http-server

Simple and configurable command-line HTTP server

Installation

cargo install http-server

Check for the installation to be successful.

http-server --help

Expect the following output

USAGE:
    http-server [FLAGS] [OPTIONS] [root-dir]

FLAGS:
        --cors                 Enable Cross-Origin Resource Sharing allowing any origin
        --graceful-shutdown    Waits for all requests to fulfill before shutting down the server
        --gzip                 Enable GZip compression for HTTP Responses
        --help                 Prints help information
        --logger               Prints HTTP request and response details to stdout
        --tls                  Enables HTTPS serving using TLS
    -V, --version              Prints version information
    -v, --verbose              Turns on stdout/stderr logging

OPTIONS:
    -c, --config <config>                          Path to TOML configuration file
    -h, --host <host>                              Host (IP) to bind the server [default: 127.0.0.1]
        --password <password>                      Specifies password for basic authentication
    -p, --port <port>                              Port to bind the server [default: 7878]
        --proxy <proxy>                            Proxy requests to the provided URL
        --tls-cert <tls-cert>                      Path to the TLS Certificate [default: cert.pem]
        --tls-key <tls-key>                        Path to the TLS Key [default: key.rsa]
        --tls-key-algorithm <tls-key-algorithm>    Algorithm used to generate certificate key [default: rsa]
        --username <username>                      Specifies username for basic authentication

ARGS:
    <root-dir>    Directory to serve files from [default: ./]

If you find this output is out-of-date, don't hesitate to open a PR here.

Configuration

When running the server with no options or flags provided, a set of default configurations will be set, you can always change this behavior by either creating your own config with the Configuration TOML file or by providing CLI arguments described in the usage section.

Usage

http-server [FLAGS] [OPTIONS] [root-dir]

Flags

Flags are provided without any values. For example:

http-server --help

Options

Options receives a value and have support for default values as well.

http-server --host 127.0.0.1

Request Handlers

This HTTP Proxy supports different Request Handlers, this determines how each incoming HTTP request must be handled, they can't be combinable so you must choose one based on your needs.

• File Server
• Proxy

File Server Handler

Useful for serving files in the provided directory. Navigation is scoped to the specified directory, if no directory is provided the CWD will be used.

This is the default behavior for the HTTP server.

Proxy Handler

Proxies requests to the provided URL. The URL provided is used as the base URL for incoming requests.

References

The following are some relevant details on features supported by this HTTP Server solution that may be of the interest of the user.

Compression

Even when compression is supported, by default the server will not compress any HTTP response contents.

You must specify the compression configuration you want to use, as of today the server only supports compression with the GZip algorithm, but brotli is also planed to be supported, that's why theres two ways to configure this server to use compression.

The following MIME types will be skipped from compression:

• application/gzip
• application/octet-stream
• application/wasm
• application/zip
• image/*
• video/*

The Configuration File's Compression Section

As suppport for other compression algorithms is planned to be provided in the future, the configuration file already supports compression settings.

[compression]
gzip = true

The --gzip flag

Provide the --gzip argument to the server when executing it.

http-server --gzip

TLS (HTTPS)

The TLS solution supported for this HTTP Server is built with rustls crate along with hyper-rustls.

When running with TLS support you will need:

• A certificate
• A RSA Private Key for such certificate

A script to generate certificates and keys is available here tls-cert.sh. This script relies on openssl, so make sure you have it installed in your system.

Run http-server as follows:

http-server --tls --tls-cert <PATH TO YOUR CERTIFICATE> --tls-key <PATH TO YOUR KEY> --tls-key-algorithm pkcs8

Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)

This HTTP Server brings support to CORS headers out of the box. Based on the headers you want to provide to your HTTP Responses, 2 different methods for CORS configuration are available.

By providing the --cors option to the http-server, CORS headers will be appended to every HTTP Response, allowing any origin.

For more complex configurations, like specifying an origin, a set of allowed HTTP methods and more, you should specify the configuration via the configuration TOML file.

The following example shows all the options available, these options are mapped to the server configuration during initialization.

[cors]
allow_credentials = false
allow_headers = ["content-type", "authorization", "content-length"]
allow_methods = ["GET", "PATCH", "POST", "PUT", "DELETE"]
allow_origin = "example.com"
expose_headers = ["*", "authorization"]
max_age = 600
request_headers = ["x-app-version"]
request_method = "GET"

Basic Authentication

Basic Authentication is supported to deny requests when credentials are invalid. You must provide the allowed username and password either by using the CLI options --username along with the desired username and --password along with the desired password, or by specifying such values through the configuration TOML file.

[basic_auth]
username = "John"
password = "Appleseed"

Proxy

The HTTP Server is able to proxy requests to an specified URL.

By using the proxy the FileExplorer wont be available, the proxy is considered a Request Handler.

The config TOML file can be used to provide proxy configurations:

[proxy]
url = "https://example.com"

Roadmap

The following roadmap list features to provide for the version v1.0.0.

This roadmap still open for suggestions, if you find that theres a missing feature in this list, you would like to work on or expect for the first stable release, please contact software editors by opening an issue or a discussion.

If you want to contribute to one of these, please make sure theres an issue tracking the feature and ping me. Otherwise open an issue to be assigned and track the progress there.

• [x] Logging
  • [x] Request/Response Logging
  • [x] Service Config Loggins
• [ ] File Explorer
  • [x] Modified Date
  • [x] File Size
  • [ ] Breadcrumb Navigation
  • [ ] File Upload
  • [ ] Filtering
  • [ ] Sorting
    • [ ] Sort By: File Name
    • [ ] Sort By: File Size
    • [ ] Sort By: File Modified Date
    • [x] Directories First
    • [ ] Files First
• [x] HTTPS/TLS Serving
  • [x] HTTPS/TLS Support
• [ ] Compression
  • [x] gzip/deflate Compression
  • [ ] brotli Compression
• [ ] CORS
  • [x] Cross Origin Resource Sharing
    • [x] Allow Credentials
    • [x] Allow Headers
    • [x] Allow Methods
    • [x] Allow Origin
    • [x] Expose Headers
    • [x] Max Age
    • [x] Request Headers
    • [x] Request Methods
    • [ ] Multiple Origins (#8)
• [ ] Cache Control
  • [ ] Last-Modified and ETag
  • [ ] Respond with 304 to If-Modified-Since
• [ ] Partial Request
  • [ ] Accept-Ranges
  • [ ] Content-Range
  • [ ] If-Range
  • [ ] If-Match
  • [ ] Range
• [x] Standalone Builds
  • [x] macOS
  • [x] Linux
  • [x] Windows
• [ ] Development Server
  • [ ] Live Reload
• [x] Proxy
  • [x] URL Configuration
• [x] Basic Authentication
  • [x] Username
  • [x] Password
• [x] Graceful Shutdown

Release

In order to create a release you must push a Git tag as follows

git tag -a <version> -m <message>

Example

git tag -a v0.1.0 -m "First release"

Tags must follow semver conventions Tags must be prefixed with a lowercase v letter.

Then push tags as follows:

git push origin main --follow-tags

Contributing

Every contribution to this project is welcome. Feel free to open a pull request, an issue or just by starting this project.

License

Distributed under the terms of both the MIT license and the Apache License (Version 2.0)