Running a Simple HTTP Server with Python

I think this is going to be the shortest blog post of all time because running a Python HTTP server is incredibly straightforward. Python's HTTP server module lets you create a basic web server using just a single command. This server can serve files from a directory over the network, making it an excellent tool for quick testing and file sharing without the complexity of setting up a full-fledged web server.

You can start the Python HTTP server with the command python -m http.server 8000, which serves files from the current directory on port 8000. You can choose any port number by replacing 8000 with your preferred port. However, if you select a lower port number, such as 80, you might need administrator privileges to run the server.

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You don't even need to have a Python file or any code to run this, just this single command does the trick.

In this example, I have two files in a directory - one is a text file with a list of domains and the second is a simple YAML file.

If I run the command python -m http.server 8000, it starts a web server and I can access these files on my browser.

 python -m http.server 8000

Clicking the text file opens it directly in the browser while clicking the YAML file downloads the file. This is also useful if you want to quickly share files across your network.

See, that's all you need. That was quick 🙂