miniserve - a CLI tool to serve files and dirs over HTTP

For when you really just want to serve some files over HTTP right now!

miniserve is a small, self-contained cross-platform CLI tool that allows you to just grab the binary and serve some file(s) via HTTP. Sometimes this is just a more practical and quick way than doing things properly.

Screenshot

How to use

Serve a directory:

miniserve linux-distro-collection/

Serve a single file:

miniserve linux-distro.iso

Set a custom index file to serve instead of a file listing:

miniserve --index test.html

Serve an SPA (Single Page Application) so that non-existent paths are forwarded to the SPA's router instead

miniserve --spa --index index.html

Require username/password:

miniserve --auth joe:123 unreleased-linux-distros/

Require username/password as hash:

pw=$(echo -n "123" | sha256sum | cut -f 1 -d ' ')
miniserve --auth joe:sha256:$pw unreleased-linux-distros/

Generate random 6-hexdigit URL:

miniserve -i 192.168.0.1 --random-route /tmp
# Serving path /private/tmp at http://192.168.0.1/c789b6

Bind to multiple interfaces:

miniserve -i 192.168.0.1 -i 10.13.37.10 -i ::1 /tmp/myshare

Start with TLS:

miniserve --tls-cert my.cert --tls-key my.key /tmp/myshare

Upload a file using `curl`:

# in one terminal
miniserve -u .
# in another terminal
curl -F "path=@$FILE" http://localhost:8080/upload\?path\=/

(where $FILE is the path to the file. This uses miniserve's default port of 8080)

Create a directory using `curl`:

# in one terminal
miniserve --upload-files --mkdir .
# in another terminal
curl -F "mkdir=$DIR_NAME" http://localhost:8080/upload\?path=\/

(where $DIR_NAME is the name of the directory. This uses miniserve's default port of 8080.)

Take pictures and upload them from smartphones:

miniserve -u -m image -q

This uses the --media-type option, which sends a hint for the expected media type to the browser. Some mobile browsers like Firefox on Android will offer to open the camera app when seeing this.

Features

Easy to use
Just works: Correct MIME types handling out of the box
Single binary drop-in with no extra dependencies required
Authentication support with username and password (and hashed password)
Mega fast and highly parallel (thanks to Rust and Actix)
Folder download (compressed on the fly as .tar.gz or .zip)
File uploading
Directory creation
Pretty themes (with light and dark theme support)
Scan QR code for quick access
Shell completions
Sane and secure defaults
TLS (for supported architectures)
Supports README.md rendering like on GitHub

Usage

miniserve 0.22.0
Sven-Hendrik Haase <svenstaro@gmail.com>, Boastful Squirrel <boastful.squirrel@gmail.com>
For when you really just want to serve some files over HTTP right now!

USAGE:
    miniserve [OPTIONS] [--] [PATH]

ARGS:
    <PATH>
            Which path to serve

OPTIONS:
    -a, --auth <AUTH>
            Set authentication. Currently supported formats: username:password, username:sha256:hash,
            username:sha512:hash (e.g. joe:123,
            joe:sha256:a665a45920422f9d417e4867efdc4fb8a04a1f3fff1fa07e998e86f7f7a27ae3)

    -c, --color-scheme <COLOR_SCHEME>
            Default color scheme

            [default: squirrel]
            [possible values: squirrel, archlinux, zenburn, monokai]

    -d, --color-scheme-dark <COLOR_SCHEME_DARK>
            Default color scheme

            [default: archlinux]
            [possible values: squirrel, archlinux, zenburn, monokai]

    -D, --dirs-first
            List directories first

    -F, --hide-version-footer
            Hide version footer

    -g, --enable-tar-gz
            Enable gz-compressed tar archive generation

    -h, --help
            Print help information

    -H, --hidden
            Show hidden files

        --header <HEADER>
            Set custom header for responses

        --hide-theme-selector
            Hide theme selector

    -i, --interfaces <INTERFACES>
            Interface to listen on

        --index <index_file>
            The name of a directory index file to serve, like "index.html"

            Normally, when miniserve serves a directory, it creates a listing for that directory.
            However, if a directory contains this file, miniserve will serve that file instead.

    -l, --show-symlink-info
            Visualize symlinks in directory listing

    -m, --media-type <MEDIA_TYPE>
            Specify uploadable media types

            [possible values: image, audio, video]

    -M, --raw-media-type <MEDIA_TYPE_RAW>
            Directly specify the uploadable media type expression

    -o, --overwrite-files
            Enable overriding existing files during file upload

    -p, --port <PORT>
            Port to use

            [default: 8080]

    -P, --no-symlinks
            Hide symlinks in listing and prevent them from being followed

        --print-completions <shell>
            Generate completion file for a shell

            [possible values: bash, elvish, fish, powershell, zsh]

        --print-manpage
            Generate man page

    -q, --qrcode
            Enable QR code display

    -r, --enable-tar
            Enable uncompressed tar archive generation

        --random-route
            Generate a random 6-hexdigit route

        --readme
            Enable README.md rendering in directories

        --route-prefix <ROUTE_PREFIX>
            Use a specific route prefix

        --spa
            Activate SPA (Single Page Application) mode

            This will cause the file given by --index to be served for all non-existing file paths. In
            effect, this will serve the index file whenever a 404 would otherwise occur in order to allow the
            SPA router to handle the request instead.

    -t, --title <TITLE>
            Shown instead of host in page title and heading

        --tls-cert <TLS_CERT>
            TLS certificate to use

        --tls-key <TLS_KEY>
            TLS private key to use

    -u, --upload-files [<ALLOWED_UPLOAD_DIR>...]
            Enable file uploading (and optionally specify for which directory)

    -U, --mkdir
            Enable creating directories

    -v, --verbose
            Be verbose, includes emitting access logs

    -V, --version
            Print version information

    -W, --show-wget-footer
            If enabled, display a wget command to recursively download the current directory

    -z, --enable-zip
            Enable zip archive generation
            
            WARNING: Zipping large directories can result in out-of-memory exception because zip generation
            is done in memory and cannot be sent on the fly

How to install

On Linux: Download miniserve-linux from the releases page and run

chmod +x miniserve-linux
./miniserve-linux

Alternatively, if you are on Arch Linux, you can do

pacman -S miniserve

On Termux

pkg install miniserve

On OSX: Download miniserve-osx from the releases page and run

chmod +x miniserve-osx
./miniserve-osx

Alternatively install with Homebrew:

brew install miniserve
miniserve

On Windows: Download miniserve-win.exe from the releases page and run

miniserve-win.exe

Alternatively install with Scoop:

scoop install miniserve

With Cargo: Make sure you have a recent version of Rust. Then you can run

cargo install --locked miniserve
miniserve

With Docker: Make sure the Docker daemon is running and then run

docker run -v /tmp:/tmp -p 8080:8080 --rm -it docker.io/svenstaro/miniserve /tmp

With Podman: Just run

podman run -v /tmp:/tmp -p 8080:8080 --rm -it docker.io/svenstaro/miniserve /tmp

Shell completions

If you'd like to make use of the built-in shell completion support, you need to run miniserve --print-completions <your-shell> and put the completions in the correct place for your shell. A few examples with common paths are provided below:

# For bash
miniserve --print-completions bash > ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions/miniserve
# For zsh
miniserve --print-completions zsh > /usr/local/share/zsh/site-functions/_miniserve
# For fish
miniserve --print-completions fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/miniserve.fish

systemd

A hardened systemd-compatible unit file can be found in packaging/miniserve@.service. You could install this to /etc/systemd/system/miniserve@.service and start and enable miniserve as a daemon on a specific serve path /my/serve/path like this:

systemctl enable --now miniserve@-my-serve-path

Keep in mind that you'll have to use systemd-escape to properly escape a path for this usage.

In case you want to customize the particular flags that miniserve launches with, you can use

systemctl edit miniserve@-my-serve-path

and set the [Service] part in the resulting override.conf file. For instance:

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/miniserve --enable-tar --enable-zip --no-symlinks --verbose -i ::1 -p 1234 --title hello --color-scheme monokai --color-scheme-dark monokai -- %I

Make sure to leave the %I at the very end in place or the wrong path might be served. You might additionally have to override IPAddressAllow and IPAddressDeny if you plan on making miniserve directly available on a public interface.

Binding behavior

For convenience reasons, miniserve will try to bind on all interfaces by default (if no -i is provided). It will also do that if explicitly provided with -i 0.0.0.0 or -i ::. In all of the aforementioned cases, it will bind on both IPv4 and IPv6. If provided with an explicit non-default interface, it will ONLY bind to that interface. You can provide -i multiple times to bind to multiple interfaces at the same time.

Why use this over alternatives?

darkhttpd: Not easily available on Windows and it's not as easy as download-and-go.
Python built-in webserver: Need to have Python installed, it's low performance, and also doesn't do correct MIME type handling in some cases.
netcat: Not as convenient to use and sending directories is somewhat involved.

Releasing

This is mostly a note for me on how to release this thing:

Make sure CHANGELOG.md is up to date.
cargo release <version>
cargo release --execute <version>
Releases will automatically be deployed by GitHub Actions.
Update Arch package.

dengchanggang/miniserve