About this fork

In May of 2016, an absolute legend going by the name hedefalk created a PR for http-server that allows setting custom headers. This is crucial for projects that need things like wasm and SharedArrayBuffer support.

Using hedefalk's old version these days is problematic because, being old, it lacks other very important features people like me need, such as custom mimetype support for better wasm support.

7 years later (at time of writing) that PR is still sitting there, dusty, ignored, people desperately asking for it to be merged. But it's difficult now, because it has entered merge-conflict territory.

So, I merged it. Use it in your package.json file as follows:

"devDependencies": {
  "http-server": "git+https://github.com:aggregate1166877/http-server.git#943e771ddd257874fc1fb64d4ca410b1cc3b312d"
}

Example use:

{
  "scripts": {
    "start": "http-server dirName --header Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy:require-corp --header Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy:same-origin"
  }
}

You should consider this repo unmaintained as I'm unlikely to merge future https-server changes into this repo (I guess we'll see), but it's a temporary solution for people who desperately need a fix right now.

With a bit of luck the authors of https-server merge that PR in the next 7 years or so.

Original README follows below.

http-server: a simple static HTTP server

http-server is a simple, zero-configuration command-line static 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.

Installation:

Running on-demand:

Using npx you can run the script without installing it first:

npx http-server [path] [options]

Globally via `npm`

npm install --global http-server

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

Globally via Homebrew

brew install http-server

As a dependency in your `npm` package:

npm install http-server

Usage:

 http-server [path] [options]

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

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

Note: Caching is on by default. Add -c-1 as an option to disable caching.

Available Options:

Command	Description	Defaults
`-p` or `--port`	Port to use. Use `-p 0` to look for an open port, starting at 8080. It will also read from `process.env.PORT`.	8080
`-a`	Address to use	0.0.0.0
`-d`	Show directory listings	`true`
`-i`	Display autoIndex	`true`
`-g` or `--gzip`	When enabled 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. If brotli is also enabled, it will try to serve brotli first.	`false`
`-b` or `--brotli`	When enabled it will serve `./public/some-file.js.br` in place of `./public/some-file.js` when a brotli compressed version of the file exists and the request accepts `br` encoding. If gzip is also enabled, it will try to serve brotli first.	`false`
`-e` or `--ext`	Default file extension if none supplied	`html`
`-s` or `--silent`	Suppress log messages from output
`--cors`	Enable CORS via the `Access-Control-Allow-Origin` header
`-o [path]`	Open browser window after starting the server. Optionally provide a URL path to open. e.g.: -o /other/dir/
`-c`	Set cache time (in seconds) for cache-control max-age header, e.g. `-c10` for 10 seconds. To disable caching, use `-c-1`.	`3600`
`-U` or `--utc`	Use UTC time format in log messages.
`--log-ip`	Enable logging of the client's IP address	`false`
`-P` or `--proxy`	Proxies all requests which can't be resolved locally to the given url. e.g.: -P http://someurl.com
`--proxy-options`	Pass proxy options using nested dotted objects. e.g.: --proxy-options.secure false
`--username`	Username for basic authentication
`--password`	Password for basic authentication
`-S`, `--tls` or `--ssl`	Enable secure request serving with TLS/SSL (HTTPS)	`false`
`-C` or `--cert`	Path to ssl cert file	`cert.pem`
`-K` or `--key`	Path to ssl key file	`key.pem`
`-r` or `--robots`	Automatically provide a /robots.txt (The content of which defaults to `User-agent: *\nDisallow: /`)	`false`
`--no-dotfiles`	Do not show dotfiles
`--mimetypes`	Path to a .types file for custom mimetype definition
`-h` or `--help`	Print this list and exit.
`-v` or `--version`	Print the version and exit.

Magic Files

index.html will be served as the default file to any directory requests.
404.html will be served if a file is not found. This can be used for Single-Page App (SPA) hosting to serve the entry page.

Catch-all redirect

To implement a catch-all redirect, use the index page itself as the proxy with:

http-server --proxy http://localhost:8080?

Note the ? at the end of the proxy URL. Thanks to @houston3 for this clever hack!

TLS/SSL

First, you need to make sure that openssl is installed correctly, and you have key.pem and cert.pem files. You can generate them using this command:

openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -new -nodes -x509 -days 3650 -keyout key.pem -out cert.pem

You will be prompted with a few questions after entering the command. Use 127.0.0.1 as value for Common name if you want to be able to install the certificate in your OS's root certificate store or browser so that it is trusted.

This generates a cert-key pair and it will be valid for 3650 days (about 10 years).

Then you need to run the server with -S for enabling SSL and -C for your certificate file.

http-server -S -C cert.pem

If you wish to use a passphrase with your private key you can include one in the openssl command via the -passout parameter (using password of foobar)

e.g. openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -passout pass:foobar -keyout key.pem -x509 -days 365 -out cert.pem

For security reasons, the passphrase will only be read from the NODE_HTTP_SERVER_SSL_PASSPHRASE environment variable.

This is what should be output if successful:

Starting up http-server, serving ./ through https

http-server settings:
CORS: disabled
Cache: 3600 seconds
Connection Timeout: 120 seconds
Directory Listings: visible
AutoIndex: visible
Serve GZIP Files: false
Serve Brotli Files: false
Default File Extension: none

Available on:
  https://127.0.0.1:8080
  https://192.168.1.101:8080
  https://192.168.1.104:8080
Hit CTRL-C to stop the server

Development

Checkout this repository locally, then:

$ npm i
$ npm start