http-server: a command-line http server
http-server
is a simple, zero-configuration command-line http server. It is powerful enough for production usage, but it's simple and hackable enough to be used for testing, local development, and learning.
Installing globally:
Installation via npm
:
npm install http-server -g
This will install http-server
globally so that it may be run from the command line.
Running on-demand:
Using npx
you can run the script without installing it first:
npx http-server [path] [options]
Usage:
http-server [path] [options]
[path]
defaults to ./public
if the folder exists, and ./
otherwise.
Now you can visit http://localhost:8080 to view your server
Note: Caching is on by default. Add -c-1
as an option to disable caching.
Available Options:
-p
or --port
Port to use (defaults to 8080)
-a
Address to use (defaults to 0.0.0.0)
-d
Show directory listings (defaults to true
)
-i
Display autoIndex (defaults to true
)
-g
or --gzip
When enabled (defaults to false
) it will serve ./public/some-file.js.gz
in place of ./public/some-file.js
when a gzipped version of the file exists and the request accepts gzip encoding. If brotli is also enabled, it will try to serve brotli first.
-b
or --brotli
When enabled (defaults to false
) it will serve ./public/some-file.js.br
in place of ./public/some-file.js
when a brotli compressed version of the file exists and the request accepts br
encoding. If gzip is also enabled, it will try to serve brotli first.
-e
or --ext
Default file extension if none supplied (defaults to html
)
-s
or --silent
Suppress log messages from output
--cors
Enable CORS via the Access-Control-Allow-Origin
header
-o [path]
Open browser window after starting the server. Optionally provide a URL path to open. e.g.: -o /other/dir/
-c
Set cache time (in seconds) for cache-control max-age header, e.g. -c10
for 10 seconds (defaults to 3600
). To disable caching, use -c-1
.
-U
or --utc
Use UTC time format in log messages.
--log-ip
Enable logging of the client's IP address (default: false
).
-P
or --proxy
Proxies all requests which can't be resolved locally to the given url. e.g.: -P http://someurl.com
--username
Username for basic authentication [none]
--password
Password for basic authentication [none]
-S
or --ssl
Enable https.
-C
or --cert
Path to ssl cert file (default: cert.pem
).
-K
or --key
Path to ssl key file (default: key.pem
).
-r
or --robots
Provide a /robots.txt (whose content defaults to User-agent: *\nDisallow: /
)
-h
or --help
Print this list and exit.
Magic Files
index.html
will be served as the default file to any directory requests.404.html
will be served if a file is not found. This can be used for Single-Page App (SPA) hosting to serve the entry page.
Development
Checkout this repository locally, then:
$ npm i$ node bin/http-server
Now you can visit http://localhost:8080 to view your server
You should see the turtle image in the screenshot above hosted at that URL. See
the ./public
folder for demo content.