http-serve: a command-line http server

This is an extended version of http-server strengthened with a support of gzip compression and a fallback option for nonexistent routes (please see 'Available Options' section bellow for details). Together with https support, it make the server ideal for front-end testing purposes.

http-serve itself is a simple, zero-configuration command-line http server. It is powerful enough for production usage, but it's simple and hackable enough to be used for testing, local development, and learning.

Installing

Installation globally via npm:

 npm i -g http-serve

This will install http-serve globally so that it may be run from the command line.

Or it can be installed locally, for a project:

 npm i -D http-serve

Usage:

 http-serve [path] [options]

[path] defaults to ./public if the folder exists, and ./ otherwise.

Usage

Starting http-serve locally

 node bin/http-serve

Now you can visit http://localhost:8080 to view your server

Available Options:

-p Port to use (defaults to 8080)

-a Address to use (defaults to 0.0.0.0)

-d Show directory listings (defaults to 'True')

-i Display autoIndex (defaults to 'True')

-g or --gzip When enabled (defaults to 'False') it will serve ./public/some-file.js.gz in place of ./public/some-file.js when a gzipped version of the file exists and the request accepts gzip encoding.

-e or --ext Default file extension if none supplied (defaults to 'html')

-s or --silent Suppress log messages from output

--cors Enable CORS via the Access-Control-Allow-Origin header

-o Open browser window after starting the server

-c Set cache time (in seconds) for cache-control max-age header, e.g. -c10 for 10 seconds (defaults to '3600'). To disable caching, use -c-1.

-U or --utc Use UTC time format in log messages.

-P or --proxy Proxies all requests which can't be resolved locally to the given url. e.g.: -P http://someurl.com

-S or --ssl Enable https.

-C or --cert Path to ssl cert file (default: cert.pem).

-K or --key Path to ssl key file (default: key.pem).

-r or --robots Provide a /robots.txt (whose content defaults to 'User-agent: *\nDisallow: /') -f or --fallback Provide a fallback url if response returns 404 - useful for SPA frameworks

-h or --help Print this list and exit.

Example

http-serve ./dist --gzip -p /

It will run the http server for ./dist content dirctory, with gzip commpression suport. All of the nonexistent routes will be redirected to the host's root - /.