Quick and Dirty Web server

Every now and again, I need a TCP service for testing purposes. Often one that can be used for transferring files between computers. Sometimes one that can be used with SSL encryption. A tiny simple HTTP daemon/server that can do HTTPs usually fills the use-case.

If the system where the test service needs to run, one can do this easily with the Python one-liner, usually something like python -m http.server 8000, or in a very simple .py-file setting up an SSL context wrapper. However, I usually don't bother remembering these simple commands, and I end up googling how to set the port number or the path served or even how to do this in the first place. Thus, I've created this little tool.

Serving content

The path to content served is currently not a command line option, but hard coded as the directory content/ relative to the current working directory. The code that serves this content is a subclass of Python's http.server.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler, where I've only implemented code for GET requests.

Starting

python3 qdwebserver.py --help
usage: qdwebserver.py [-h] [-p PORT] [-l LISTEN] [-c CERT] [-k KEY] [-s]

Simple test-and-dummy HTTP server, based on 'python -m http.server'

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -p PORT, --port PORT  TCP port to listen on, defaults to 8080
  -l LISTEN, --listen LISTEN
                    Host address to listen on, defaults to any
  -c CERT, --cert CERT  Certificate file to use if SSL is activated
  -k KEY, --key KEY     Key file for certificate, if SSL is activated
  -s, --ssl             Enable/use SSL wrappers
  -6, --ipv6            Use IPv6. Defaults to IPv4 only.

If SSL is requested, provide both --cert and --key, support for combined PEM is not included

To listen on "Any address", use --listen "" or -l "" to give the empty string. To listen on "Any IPv4", use --listen 0.0.0.0 (work needed: IPv6)

Examples

Example of running an HTTPS server, using self-signed certificate/key files, on port 4443, listening on any address:

python3 qdwebserver.py -s -c selfsign.pem -k selfsign.key -p 4443 -l ""

Example of running an SSL-less HTTP server, listening on port 8080, listening on 172.16.0.123:

python3 qdwebserver.py -l 172.16.0.123

Example of running an SSL-less HTTP server, listening on port 8080, localhost only:

python3 qdwebserver.py

Certificate for SSL

To use a simple self-signed certificate, the PEM formatted cert/key pair can be generated using

openssl req -new -x509 -keyout selfsign.key -out selfsign.pem -days 365 -node

Files named selfsign.* are included in the .gitignore file, so they can be created in the git working directory without cluttering your status or adds/commits. Or you could use proper, signed certificates :)

License

jonlan/qdwebserver

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