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 $FILE is the path to the file. This uses miniserve's default port of 8080)
Note that for uploading, we have to use -- to disambiguate the argument to -u.
This is because -u can also take a path (or multiple). If a path argument to -u is given,
uploading will only be possible to the provided paths as opposed to every path.
Another effect of this is that you can't just combine flags like this -uv when -u is used. In
this example, you'd need to use -u -v.
Create a directory using curl:
# in one terminal
miniserve --upload-files --mkdir .
# in another terminal
curl -F "mkdir=$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.gzor.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
- Range requests
Usage
For when you really just want to serve some files over HTTP right now!
Usage: miniserve [OPTIONS] [PATH]
Arguments:
[PATH]
Which path to serve
Options:
-v, --verbose
Be verbose, includes emitting access logs
--index <INDEX>
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.
--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.
-p, --port <PORT>
Port to use
[default: 8080]
-i, --interfaces <INTERFACES>...
Interface to listen on
-a, --auth <AUTH>...
Set authentication. Currently supported formats: username:password,
username:sha256:hash, username:sha512:hash (e.g. joe:123,
joe:sha256:a665a45920422f9d417e4867efdc4fb8a04a1f3fff1fa07e998e86f7f7a27ae3)
--route-prefix <ROUTE_PREFIX>
Use a specific route prefix
--random-route
Generate a random 6-hexdigit route
-P, --no-symlinks
Hide symlinks in listing and prevent them from being followed
-H, --hidden
Show hidden files
-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]
-q, --qrcode
Enable QR code display
-u, --upload-files [<ALLOWED_UPLOAD_DIR>]
Enable file uploading (and optionally specify for which directory)
-U, --mkdir
Enable creating directories
-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
-r, --enable-tar
Enable uncompressed tar archive generation
-g, --enable-tar-gz
Enable gz-compressed tar archive generation
-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
-D, --dirs-first
List directories first
-t, --title <TITLE>
Shown instead of host in page title and heading
--header <HEADER>...
Set custom header for responses
-l, --show-symlink-info
Visualize symlinks in directory listing
-F, --hide-version-footer
Hide version footer
--hide-theme-selector
Hide theme selector
-W, --show-wget-footer
If enabled, display a wget command to recursively download the current directory
--print-completions <shell>
Generate completion file for a shell
[possible values: bash, elvish, fish, powershell, zsh]
--print-manpage
Generate man page
--tls-cert <TLS_CERT>
TLS certificate to use
--tls-key <TLS_KEY>
TLS private key to use
--readme
Enable README.md rendering in directories
-h, --help
Print help information (use `-h` for a summary)
-V, --version
Print version information
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/[email protected]. You could
install this to /etc/systemd/system/[email protected] 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.mdis up to date. cargo release <version>cargo release --execute <version>- Releases will automatically be deployed by GitHub Actions.
- Update Arch package.