Source code:
———
This module defines classes for implementing HTTP servers.
Warning
http.server is not recommended for production. It only implements
.
One class,
, is a
subclass. It creates and listens at the HTTP socket, dispatching the requests to a handler. Code to create and run the server looks like this:
defrun(server_class=HTTPServer,handler_class=BaseHTTPRequestHandler):server_address=('',8000)httpd=server_class(server_address,handler_class)httpd.serve_forever()classhttp.server.HTTPServer(server_address, RequestHandlerClass)
This class builds on the
class by storing the server address as instance variables named
and
. The server is accessible by the handler, typically through the handler’s
instance variable.
server_name
The HTTP server’s fully qualified domain name.
server_port
The HTTP server’s port number obtained from server_address.
classhttp.server.ThreadingHTTPServer(server_address, RequestHandlerClass)
This class is identical to HTTPServer but uses threads to handle requests by using the
. This is useful to handle web browsers pre-opening sockets, on which
would wait indefinitely.
Added in version 3.7.
classhttp.server.HTTPSServer(server_address, RequestHandlerClass, bind_and_activate=True, *, certfile, keyfile=None, password=None, alpn_protocols=None)
Subclass of
with a wrapped socket using the
module. If the ssl module is not available, instantiating a HTTPSServer object fails with a
.
The certfile argument is the path to the SSL certificate chain file, and the keyfile is the path to the file containing the private key.
A password can be specified for files protected and wrapped with PKCS#8, but beware that this could possibly expose hardcoded passwords in clear.
When specified, the alpn_protocols argument must be a sequence of strings specifying the “Application-Layer Protocol Negotiation” (ALPN) protocols supported by the server. ALPN allows the server and the client to negotiate the application protocol during the TLS handshake.
By default, it is set to ["http/1.1"], meaning the server supports HTTP/1.1.
Added in version 3.14.
classhttp.server.ThreadingHTTPSServer(server_address, RequestHandlerClass, bind_and_activate=True, *, certfile, keyfile=None, password=None, alpn_protocols=None)
This class is identical to
but uses threads to handle requests by inheriting from
. This is analogous to
only using HTTPSServer.
Added in version 3.14.
The
,
,
and
must be given a RequestHandlerClass on instantiation, of which this module provides three different variants:
classhttp.server.BaseHTTPRequestHandler(request, client_address, server)
This class is used to handle the HTTP requests that arrive at the server. By itself, it cannot respond to any actual HTTP requests; it must be subclassed to handle each request method (for example, 'GET' or 'POST'). BaseHTTPRequestHandler provides a number of class and instance variables, and methods for use by subclasses.
The handler will parse the request and the headers, then call a method specific to the request type. The method name is constructed from the request. For example, for the request method SPAM, the do_SPAM() method will be called with no arguments. All of the relevant information is stored in instance variables of the handler. Subclasses should not need to override or extend the __init__() method.
BaseHTTPRequestHandler has the following instance variables:
client_address
Contains a tuple of the form (host,port) referring to the client’s address.
server
Contains the server instance.
close_connection
Boolean that should be set before
returns, indicating if another request may be expected, or if the connection should be shut down.
requestline
Contains the string representation of the HTTP request line. The terminating CRLF is stripped. This attribute should be set by
. If no valid request line was processed, it should be set to the empty string.
command
Contains the command (request type). For example, 'GET'.
path
Contains the request path. If the query component of the URL is present, then path includes the query. Using the terminology of
, path here includes hier-part and the query.
request_version
Contains the version string from the request. For example, 'HTTP/1.0'.
headers
Holds an instance of the class specified by the
class variable. This instance parses and manages the headers in the HTTP request. The
function from
is used to parse the headers and it requires that the HTTP request provide a valid
style header.
rfile
An
input stream, ready to read from the start of the optional input data.
wfile
Contains the output stream for writing a response back to the client. Proper adherence to the HTTP protocol must be used when writing to this stream in order to achieve successful interoperation with HTTP clients.
BaseHTTPRequestHandler has the following attributes:
server_version
Specifies the server software version. You may want to override this. The format is multiple whitespace-separated strings, where each string is of the form name[/version]. For example, 'BaseHTTP/0.2'.
sys_version
Contains the Python system version, in a form usable by the
method and the
class variable. For example, 'Python/1.4'.
error_message_format
Specifies a format string that should be used by
method for building an error response to the client. The string is filled by default with variables from
based on the status code passed to send_error().
error_content_type
Specifies the Content-Type HTTP header of error responses sent to the client. The default value is 'text/html'.
protocol_version
Specifies the HTTP version to which the server is conformant. It is sent in responses to let the client know the server’s communication capabilities for future requests. If set to 'HTTP/1.1', the server will permit HTTP persistent connections; however, your server must then include an accurate Content-Length header (using
) in all of its responses to clients. For backwards compatibility, the setting defaults to 'HTTP/1.0'.
MessageClass
Specifies an
-like class to parse HTTP headers. Typically, this is not overridden, and it defaults to
.
responses
This attribute contains a mapping of error code integers to two-element tuples containing a short and long message. For example, {code:(shortmessage,longmessage)}. The shortmessage is usually used as the message key in an error response, and longmessage as the explain key. It is used by
and
methods.
A BaseHTTPRequestHandler instance has the following methods:
handle()
Calls
once (or, if persistent connections are enabled, multiple times) to handle incoming HTTP requests. You should never need to override it; instead, implement appropriate do_*() methods.
handle_one_request()
This method will parse and dispatch the request to the appropriate do_*() method. You should never need to override it.
handle_expect_100()
When an HTTP/1.1 conformant server receives an Expect:100-continue request header it responds with a 100Continue followed by 200OK headers. This method can be overridden to raise an error if the server does not want the client to continue. For example, the server can choose to send 417ExpectationFailed as a response header and returnFalse.
Added in version 3.2.
send_error(code, message=None, explain=None)
Sends and logs a complete error reply to the client. The numeric code specifies the HTTP error code, with message as an optional, short, human readable description of the error. The explain argument can be used to provide more detailed information about the error; it will be formatted using the
attribute and emitted, after a complete set of headers, as the response body. The
attribute holds the default values for message and explain that will be used if no value is provided; for unknown codes the default value for both is the string ???. The body will be empty if the method is HEAD or the response code is one of the following: 1xx, 204NoContent, 205ResetContent, 304NotModified.
Changed in version 3.4: The error response includes a Content-Length header. Added the explain argument.
send_response(code, message=None)
Adds a response header to the headers buffer and logs the accepted request. The HTTP response line is written to the internal buffer, followed by Server and Date headers. The values for these two headers are picked up from the
and
methods, respectively. If the server does not intend to send any other headers using the
method, then send_response() should be followed by an
call.
Changed in version 3.3: Headers are stored to an internal buffer and
needs to be called explicitly.
send_header(keyword, value)
Adds the HTTP header to an internal buffer which will be written to the output stream when either
or
is invoked. keyword should specify the header keyword, with value specifying its value. Note that, after the send_header calls are done, end_headers() MUST BE called in order to complete the operation.
This method does not reject input containing CRLF sequences.
Changed in version 3.2: Headers are stored in an internal buffer.
send_response_only(code, message=None)
Sends the response header only, used for the purposes when 100Continue response is sent by the server to the client. The headers are not buffered and sent directly the output stream. If the message is not specified, the HTTP message corresponding the response code is sent.
This method does not reject message containing CRLF sequences.
Added in version 3.2.
end_headers()
Adds a blank line (indicating the end of the HTTP headers in the response) to the headers buffer and calls
.
Changed in version 3.2: The buffered headers are written to the output stream.
flush_headers()
Finally send the headers to the output stream and flush the internal headers buffer.
Added in version 3.3.
log_request(code='-', size='-')
Logs an accepted (successful) request. code should specify the numeric HTTP code associated with the response. If a size of the response is available, then it should be passed as the size parameter.
log_error(...)
Logs an error when a request cannot be fulfilled. By default, it passes the message to
, so it takes the same arguments (format and additional values).
log_message(format, ...)
Logs an arbitrary message to sys.stderr. This is typically overridden to create custom error logging mechanisms. The format argument is a standard printf-style format string, where the additional arguments to log_message() are applied as inputs to the formatting. The client IP address and current date and time are prefixed to every message logged.
version_string()
Returns the server software’s version string. This is a combination of the
and
attributes.
date_time_string(timestamp=None)
Returns the date and time given by timestamp (which must be None or in the format returned by
), formatted for a message header. If timestamp is omitted, it uses the current date and time.
The result looks like 'Sun,06Nov199408:49:37GMT'.
log_date_time_string()
Returns the current date and time, formatted for logging.
address_string()
Returns the client address.
Changed in version 3.3: Previously, a name lookup was performed. To avoid name resolution delays, it now always returns the IP address.
classhttp.server.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler(request, client_address, server, directory=None)
This class serves files from the directory directory and below, or the current directory if directory is not provided, directly mapping the directory structure to HTTP requests.
Changed in version 3.7: Added the directory parameter.
Changed in version 3.9: The directory parameter accepts a
.
A lot of the work, such as parsing the request, is done by the base class
. This class implements the
and
functions.
The following are defined as class-level attributes of SimpleHTTPRequestHandler:
server_version
This will be "SimpleHTTP/"+__version__, where __version__ is defined at the module level.
index_pages
Specifies the filenames that are treated as directory index pages.
Defaults to ("index.html","index.htm").
Added in version 3.12.
extensions_map
A dictionary mapping suffixes into MIME types, contains custom overrides for the default system mappings. The mapping is used case-insensitively, and so should contain only lower-cased keys.
Changed in version 3.9: This dictionary is no longer filled with the default system mappings, but only contains overrides.
The SimpleHTTPRequestHandler class defines the following methods:
do_HEAD()
This method serves the 'HEAD' request type: it sends the headers it would send for the equivalent GET request. See the
method for a more complete explanation of the possible headers.
do_GET()
The request is mapped to a local file by interpreting the request as a path relative to the current working directory.
If the request was mapped to a directory, the directory is checked for an index page as specified by
. If found, the file’s contents are returned; otherwise a directory listing is generated by calling the
method. This method uses
to scan the directory, and returns a 404 error response if the listdir() fails.
If the request was mapped to a file, it is opened. Any
exception in opening the requested file is mapped to a 404, 'Filenotfound' error. If there was an 'If-Modified-Since' header in the request, and the file was not modified after this time, a 304, 'NotModified' response is sent. Otherwise, the content type is guessed by calling the
method, which in turn uses the extensions_map variable, and the file contents are returned.
A 'Content-type:' header with the guessed content type is output, followed by a 'Content-Length:' header with the file’s size and a 'Last-Modified:' header with the file’s modification time.
Then follows a blank line signifying the end of the headers, and then the contents of the file are output.
For example usage, see the implementation of the test function in
.
Changed in version 3.7: Support of the 'If-Modified-Since' header.
list_directory(path)
Helper to list the contents of path when no index page is present.
This returns either a
(which must be closed by the caller) or None to indicate an error, in which case the caller has nothing further to do. In either case, the headers are sent.
guess_type(path)
Guess the type of the file at the given path.
This returns a string of the form type/subtype, usable for a MIME Content-type header.
The default implementation looks the file’s extension up in
, falling back to
and then to 'application/octet-stream'.
The
class can be used to create a very basic webserver serving files relative to the current directory as follows:
importhttp.serverimportsocketserverPORT=8000Handler=http.server.SimpleHTTPRequestHandlerwithsocketserver.TCPServer(("",PORT),Handler)ashttpd:print("serving at port",PORT)httpd.serve_forever()
can also be subclassed to enhance behavior, such as using different index file names by overriding the class attribute
.
classhttp.server.CGIHTTPRequestHandler(request, client_address, server)
This class is used to serve either files or output of CGI scripts from the current directory and below. Note that mapping HTTP hierarchic structure to local directory structure is exactly as in
.
Note
CGI scripts run by the CGIHTTPRequestHandler class cannot execute redirects (HTTP code 302), because code 200 (script output follows) is sent prior to execution of the CGI script. This pre-empts the status code.
The class will however, run the CGI script, instead of serving it as a file, if it guesses it to be a CGI script. Only directory-based CGI are used — the other common server configuration is to treat special extensions as denoting CGI scripts.
The
and
functions are modified to run CGI scripts and serve the output, instead of serving files, if the request leads to somewhere below the cgi_directories path.
The CGIHTTPRequestHandler defines the following data member:
cgi_directories
This defaults to ['/cgi-bin','/htbin'] and describes directories to treat as containing CGI scripts.
The CGIHTTPRequestHandler defines the following method:
do_POST()
This method serves the 'POST' request type, only allowed for CGI scripts. Error 501, “Can only POST to CGI scripts”, is output when trying to POST to a non-CGI url.
Note that CGI scripts will be run with UID of user nobody, for security reasons. Problems with the CGI script will be translated to error 403.
Deprecated since version 3.13, will be removed in version 3.15: CGIHTTPRequestHandler is being removed in 3.15. CGI has not been considered a good way to do things for well over a decade. This code has been unmaintained for a while now and sees very little practical use. Retaining it could lead to further
.
Command-line interface
http.server can also be invoked directly using the
switch of the interpreter. The following example illustrates how to serve files relative to the current directory:
python-mhttp.server[OPTIONS][port]The following options are accepted:
port
The server listens to port 8000 by default. The default can be overridden by passing the desired port number as an argument:
python-mhttp.server9000-b,--bind<address>
Specifies a specific address to which it should bind. Both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are supported. By default, the server binds itself to all interfaces. For example, the following command causes the server to bind to localhost only:
python-mhttp.server--bind127.0.0.1 Added in version 3.4.
Changed in version 3.8: Support IPv6 in the --bind option.
-d,--directory<dir>
Specifies a directory to which it should serve the files. By default, the server uses the current directory. For example, the following command uses a specific directory:
python-mhttp.server--directory/tmp/ Added in version 3.7.
-p,--protocol<version>
Specifies the HTTP version to which the server is conformant. By default, the server is conformant to HTTP/1.0. For example, the following command runs an HTTP/1.1 conformant server:
python-mhttp.server--protocolHTTP/1.1 Added in version 3.11.
--cgi
can be enabled in the command line by passing the --cgi option:
python-mhttp.server--cgiDeprecated since version 3.13, will be removed in version 3.15: http.server command line --cgi support is being removed because
is being removed.
Warning
and the --cgi command-line option are not intended for use by untrusted clients and may be vulnerable to exploitation. Always use within a secure environment.
--tls-cert
Specifies a TLS certificate chain for HTTPS connections:
python-mhttp.server--tls-certfullchain.pem Added in version 3.14.
--tls-key
Specifies a private key file for HTTPS connections.
This option requires --tls-cert to be specified.
Added in version 3.14.
--tls-password-file
Specifies the password file for password-protected private keys:
python-mhttp.server\--tls-certcert.pem\--tls-keykey.pem\--tls-password-filepassword.txt This option requires --tls-cert to be specified.
Added in version 3.14.
Security considerations
will follow symbolic links when handling requests which makes it possible for files outside of the specified directory to be served.
Methods
BaseHTTPRequestHandler.send_header()
and
BaseHTTPRequestHandler.send_response_only()
assume sanitized input and do not perform input validation such as checking for the presence of CRLF sequences. Untrusted input may result in HTTP header injection attacks.
Earlier versions of Python did not scrub control characters from the log messages emitted to stderr from python-mhttp.server or the default
.log_message implementation. This could allow remote clients connecting to your server to send nefarious control codes to your terminal.
Changed in version 3.12: Control characters are scrubbed in stderr logs.