Introducing Serve
Apr 10, 2014 · 2 minute read · Commentssoftware
Sometimes, it takes a great deal of effort to create something simple.
- What is the smallest feature set you can support and still be useful?
- How elegant should the implementation be?
These are the typical questions which would come to your mind when aiming for simplicity.
Well, here is my dedication to the shrine of simplicity.
What is this?
Serve makes serving static content out of directories simple.
Why would you want to do this?
python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8080
When you can just do this:
serve .
Serve is a single binary. Easy installed via Homebrew with a single command:
brew install kidoman/tools/serve
(there are a few other ways of installing Serve, including but not limited to precompiled binaries. But they are much better documented at the Github repo)
How to use
Provided you have serve under your $PATH somewhere:
serve .
This will serve the current directory at http://localhost:5000/
serve -p 9999 ~/my-awesome-blog
Will serve the contents of the folder ~/my-awesome-blog at http://localhost:9999/
serve -x /my ~/precious
You guessed it, http://localhost:5000/my is now wired up to ~/precious
serve -o ~/sesame
Wires up http://localhost:5000 to ~/sesame and opens the URL in your favorite browser while it is at it.
Next Steps
The next logical thing would be to allow the serve functionality to be used by simply importing the package. But it totally depends on the simplicity of the change! Happy serving.