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

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

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
• Pretty themes
• Scan QR code for quick access

Usage

miniserve 0.10.2
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 [FLAGS] [OPTIONS] [--] [PATH]

FLAGS:
    -r, --enable-tar
            Enable 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
    -u, --upload-files
            Enable file uploading

    -h, --help
            Prints help information

    -P, --no-symlinks
            Do not follow symbolic links

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

    -q, --qrcode
            Enable QR code display

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

    -V, --version
            Prints version information

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


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]

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

    -p, --port <port>
            Port to use [default: 8080]

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


ARGS:
    <PATH>
            Which path to serve

How to install

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

chmod +x miniserve-linux
./miniserve-linux

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

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

cargo install miniserve
miniserve

With Docker: If you prefer using Docker for this, run

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

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 --dry-run <version>
• cargo release <version>
• Releases will automatically be deployed by Github Actions.
• Docker images will automatically be built by Docker Hub.
• Update AUR package.