There are always situations for which we need to create a Basic HTTP server on our current directory. If we have Apache like web server installed on our system then we can use that by copying our content to a directory in the root of our web directory. We can upload our script to a server and access remotely too.

But all these things seems a bit pain to me. I wanted a simple web server which will run on my current diretory. And ofcourse I want to control the service from the shell. And I wanted a platform independant solution. So I came up with these (from shell):

###Python 2.x

$ python -m SimpleHTTPServer

###Python 3.x

$ python -m http.server

###PHP

$ php -S localhost:8000

###Node Module

This is the best solution I think.

$ npm install -g instant-server $ instant <port>

That’s it. Test out the web server at localhost on port 8000. Example: from browser hit the url “localhost:8000”