Sometimes you just want to have a small web server that serves files to test something.

Serve the current directory

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On Ruby 1.9.2+ you can do the following ("." for current directory).

ruby -run -ehttpd . -p8000

Python 2.x offers a similar way.

python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000 .

This is the same way with Python 3.x

python -m http.server

In both cases your web server is single-threaded and will block when large files are being downloaded from you.

WEBrick also offers a simple way Show archive.org snapshot to serve your files via HTTPS:

ruby -r webrick/https -e '
  WEBrick::HTTPServer.new(
    Port: 8000, DocumentRoot: ".",
    SSLEnable: true, SSLCertName: [%w[CN localhost]]
  ).start'

For solutions in many other languages, see the big list of http static server one-liners Show archive.org snapshot .

Running a Rack application

To boot an application that comes with a config.ru, simply run

rackup

Or, if you have installed Passenger Standalone:

passenger start

For HTTPS, use this snippet:

puma -b ssl://localhost:8000