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Comment by tyzoid | Hacker News Reader

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tyzoid

My usual go-to for a quick static server is:

python -m http.server

But variations exist for a lot of languages. Php has one built-in too

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I use python for serving my local static site development with this custom little bash wrapper script I wrote:

    #!/usr/bin/env bash
    set -e; [[ $TRACE ]] && set -x

    port=8080
    dir="."

    if [[ "$1" == "-h" || "$1" == "--help" ]]; then
        echo "usage: http-server [PORT] [DIRECTORY]"
        echo "  PORT      Port to listen on (default: 8080)"
        echo "  DIRECTORY Directory to serve (default: .)"
        exit 0
    fi

    if [ -n "$1" ]; then
        port=$1
    fi

    if [[ -n "$2" ]]; then
        dir=$2
    fi

    python3 -m http.server --directory "$dir" --protocol HTTP/1.1 "$port"

From the people who brought you Useless Use of Cat, here's our newest innovation: Useless Use of Bash!

That whole script could just be the last line! Maybe you could add defaults like

    "${port:-8080}"

Fair, but don't need to be snooty about it. :-)

    port="${1:-8080}"
    dir="${2:-.}"

Genuinely curious about what the full script would look like in consideration of your feedback.

  python3 -m http.server "${$1:-8080}" "${$2:-.}"

Don't forget bash.

    #!/bin/bash

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

I was about to down-vote you, but that would be unfair, as this has roughly the typical level of correctness of most bash scripts.

It's absolutely (almost) correct! HTTP/0.9 does not require you to send back a status code or any headers. Some modern web servers even recognise a lone "GET /" to mean HTTP/0.9 and will respond accordingly.

This is exactly my point - it successfully accomplishes a very specific task, in a way that is fragile and context dependent, and completely fails to handle any errors or edge cases, or reckon with any complexity at all.

This is hilarious

For anyone baffled by this: This works because HTTP/0.9 (just called "HTTP" at the time) worked in an extremely simple way, and browsers mostly retained compatibility for this.

HTTP/0.9 web browser sends:

    GET /

Netcat sends:

    <!doctype html>
    ...

Nowadays a browser will send `GET / HTTP/1.1` and then a bunch of headers, which a true HTTP/0.9 server may be able to filter out and ignore, but of course this script will just send the document and the browser will still assume it's a legacy server.

There are some nice compilations of those, like

https://gist.github.com/willurd/5720255

Python is my go-to method too, altough the config file approach from this project looks exciting.

(I'm sure if I dug in the http.server documentation I could find all those options too.)

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