Run A Local Web Server
April 2, 2020 by Areg Sarkissian
In this post I detail how to run a web server on your local system using various languages.
Using NPX
If you have NodeJS installed you can use the npx cli.
# serve files from the current directory
npx serve .
let’s serve an html page
echo "<html><body>Hello</body></html>" > index.html
npx serve .
open -a /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome http://localhost:5000
Using PHP
If you have PHP installed you can use the php cli.
# serve files from the current directory
php -S localhost:8000
Or
# serve files from the specified directory which happens to be the current directory
php -S localhost:8000 -t .
let’s serve an html page
echo "<?php" > index.php
echo "phpinfo();" >> index.php
php -S localhost:8000
open -a /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome http://localhost:8000
Using Python
If you have Python 3 installed you can use the python cli.
# serve files from the current directory
python3 -m http.server
Serving using ParcelJS
If you want to bundle code before serving, you can use the ParcelJS bundler from https://parceljs.org/
Setup ParcelJS using NPM
If you have node installed you can install ParcelJS globally using the npm cli.
npm install -g parcel-bundler
You need to create a project directory and initialize it:
mkdir myproject && cd myproject
# create a package.json file
npm init -y
Once initialized you can run the server using the parcel cli.
parcel index.html -p 5000
Setup ParcelJS using YARN
If you have node installed and you installed the yarn package manager, you can install ParcelJS globally using the yarn cli.
yarn global add parcel-bundler
You need to create a project directory initialize it:
mkdir myproject && cd myproject
# create a package.json file
yarn init -y
Once initialized you can run the server using the parcel cli.
parcel index.html -p 5000
Testing the local web server
Add index.html file in the directory that you run the local server and add the following html content into it:
<html>
<body>
Hello
</body>
</html>
Here is how you can do this using a bash script:
touch index.html
echo '<html><body>Hello</body></html>' > index.html
Now run any of the server execution scripts mentioned in this article to serve up index.html the file.
Navigate your browser to http://localhost/index.html to view the file.