What is a faster alternative to Python's http.server (or SimpleHTTPServer)?
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.
Installation
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
.
Use
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 exits
So to serve the current directory on port 8000, type:
http-server -p 8000
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=.
Details
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
Installation
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/
HTTPS
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
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