{"id":6338,"date":"2020-06-18T14:36:43","date_gmt":"2020-06-18T14:36:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.askpython.com\/?p=6338"},"modified":"2020-06-18T14:36:45","modified_gmt":"2020-06-18T14:36:45","slug":"python-httpserver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.askpython.com\/python-modules\/python-httpserver","title":{"rendered":"Using Python HttpServer as a simple HTTP Server"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hello everyone! In today’s article, we’ll take a look at using Python HttpServer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This module serves as a very quick and easy way to start a local Http Server on your network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier, in Python 2.7, this module was called HttpServer<\/code>. But with Python3, this module has been merged into the http.server<\/code> module.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s get started, and run our own Http Server!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Importing Python httpserver Module<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This module comes as part of the standard library, so there’s no need to pip install<\/a> it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To import this module, simply use the below statement:<\/p>\n\n\n

\nimport http.server\n<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n
Now you’re all set to run the server. Let’s now write a bit of code to serve the files.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Running our Http Server<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
If you simply want to share your files and directories to another user, you can directly run the server using Python.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Go to whatever directory you wish to share, and run the server from there, using:<\/p>\n\n\n
\npython -m http.server 9000\n<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n
Here, we start our local Http Server at port 9000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Connecting to the Http Server<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Now, to connect to the local server, you must do the following steps:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
  1. Go to the server machine, and find out the server IP Address using arp -a<\/code> on Windows or ip -a | grep inet<\/code> on Linux.<\/li>
  2. From the remote client, simply type http:\/\/IP_ADDRESS:9000\/<\/code> on your browser and see the magic!<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
    Output<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
    \"Http
    Http Server Basic<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
    Note that you can look at the server files, or even download it to the client machine!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    \"Python
    Python Http Server File<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
    \n\n\n\n
    Running a Python HttpServer that serves a custom index.html file<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    While the default server is a convenience for directly sharing files, you can customize the behavior of the server, by running a separate file.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    For example, we’ll be running a custom Http Server which uses http.server<\/code> and socketserver<\/code> for TCP Communication. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
    The MyHttpRequestHandler calls do_GET() method to serve the request. To serve a custom file for the request, we can override the function<\/a> by simply defining another do_GET() method that returns a different value. <\/p>\n\n\n
    \n# server.py\nimport http.server # Our http server handler for http requests\nimport socketserver # Establish the TCP Socket connections\n\nPORT = 9000\n\nclass MyHttpRequestHandler(http.server.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler):\n    def do_GET(self):\n        self.path = 'index.html'\n        return http.server.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler.do_GET(self)\n\nHandler = MyHttpRequestHandler\n\nwith socketserver.TCPServer(("", PORT), Handler) as httpd:\n    print("Http Server Serving at port", PORT)\n    httpd.serve_forever()\n\n<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n
    If you call this as server.py<\/code>, you can run the http server using:<\/p>\n\n\n
    \npython server.py\n<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n
    \"Custom
    Custom Homepage for Python http server<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
    Because we defined our custom do_GET() function, we can serve a homepage HTML file using our server which is index.html in this case. Also if the server is running on your system, you can directly access the server using localhost:<portnumber> instead of using the IP. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
    \n\n\n\n
    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    In this article, we learned how to set up a simple Http server in Python, using the http.server<\/code> module. We also learned how to define the do_GET() method to serve custom files when we make a request to our server.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    References<\/h2>\n\n\n\n