Serving static files

Sometimes when working on JavaScript-based applications or static websites, it's necessary to be able to serve the content of a directory directly from disk.

The Python standard library has a ready-made HTTP server that handles requests, mapping them to files in a directory, so we can quickly roll our own HTTP server to write websites without the need to install any other tool.

How to do it...

The http.server module provides most of what is needed to implement an HTTP server in charge of serving content of a directory:

import os.path
import socketserver
from http.server import SimpleHTTPRequestHandler, HTTPServer

def serve_directory(path, port=8000):
    class ConfiguredHandler(HTTPDirectoryRequestHandler...