What is a faster alternative to Python's http.

Question

Python's http.server (or SimpleHTTPServer for Python 2) is a great way of serve the contents of the current directory from the command line:

python -m http.server

However, as far as web servers go, it's very slooooow...

It behaves as though it's single threaded, and occasionally causes timeout errors when loading JavaScript AMD modules using RequireJS. It can take five to ten seconds to load a simple page with no images.

What's a faster alternative that is just as convenient?

Answer 1

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 comes preinstalled on OS X since 10.5. 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 since 10.5, or is available in MacPorts)

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

Answer 2

Using Servez as a server

1. Download Servez
2. Install It, Run it
3. Choose the folder to serve
4. Pick "Start"
5. Go to http://localhost:8080 or pick "Launch Browser"

Note: I threw this together because Web Server for Chrome is going away since Chrome is removing support for apps and because I support art students who have zero experience with the command line

Answer 3

Also consider devd a small webserver written in go. Binaries for many platforms are available here.

devd -ol path/to/files/to/serve

It's small, fast, and provides some interesting optional features like live-reloading when your files change.

Answer 4

give polpetta a try ...

npm install -g polpetta

then you can

polpetta ~/folder

and you are ready to go :-)

Answer 5

Here's another. It's a Chrome Extension

Once installed you can run it by creating a new tab in Chrome and clicking the apps button near the top left

It has a simple gui. Click choose folder, then click the http://127.0.0.1:8887 link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK6swHiPtew

Answer 6

Try webfs, it's tiny and doesn't depend on having a platform like node.js or python installed.