Frontend Engineering Development
Python's inbuilt simple http server is extremely useful for front end developers

Photo by Artturi Jalli on Unsplash

Python's inbuilt simple http server is extremely useful for front end developers

Wiseland AI Engineering Team's photo
Wiseland AI Engineering Team
·

2 min read

Front-end development frequently involves working with static files, such as HTML structures, CSS stylesheets, and JavaScript code. To observe how these components interact and accurately visualize your work, you need a method to serve them as a typical web server would. Fortunately, Python offers a solution with its built-in HTTP server module.

Lightning-Fast Setup: Python makes spinning up a local web server incredibly simple. Here's the magic one-liner, executed from within your project directory in your terminal:

python -m http.server

  1. No Extra Installations: If you have Python installed, you have everything you need. There are no additional packages or libraries to manage.

  2. Perfect for Quick Testing: The simple HTTP server is ideal when you need to quickly preview website changes, test JavaScript functionality, or do some basic cross-browser compatibility checks.

  3. Cross-Platform: Whether you're on Windows, macOS, or a Linux machine, Python's got you covered.

How to use it

  1. Let's say you have a project folder called 'my-website' with the usual 'index.html', CSS, and JavaScript files inside it.

  2. Navigate to this folder in your terminal or command prompt.

  3. Run: python -m http.server

  4. Open your web browser and go to http://localhost:8000/ (or the port you specified), and you'll see your website rendered!

Conclusion

Python's simple HTTP server is a fantastic tool in any front-end developer's toolkit. It simplifies local development and testing workflows, letting you focus on building great user interfaces.

Note: Sometime you might want to disable cache when using this python server.

Python