11 releases (4 stable)
1.0.3 | Jan 26, 2020 |
---|---|
1.0.2 | Jan 13, 2020 |
1.0.0 | Dec 13, 2019 |
0.6.1 | Oct 28, 2019 |
0.5.1 | Sep 29, 2019 |
#800 in HTTP server
40 downloads per month
20KB
514 lines
httpserv
A tiny, zero-dependency HTTP fileserver, meant for local development of HTML. It's not the absolute fastest, it's not the absolute smallest executable, it's not the most featureful, but it's incredibly simple to deploy and does almost nothing but just serve the file you name over HTTP. Specifically, all it does is:
- Parse the URL to find the local filepath
- Make sure that URL doesn't contain
..
s - If that filepath points to a directory, add
/index.html
- Use the extension to figure out the
Content-Type
- Send the file back
Because of its simplicity, it's incredibly quick to install, quick to start, and quick to respond
Planned tasks can be seen in the issues
Planned non-features include:
- Any dependencies by default (behind a feature gate is fine)
- Maximizing response speed where it would cost ease of use or setup speed
- Anything that gives httpserv a noticeable delay
- Anything targeted at better production suitability
Install
cargo install httpserv
That's it. Assuming the Cargo bin directory is on your path, you can now call
httpserv
from your command line. For directions on installing Cargo, please
see rustup.rs.
On WSL, you may need to call cargo.exe
and httpserv.exe
instead, depending
on if you've got Rust installed on the Windows or WSL side of things.
Usage
All arguments are optional -- if you want to serve your current directory on
localhost:8080
with the default mappings, you can just type httpserv
and
hit enter. Otherwise:
httpserv [directory] [listen] [mappings...]
directory
: Where to look for files to serve. Defaults to.
listen
: The host/port to listen on, as expected by theFromStr
impl forSocketAddr
. Defaults tolocalhost:8080
mappings...
: Any additional mappings from file extension to MIME types, besides the defaults. Anything specified here which matches the same extension as a default will override the default MIME type. The format isextension=MIME
, with no leading.
on the extension.
Known issues
Because this is meant for local development and not production use, there are some issues which I haven't bothered to fix. In general, the reason why boils down to httpserv being meant to aid local development. If you're using it in any situation where you can't restart it at will, you're doing it very, very wrong.
- Requests with absurdly long URLs or absurd numbers of headers can cause the process to hang or crash
- Requests are processed serially, so if enough are received at once, some may not get responses for a while; however, the time to parse any single request is so fast that it's not an issue normally
- If a file is changed between when the HTTP headers are sent and when the
rest of the body is sent, the reported
Content-Length
will be incorrect, so the browser may truncate the content or display an error. - A malicious actor could send a partial request (e.g. never ending the header) and lock up the server.