How do I set up the simplest HTTP local server?

Ubuntu ships using python3 as its default, and they have gone to great lengths to make this extremely easy for us :D

To start the http server on port port simply type

python -m http.server port

If you want to share files and dirs, cd into whichever directory you want to serve

cd /my/html/files
python -m http.server 8080

Should you want to use an address other than the default 0.0.0.0 you can use --bind

Ex: python -m http.server 8080 --bind 127.0.0.1 will serve them at the address 127.0.0.1:8080 :)

Edit: Whether or not it truly was great lengths, I'll leave that to the reader

Also for your convenience here is a link to the docs https://docs.python.org/3/library/http.server.html

Here is a list of HTTP server in one line. I'm sure there is one that will fit your purposes/existing tooling.

Hereafter is a subset of the link, that contains in my opinion the most convenient ones.

Python:

python -m http.server 8000

Ruby:

ruby -run -ehttpd . -p8000

Node:

npm install -g http-server
http-server -p 8000

Php:

php -S 127.0.0.1:8000

One simple way to setup a static http site is to use darkhttpd

There is no package in ubuntu for that but the software is just one single source file that you can download with a tarball on the site or with git :

git clone https://unix4lyfe.org/git/darkhttpd
cd darkhttpd

Then run make and you have your darkhttpd executable. (Place it in /usr/local/bin to make it available to every user)

Run

./darkhttpd /path/to/wwwroot

./darkhttpd --help

to get help about the command

One can specify directory or port to use and many other options.

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