Python: Create a web server to share files in just one line!

Assume the following scenario! you need quickly to share files with users, but you don't have the time to set a mechanism that will transfer files to them, and as usually users tend to be in-patient :) well users always have web browsers in their computers, and we can use this for our own benefit; what i tell you that you can create a Web server in Python with zero configuration and zero effort! ofc this is not a permanent solution but rather a quick hack to make things move while you have the time to design a more permanent solution.

No need to install additional modules

Python3 has the http.server module already included in the standard library; this means that we don't need to install anything.

Prerequisites

You just need to create a directory that will host your files, the only things you need to have in mind are

• The user who will run Python needs to have read access to the directory and the files that you want to share.
• Use a port over 1024 if you run Python as a non — root user.
• Ensure that the ip address/port of the computer that will run the Python web server is not blocked by a firewall.
• Ensure that users can reach the Python Web server IP Address.

Come on! just give the the one-liner

Create the directory that will keep the files$ mkdir web_test

Create the files in the directory with some content$ echo "hello from python" > hello.html
$ echo "another file" > file.txt

Start the Web server, listen to port 8888.$ cd ./web_test/ && python3 -m http.server 8888
Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 8888 (http://0.0.0.0:8888/) ...

Now open a web browser and go to this computer ip address, for testing/debugging purposes you can access the web server its own localhost address

This tiny web server also logs on screen incoming requests and their response statuses

I hope you found this article as exciting as i felt when i learned that Python includes a web server.