The following commands will each start a simple web server, serving up the files in the current directory.
Just open up the browser, and navigate to the system’s IP + port (e.g. http://localhost:8080).
Python
python -m http.server 8000
Node.js
npx http-server ./ --port 8080
PHP
php -S 127.0.0.1:8080
Ruby
ruby -run -e httpd ./ -p 8080
R
Rscript -e 'servr::httd()' -p8080
Caddy
Caddy is a feature-rich production-ready Go-based web server, with easy configuration. Just download and use something like the following command.
caddy file-server
Rust (with miniserve)
cargo install miniserve
miniserve -p 8080 .
BusyBox The Swiss Army Knife of Embedded Linux
busybox httpd -f -p 8080
You can also share the server with someone remotely, Using Ngrok to expose server to the internet
This is really useful for so many use cases, for example temporarily sharing locally running services your building with colleges
- Download Ngrok for your platform, from ngrok.com/download
- Unzip the archive, and navigate to it’s path or add an alias pointing to it
- Simply run
./ngrok http [port num], so if your local app is running on port 300, that would be./ngrok http 3000 - The command line will show a public ngrok domain, which is accessible to anyone through the internet
You may need to log in, to do so, create an account on ngrok, go to dashboard –> autotoken and copy your token.
Then run ./ngrok authtoken [your-token]