Python contains one helpful module: SimpleHTTPServer. You can expose local directory via HTTP by the following command:

python -m SimpleHTTPServer

Python will start HTTP server at http://localhost:8000

It is very worthy when you’re doing some tests of web application.

The only problem is that SimpleHTTPServer does not support POST. Sometimes it’s very useful to see the content of POST request.

Is there any simple way how to achieve this in Python?

Here is a small extension of SimpleHTTPServer with do_POST handler:

import SimpleHTTPServer
import SocketServer
import logging
import cgi

PORT = 8000

class ServerHandler(SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler):

    def do_GET(self):
        logging.error(self.headers)
        SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler.do_GET(self)

    def do_POST(self):
        logging.error(self.headers)
        form = cgi.FieldStorage(
            fp=self.rfile,
            headers=self.headers,
            environ={'REQUEST_METHOD':'POST',
                     'CONTENT_TYPE':self.headers['Content-Type'],
                     })
        for item in form.list:
            logging.error(item)
        SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler.do_GET(self)

Handler = ServerHandler

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

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

You can download SimpleServer.py here and start it with command:

python SimpleServer.py