Local Webserver

Introduction

This repository provides local webservers which serve the local directory in which they were stored.

If the server is stored at /home/user/tmp/mydir/lw it will serve all files in /home/user/tmp/mydir/ - please see the "Usage"-section for a more complete example.

After starting the server it opens a new site in your web browser. You can also choose an network interface the server should listen on.

To open the browser with the url, open is used on Mac OS X, start under Windows and xdg-open on Linux/Other operating systems.

You may want to use lw to ...

• share data on demand from your local machine without the hassle of filesystem permissions or setting up a network share
• serve a built presentation – e.g. reveal.js
• load data from your local machine onto some network device

What makes local-server so nice and sweet?

• It's just one single executable
• It has just a few options and does not use a configuration file
• It can be compiled for multiple platforms - e.g. Mac OS X, Windows and Linux
• It chooses a random port on startup, so there's no conflict with other instances of local_server – can be overridden
• You can choose which interface the server should listen on.

Download

You can use the following commandline to download and extract the current version of "local-webserver" to the current working directory. You find all releases of "local-webserver here: https://github.com/feduxorg/local-webserver/releases/latest.

• Linux

  curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/feduxorg/local-webserver/releases/latest \
  | grep -e "browser_download_url.*linux.*" \
  | cut -d : -f 2,3 \
  | tr -d \" \
  | xargs -I {} sh -c 'curl -L {} | tar -xzf -'

• Windows

  curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/feduxorg/local-webserver/releases/latest \
  | grep -e "browser_download_url.*windows.*" \
  | cut -d : -f 2,3 \
  | tr -d \" \
  | xargs -I {} sh -c 'curl -L {} | tar -xzf -'

• MacOS

  curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/feduxorg/local-webserver/releases/latest \
  | grep -e "browser_download_url.*darwin.*" \
  | cut -d : -f 2,3 \
  | tr -d \" \
  | xargs -I {} sh -c 'curl -L {} | tar -xzf -'

Usage

The server will ask you what interface it should use on startup. If you do nothing and wait 7s or press ENTER 127.0.0.1 will be chosen.

Start server with random port (1023 < port < 65535) and localhost as interface (mind the * ) and be verbose:

./lw
# => Available Interfaces
# => [ 1]               enp0s25: 151.217.104.62
# => [ 2]               enp0s25: 2001:67c:20a1:1104:7cab:7900:6e5:49bd
# => [ 3]*                   lo: 127.0.0.1
# => [ 4]                    lo: ::1
# => [ 5]              vboxnet0: 192.168.99.1
# => Enter Number [1-5] (Timeout: 7s, Default: 3, Press Enter for Default):

Start server with port and interface defined

./lw --port 1234 --interface 127.0.0.2
# => 
# => Server listens on 127.0.0.2:1234
# => 
# => Requests:
# => 

Serve a different directory

./lw --directory /usr/share/doc
# or
./lw --directory ~/
# => 
# => Available Interfaces
# => [ 1]               enp0s25: 151.217.104.62
# => [ 2]               enp0s25: 2001:67c:20a1:1104:7cab:7900:6e5:49bd
# => [ 3]*                   lo: 127.0.0.1
# => [ 4]                    lo: ::1
# => [ 5]              vboxnet0: 192.168.99.1
# => Enter Number [1-5] (Timeout: 7s, Default: 3, Press Enter for Default):
# => 
# => Server listens on 127.0.0.1:17150
# => 
# => Requests:

Do not output anything, but request which interface should be used

./lw --silent --port 1234 --interface 127.0.0.1
# => 
# => Available Interfaces
# => [ 1]               enp0s25: 151.217.104.62
# => [ 2]               enp0s25: 2001:67c:20a1:1104:7cab:7900:6e5:49bd
# => [ 3]*                   lo: 127.0.0.1
# => [ 4]                    lo: ::1
# => [ 5]              vboxnet0: 192.168.99.1
# => Enter Number [1-5] (Timeout: 7s, Default: 3, Press Enter for Default):

Do not output anything, but request which interface should be used

./lw --silent --port 1234 --interface 127.0.0.1

Development

This project was built with Google Go. See this page for some documentation about developing software with "Go". If you're interested to cross-compile this application: I wrote an blog article about how a setup an environment for that.

Requirements

• Go needs to be installed
• make needs to be installed.
• Bourne (compatible) shell needs to be installed.

Setup environment

This will install all required Go-modules. It will also check if all required other software packages are installed.

bin/setup

Build application

Run this script and have a look for the build binaries in dist. Set the GOOS and GOARCH to the required values - defaults GOOS=linux and GOARCH=amd64.

./bin/build

Build docker image

./bin/docker/build

License

Please see the LICENSE.md.