12-10-2010, 11:19 PM

Hi, ive been messing around with terminal and I saw this code that can set up a very simple server on your 8080 port

python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8080

And it works great and ive had fun messing around with it, but when i put an html file named index.htm or named anything else, the html code isn't translated into the page, it justs displays the code

i've navigated to the file

/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/SimpleHTTPServer.py

and found that when I edit it, i can edit the html file that is the root directory when you start that server, the only thing is that I can't save the file as i dont have permission. Anyone have any tips?

12-11-2010, 12:26 AM

Edit the file however you need to. Save it to your desktop. Then copy the saved file to the originals location in Finder. In the dialogs that pop up click Replace, and put in your password.

12-11-2010, 04:53 PM

or sudo chmod 777 /file/path/here

12-11-2010, 05:52 PM

Just a tip - you shouldn't be using Python's SimpleHTTPServer for anything serious (I'm not saying you are though).

A much easier solution would be to simply write a small server in Python using SimpleHTTPServer and run that from a directory that you have permissions to. Using Python's docs to help me here (I'm largely unfamiliar with the SImpleHTTPServer module), create a file called <something>.py (replace <something> with whatever you want) and make the contents of the file the following:

import SimpleHTTPServer
import SocketServer

PORT = 8000

Handler = SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler

httpd = SocketServer.TCPServer(("", PORT), Handler)

print "serving at port", PORT
httpd.serve_forever()

Execute that by executing

python <something>.py

Put your html docs in the directory with the Python script and navigate to http://localhost:8000 (change the port if you change it in the script).