http-server

Simple and configurable command-line HTTP server

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Installation

bash cargo install http-server

Check for the installation to be successful.

bash http-server --help

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.

Name | Description | Default --- | --- | --- Host | Address to bind the server | 127.0.0.1 Port | Port to bind the server | 7878 Root Directory | The directory to serve files from | CWD File Explorer UI | A File Explorer UI for the directory configured as the Root Directory | Enabled Configuration File | Specifies a configuration file. Example | Disabled HTTPS (TLS) | HTTPS Secure connection configuration. Refer to TLS (HTTPS) reference | Disabled CORS | Cross-Origin-Resource-Sharing headers support. Refer to CORS reference | Disabled Compression | GZip compression for HTTP Response Bodies. Refer to Compression reference | Disabled Verbose | Print server details when running. This doesn't include any logging capabilities. | Disabled Basic Authentication | Authorize requests using Basic Authentication. Refer to Basic Authentication | Disabled Logger | Prints HTTP request and response details to stdout | Disabled

Usage

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

Flags

Flags are provided without any values. For example:

http-server --help

Name | Short | Long | Description --- | --- | --- | --- Cross-Origin Resource Sharing | N/A | --cors | Enable Cross-Origin Resource Sharing allowing any origin GZip Compression | N/A | --gzip | Enable GZip compression for responses Help | N/A | --help | Prints help information Logger | N/A | --logger | Prints HTTP request and response details to stdout Version | -V | --version | Prints version information Verbose | -v | --verbose | Prints output to console

Options

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

http-server --host 127.0.0.1

Name | Short | Long | Description | Default Value --- | --- | --- | --- | --- Host | -h | --host | Address to bind the server | 127.0.0.1 Port | -p | --port | Port to bind the server | 7878 Configuration File | -c | --config | Specifies a configuration file. Example | N/A TLS | N/A | --tls | Enable TLS for HTTPS connections. Requires a Certificate and Key. Reference | N/A TLS Ceritificate | N/A | --tls-cert | Path to TLS certificate file. Depends on --tls | cert.pem TLS Key | N/A | --tls-key | Path to TLS key file. Depends on --tls | key.rsa TLS Key Algorithm | N/A | --tls-key-algorithm | Algorithm used to generate certificate key. Depends on --tls | rsa Username | N/A | --username | Specify the username to validate using basic authentication | N/A Password | N/A | --password | Specify the password to validate using basic authentication. Depends on --username | N/A Proxy | N/A | --proxy | Proxy requests to the provided URL | N/A

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 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:

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.

toml [compression] gzip = true

The --gzip flag

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

bash 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 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:

sh 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.

toml [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.

toml [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:

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

Release

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

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

Example

sh 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:

sh 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)