This reminds me a lot of Certbot's use of the Python SimpleHTTPServer:

  $(command -v python2 || command -v python2.7 || command -v python2.6) -c
  "import BaseHTTPServer, SimpleHTTPServer;
  s = BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer(('', {port}), SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler);
  s.serve_forever()"