Simple command line http server

Question

I have a script which generates a daily report which I want to serve to the so called general public. The problem is I don't want to add to my headaches maintance of a http server (e.x. apache) with all the configurations and security implications.

Is there a dead simple solution for serving one small html page without the effort of configuring a full blown http server?

Answer 1

Yes, nweb:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/systems/library/es-nweb/index.html

To compile nweb.c:

gcc -O -DLINUX nweb.c -o nweb

Answer 2

python -m SimpleHTTPServer should do it.

Answer 3

Use node.js , fast and lightweight.

Or

just use simple nc netcat command to start a quick webserver on a port and serve the content of a file including the server response headers.

Reference from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netcat#Setting_up_a_one-shot_webserver_on_port_8080_to_present_the_content_of_a_file

{ echo -ne "HTTP/1.0 200 OK\r\n\r\n"; cat some.file; } | nc -l -p 8080
{ echo -ne "HTTP/1.0 200 OK\r\nContent-Length: $(wc -c <some.file)\r\n\r\n"; cat some.file; } | nc -l -p 8080

Answer 4

Try using SimpleHTTPServer in Python.

mkdir ~/public_html
command_to_generate_output > ~/public_html/output.txt

(cd ~/public_html; python -c 'import SimpleHTTPServer,BaseHTTPServer; BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer(("", 8080), SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler).serve_forever()')

The first two lines are setup for the web server. The last line creates a simple web server, opened on port 8080, which only serves files from ~/public_html. If only one file is in that directory, then only that is exposed: http://localhost:8080/output.txt.

Answer 5

Since version 5.4.0 PHP also has a built-in web server:

php -S localhost:8000

Answer 6

Simple netcat example to put in bash script:

while true ; do nc -l 80 <index.html ; done