servitsy

Small, local HTTP server for static files.

• Small: no dependencies, 22 kilobytes gzipped.
• Local: designed for local development workflows.
• Static: serves files and directory listings.

Usage

npx servitsy [directory] [options]

[!NOTE] servitsy is a command-line tool, published as a npm package. It requires Node.js version 18 or higher, or a compatible runtime like Deno or Bun.

# Running with Bun
bunx servitsy

# Running with Deno (will prompt for read access)
deno run --allow-net --allow-sys npm:servitsy

Calling servitsy without options will:

• serve the current directory at http://localhost:8080 (listening on hostname 0.0.0.0);
• try the next port numbers if 8080 is not available;
• serve index.html files for folders, and .html files when the extension was omitted in the URL;
• serve directory listings (for folders without an index file).

Options

You can configure servitsy's behavior with options. For example:

# Serve current folder on port 3000, with CORS headers
npx servitsy -p 3000 --cors

# Serve 'dist' folder and disable directory listings
npx servitsy dist --dir-list false

• Use npx servitsy --help for an overview of available options.
• Read doc/options.md for details and examples.

Changelog

See doc/changelog.md for the release history.

License

This package is licensed under the MIT license.

Alternatives

[!WARNING] servitsy is not designed for production. There are safer and faster tools to serve a folder of static HTML to the public. See Apache, Nginx, @fastify/static, etc.

For local testing, here are a few established alternatives you may prefer, with their respective size:

| Package | Version | Dependencies | Installed size† | | ------------- | ------- | ------------ | --------------- | | servitsy | 0.4.4 | 0 | 108 kB | | servor | 4.0.2 | 0 | 144 kB | | sirv-cli | 3.0.0 | 12 | 396 kB | | serve | 14.2.4 | 87 | 7.5 MB | | http-server | 14.1.1 | 45 | 8.9 MB |

If size and dependency count is not a concern and you want something stable and battle-tested, I recommend serve and http-server.

Otherwise servitsy, sirv-cli or servor might work for you.

† Installed size is the uncompressed size of the package and its dependencies (as reported by du on macOS; exact size may depend on the OS and/or filesystem).