /usr/share/nginx/html/config.defaults.js

EXPOSE 80

Haskell, with just Cabal:

echo 'WaiAppStatic.CmdLine.runCommandLine (const id)' | cabal repl -b wai-app-static

It's a bit verbose, but on the plus side you're in a REPL, so it's easy to modify things.

Prompted by a question on Reddit.

Nix alternative

Faster reloads, but relies on my repo, which may not be ideal if one would prefer something more centralised.

nix run github:georgefst/nix-haskell-static-http

D, with package 'serve':

dub run serve
dub run serve -- path/to/index.html

https://code.dlang.org/packages/serve

for SPA static workload and without dependencies:
npx servor <root> <fallback> <port>
https://www.npmjs.com/package/servor

Failed to install HTTP::Server::Brick in an Alpine container:

Unimplemented: POSIX::tmpnam(): use File::Temp instead at t/serving.t line 87.

And it might be abandoned.

Anyone know how to do it with elixir?

https://gist.github.com/willurd/5720255?permalink_comment_id=4430075#gistcomment-4430075
Anyone know how to do it with elixir?

@SBoteroP You can do it in the following way:
https://gist.github.com/willurd/5720255?permalink_comment_id=2361144#gistcomment-2361144

Another option in go is goshs

For the Go equivalent you could use http.FileServer like https://gist.github.com/paulmach/7271283 . Can also do tls just by changing to ListenAndServeTLS

Submitted for your approval, a NodeJS solution in 123 chars. ⛳

r=require;r("http").createServer((i,o)=>r("stream").pipeline(r("fs").createReadStream(i.url.slice(1)),o,_=>_)).listen(8080)

Run it in bash to serve files relative to that directory, and also any file on your computer if given an absolute path. 😱

node -e 'r=require;r("http").createServer((i,o)=>r("stream").pipeline(r("fs").createReadStream(i.url.slice(1)),o,e=>console.log(i.url,e))).listen(8080)'

I prefer the 153-char version that logs out each file request and doesn't serve outside the command's directory. 🪵

r=require;r("http").createServer((i,o)=>r("stream").pipeline(r("fs").createReadStream(r("path").join(".",i.url)),o,e=>console.log(i.url,e))).listen(8080)

Here's that one-liner unobfuscated, deminimized, and explained. 🧑‍🏫

require("http").createServer((request, response) => {
  require("stream").pipeline( // Pipes from each stream to the next ending in a callback to handle errors
    require("fs").createReadStream( // Reads the file at the specified path.
      require("path").join(".", request.url) // Forces the file path to start with this directory,
    ),                                       // so no absolute paths or ../ing upward.
    response, // This is a writable stream so the file read stream pipes into the server response stream.
    (error, value) => { console.log(request.url, error); } // This callback handles the error & we use it
  )                                                        // here to log the filepath.
).listen(8080); // Actually starts the server listening on this port.

(Source: https://gist.github.com/mLuby/6cecf50649c543b6c89f3976cf203058)

Here's a crystal oneliner:

crystal eval 'require "http/server"; server = HTTP::Server.new( [HTTP::LogHandler.new, HTTP::StaticFileHandler.new("./")] ); server.bind_tcp "127.0.0.1", 8080; server.listen'

:D

python3 -m http.server -d web 8000

for when you want to host a specific directory in one line

go run github.com/eliben/static-server@latest

or

echo 'package main; import ("net/http"); func main() {fs := http.FileServer(http.Dir(".")); http.Handle("/", fs); println("Listening on http://localhost:8000"); http.ListenAndServe(":8000", nil)}' > main.go; go run main.go; rm main.go

`npx serve .`Sent from my iPhoneOn 16 Sep 2023, at 18:35, Kaiser Dandangi ***@***.***> wrote:Re: ***@***.*** commented on this gist.go run ***@***.*** 'package main; import ("net/http"); func main() {fs := http.FileServer(http.Dir(".")); http.Handle("/", fs); println("Listening on http://localhost:8000"); http.ListenAndServe(":8000", nil)}' > main.go; go run main.go; rm main.go—Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub or unsubscribe.You are receiving this email because you commented on the thread.Triage notifications on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS or Android.                                                           

Limiting request to a certain interface (eg.: do not allow request from the network)

python -m http.server --bind 127.0.0.1

Ruby 3.0+ does not include webrick by default, you will have to gem install webrick before you can use any of the Ruby one-liners
source: https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2020/12/25/ruby-3-0-0-released/

The following libraries are no longer bundled gems or standard libraries. Install the corresponding gems to use these features.

• sdbm
• webrick
• net-telnet
• xmlrpc

@danini-the-panini is there no web server replacement in the standard library?

@sancarn unfortunately not. you can see what's in the standard library of each Ruby version here: https://stdgems.org/.
net-http is only a client. Since the webrick removal there is no built-in web server included with ruby.

@wtarreau says:

once most universal

not included on arch linux fresh installation

is there any command that work on fresh installation of linux system? (no need to install additional package)

@RealYukiSan on Linux Mint, Python is installed by default, so $ python -m http.server 8000 works. But Arch seems not to have Python. On Arch, You may try things like this, using netcat. Edit: But I am not sure if that is installed on Arch.

is there any command that work on fresh installation of linux system? (no need to install additional package)

Well, in this case on x86 you can use some asm servers such as https://github.com/margaretbloom/nash-f/ and just emit their tiny code like this:

base64 -d <<< "H52Qf4owMRKgIICDCBEKADAAQACEYAARQEAjocWDFUE4BIDC4sODYCBKRBBxIiGEJw8eQAjhosuDagyoCaBGQIxtswKg84FQDQQ04EZCmSUA3Yuef67MIoCuRE8AagAoLYAuA0IoiYbFAAaLQC5fI2NIkyWiGaAtsAyYXbdtKywzjZiQIGB2EZ+5wggAQEKFCpQXMVzAACEDxuAnSxooUMwDTQwfSMqwYfMmBI8Xjn0sFAEG" | gzip -cd > httpd ; chmod 755 httpd; ./httpd

Nothing to install except making sure to have base64 and gzip. Or if you really want to have nothing but chmod, you can do that:

echo -ne '\x7fELF\x01\x01\x01\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\x02\0\x03\0\x01\0\0\0\x60\x80\x04\x08\x34\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\x34\0\x20\0\x01\0\x28\0\0\0\0\0\x01\0\0\0\x60\0\0\0\x60\x80\x04\x08\x60\x80\x04\x08\x84\0\0\0\x84\0\0\0\x07\0\0\0\x10\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\x6a\x06\x6a\x01\x6a\x02\x31\xdb\xb3\x01\xe8\x3e\0\0\0\x6a\x10\x68\xe0\x80\x04\x08\x50\xb3\x02\xe8\x2f\0\0\0\x6a\x7f\x57\xb3\x04\xe8\x25\0\0\0\x6a\0\x6a\0\x57\xb3\x05\xe8\x19\0\0\0\x50\x89\xc3\x31\xc0\xb0\x04\xb9\xbe\x80\x04\x08\x31\xd2\xb2\x22\xcd\x80\x5b\xb0\x06\xcd\x80\xeb\xdb\x31\xc0\xb0\x66\x8d\x4c\x24\x04\xcd\x80\x8b\x7c\x24\x04\xc2\x04\0HTTP/1.0 200 OK\r\n\r\n<h1>Hello!</h1>\x02\0\x22\x60' > httpd; chmod 755 httpd; ./httpd

With some training, you could even learn it to send it only from memory, that could be fun.

Well, in this case on x86 you can use some asm servers such as https://github.com/margaretbloom/nash-f/ and just emit their tiny code like this:

🚀

Thanks for the tips @wtarreau @nilslindemann !

With some training, you could even learn it to send it only from memory, that could be fun.

What do you mean by 'send it only from memory'? did you mean execute the instruction without store it to file?

I mean memorize it entirely in your head, like people remember Pi, so that you don't have to store it anywhere. It's only 228 bytes after all :-)

That's sounds cool! did you wrote it by yourself? I tried to understand the code by running it on gdb, but unfortunately the file not contain any symbol :-(

Ah, my bad. I didn't notice that you provided a reference to the source code.

crystal eval 'require "http/server"; server = HTTP::Server.new( [HTTP::LogHandler.new, HTTP::StaticFileHandler.new("./")] ); server.bind_tcp "127.0.0.1", 8080; server.listen'

That one doesn't seem to work; the downloads get interrupted every time with no stacktrace (Crystal 1.9.2).