Serve.py
Revision as of 17:56, 20 January 2014 by Michael Murtaugh (talk | contribs)
In a time when the terms of "sharing" become increasingly contested and dictated by platforms vying for our personal data and attention, this simple one-liner, which shares the current directory (and potentially sub-directories) on one's local network takes on a political dimension. I share therefore I am!
Basic
python -m SimpleHTTPServer
With python 3, this would become...
python -m http.server 8888 &
Server with CGI support
To serve with CGI (just place CGI scripts in a folder named cgi-bin).
python -m CGIHTTPServer
Automatic port selection and nicer errors
#!/usr/bin/env python
import BaseHTTPServer, CGIHTTPServer
import cgitb; cgitb.enable() ## This line enables CGI error reporting
import sys, argparse, socket
from time import sleep
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='Happy to serve you')
parser.add_argument('--port', type=int, default=8000, help='the port number to listen to')
parser.add_argument('-t', '--notryports', default=True, action="store_false", help='if a port is busy, automatically try other ones')
parser.add_argument('--share', default=False, action="store_true", help='Run as server accessible via your local network')
args = parser.parse_args()
server = BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer
handler = CGIHTTPServer.CGIHTTPRequestHandler
handler.cgi_directories = ["/cgi-bin"]
tryports = args.notryports
port = args.port
ipaddr = None
if args.share:
s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
s.connect(("wikipedia.org",80))
ipaddr = s.getsockname()[0]
s.close()
while True:
try:
if ipaddr:
server_address = (ipaddr, port)
servername = ipaddr
else:
server_address = ("localhost", port)
servername = "localhost"
httpd = server(server_address, handler)
print "Serving at --> http://{0}:{1}".format(servername, port)
httpd.serve_forever()
except socket.error, e:
if e.errno == 98:
if tryports:
if port < 2000:
port = 2000
else:
port += 1
sleep(.01)
else:
print """
====================================
Error: port ({0}) is already in use
====================================
You can pick another port number
(for example 9999) with:
serve --port 9999
""".format(port)
break
else:
raise(e)