http-server is a simple, zero-configuration command-line http server. It is powerful enough for production usage, but it's simple and hackable enough to be used for testing, local development, and learning.

Installation via npm:

 npm install http-server -g

This will install http-server globally so that it may be run from the command line.

Using npx you can run the script without installing it first:

 npx http-server [path] [options]

 http-server [path] [options]

[path] defaults to ./public if the folder exists, and ./ otherwise.

Now you can visit http://localhost:8080 to view your server

Note: Caching is on by default. Add -c-1 as an option to disable caching.

-p or --port Port to use (defaults to 8080)

-a Address to use (defaults to 0.0.0.0)

-d Show directory listings (defaults to true)

-i Display autoIndex (defaults to true)

-g or --gzip When enabled (defaults to false) it will serve ./public/some-file.js.gz in place of ./public/some-file.js when a gzipped version of the file exists and the request accepts gzip encoding. If brotli is also enabled, it will try to serve brotli first.

-b or --brotli When enabled (defaults to false) it will serve ./public/some-file.js.br in place of ./public/some-file.js when a brotli compressed version of the file exists and the request accepts br encoding. If gzip is also enabled, it will try to serve brotli first.

-e or --ext Default file extension if none supplied (defaults to html)

-s or --silent Suppress log messages from output

--cors Enable CORS via the Access-Control-Allow-Origin header

-o [path] Open browser window after starting the server. Optionally provide a URL path to open. e.g.: -o /other/dir/

-c Set cache time (in seconds) for cache-control max-age header, e.g. -c10 for 10 seconds (defaults to 3600). To disable caching, use -c-1.

-U or --utc Use UTC time format in log messages.

--log-ip Enable logging of the client's IP address (default: false).

-P or --proxy Proxies all requests which can't be resolved locally to the given url. e.g.: -P http://someurl.com

--username Username for basic authentication [none]

--password Password for basic authentication [none]

-S or --ssl Enable https.

-C or --cert Path to ssl cert file (default: cert.pem).

-K or --key Path to ssl key file (default: key.pem).

-r or --robots Provide a /robots.txt (whose content defaults to User-agent: *\nDisallow: /)

--conneg Enable content negotiation.

--trailing Enable automatic addition of trailing slashes.

-h or --help Print this list and exit.

• index.html will be served as the default file to any directory requests.
• 404.html will be served if a file is not found. This can be used for Single-Page App (SPA) hosting to serve the entry page.

The server looks for the correct file depending on the MIME Types in the accept header. MIME Types are linked to their corresponding extensions. For example, when you do a request to http://localhost:8080/test with Accept header text/turtle, the server looks for the file /test.ttl. When you do a request to http://localhost:8080/test with Accept header application/n-triples, the server looks for the file /test.nt. Accept headers with multiple types, optionally weighted with a quality value, are also supported. For example, when you do a request to http://localhost:8080/test with Accept header text/turtle;q=0.5, application/n-triples, the server looks for the file /test.nt. When content negotiation is enabled, the server will set the Vary response header accordingly (Vary: Accept).

Trailing slashes are not added by default, i.e., /test does not become /test/. In case you want this behaviour you can enable it via --trailing. However, when combing this with content negotiation this also means that, for example, when you do a request to http://localhost:8080/test with Accept header text/turtle, the server looks for the file /test/index.ttl.

To implement a catch-all redirect, use the index page itself as the proxy with:

http-server --proxy http://localhost:8080?

Note the ? at the end of the proxy URL. Thanks to @houston3 for this clever hack!

Checkout this repository locally, then:

$ npm i
$ node bin/http-server

Now you can visit http://localhost:8080 to view your server

You should see the turtle image in the screenshot above hosted at that URL. See the ./public folder for demo content.