A toy implementation of a multi-threaded static HTTP server in Python.

Snakeserver is a program that no longer requires command-line arguments to be run. All configuration is facilitated by a single paramter, the -c or --config parameter, which specifies the path to a JSON configuration file. A set of defaults has been provided for my own use, but this configuration will be needed to get more than a few predetermined locations.

Run the program through the python3 interpreter (python3 path/to/snakeserver -c <config file destination>).

As mentioned, the program uses a JSON formatted configuration file. There are multiple levels in the file, but each level inherits the properties of its parent unless overridden. Every one of these properties can be specified at any level, lower levels of course overriding their parents and defaults. The values only get read at certain levels of the parse tree, however. The following is a brief rundown of the configuration format.

All the properties are read at the server level unless specified.

This represents the maximum number of simultaneous connections for each TCP server you specify. Defaults to 32.

For each new connection made, this is the number of seconds the server will wait for an inital request. After which the socket will timeout and become available. Defaults to 15 seconds.

If the python mimetypes module fails to find a suitable MIME type for the object on the server being requested, this is the MIME type sent instead. Defaults to 'application/octet-stream'. This option doesn't really need to be changed.

Default charset for server resources. Defaults to 'utf-8'.

A boolean variable for whether or not the server should use GZIP compression when acceptable. Defaults to true.

An array of filenames which will be tested for existence, then served if a directory is requested without a filename. Defaults to ['index.html', 'index.htm'].

An array of objects representing each server the program should open for new connections. The default serves localhost:8086 with the contents of /srv/http/80 and localhost:8000 with the contents of /srv/http/81.

The port that the server will listen on for new connections. Defaults to 80.

The host that the server will listen on for new connections. Defaults to "" (empty string), a symbolic constant for all local interfaces.

A boolean variable indicating whether or not the server should listen using IPV6 instead of IPV4. Defaults to false.

A dictionary of path mappings to objects representing a single route the request can be matched to in similar way to express. Note: this object must have at least a single route on it otherwise nothing gets served. Use "/" to match all requests.

The only thing a route can do right now using this configuration is serve statically from this location on the filesystem. Make sure the server's running process has read permissions!

This small Python HTTP server was not really designed for interoperability or dynamism. For dynamic serving of web pages, you're probably better off using something like django. However, adding an importable interface would be a fun activity in server-side scripting and maintaning a public API.