What is a faster alternative to Python's http.server (or SimpleHTTPServer)?

http-server for node.js is very convenient, and is a lot faster than Python's SimpleHTTPServer. This is primarily because it uses asynchronous IO for concurrent handling of requests, instead of serialising requests.

Installation

Install node.js if you haven't already. Then use the node package manager (npm) to install the package, using the -g option to install globally. If you're on Windows you'll need a prompt with administrator permissions, and on Linux/OSX you'll want to sudo the command:

npm install http-server -g

This will download any required dependencies and install http-server.

Use

Now, from any directory, you can type:

http-server [path] [options]

Path is optional, defaulting to ./public if it exists, otherwise ./.

Options are [defaults]:

• -p The port number to listen on [8080]
• -a The host address to bind to [localhost]
• -i Display directory index pages [True]
• -s or --silent Silent mode won't log to the console
• -h or --help Displays help message and exits

So to serve the current directory on port 8000, type:

http-server -p 8000

I recommend: Twisted (http://twistedmatrix.com)

an event-driven networking engine written in Python and licensed under the open source MIT license.

It's cross-platform and was preinstalled on OS X 10.5 to 10.12. Amongst other things you can start up a simple web server in the current directory with:

twistd -no web --path=.

Details

Explanation of Options (see twistd --help for more):

-n, --nodaemon       don't daemonize, don't use default umask of 0077
-o, --no_save        do not save state on shutdown

"web" is a Command that runs a simple web server on top of the Twisted async engine. It also accepts command line options (after the "web" command - see twistd web --help for more):

  --path=             <path> is either a specific file or a directory to be
                      set as the root of the web server. Use this if you
                      have a directory full of HTML, cgi, php3, epy, or rpy
                      files or any other files that you want to be served up
                      raw.

There are also a bunch of other commands such as:

conch            A Conch SSH service.
dns              A domain name server.
ftp              An FTP server.
inetd            An inetd(8) replacement.
mail             An email service
... etc

Installation

Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install python-twisted-web (or python-twisted for the full engine)

Mac OS-X (comes preinstalled on 10.5 - 10.12, or is available in MacPorts and through Pip)

sudo port install py-twisted

Windows

installer available for download at http://twistedmatrix.com/

HTTPS

Twisted can also utilise security certificates to encrypt the connection. Use this with your existing --path and --port (for plain HTTP) options.

twistd -no web -c cert.pem -k privkey.pem --https=4433

go 1.0 includes a http server & util for serving files with a few lines of code.

package main

import (
    "fmt"; "log"; "net/http"
)

func main() {
    fmt.Println("Serving files in the current directory on port 8080")
    http.Handle("/", http.FileServer(http.Dir(".")))
    err := http.ListenAndServe(":8080", nil)
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal("ListenAndServe: ", err)
    }
}

Run this source using go run myserver.go or to build an executable go build myserver.go