How to execute python script on the BaseHTTPSERVER created by python?

Question

I have simply created a python server with :

python -m SimpleHTTPServer

I had a .htaccess (I don\'t know if it is usefull with python serve

Answer 1

You are on the right track with CGIHTTPRequestHandler, as .htaccess files mean nothing to the the built-in http server. There is a CGIHTTPRequestHandler.cgi_directories variable that specifies the directories under which an executable file is considered a cgi script (here is the check itself). You should consider moving test.py to a cgi-bin or htbin directory and use the following script:

cgiserver.py:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

from http.server import CGIHTTPRequestHandler, HTTPServer

handler = CGIHTTPRequestHandler
handler.cgi_directories = ['/cgi-bin', '/htbin']  # this is the default
server = HTTPServer(('localhost', 8123), handler)
server.serve_forever()

cgi-bin/test.py:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
print('Content-type: text/html\n')
print('<title>Hello World</title>')

You should end up with:

|- cgiserver.py
|- cgi-bin/
   ` test.py

Run with python3 cgiserver.py and send requests to localhost:8123/cgi-bin/test.py. Cheers.

Answer 2

You can use a simpler approach and use the --cgi option launching the python3 version of http server:

python3 -m http.server --cgi

as pointed out by the command:

python3 -m http.server --help

Answer 3

Have you tried using Flask? It's a lightweight server library that makes this really easy.

from flask import Flask

app = Flask(__name__)


@app.route('/')
def hello_world():
    return '<title>Hello World</title>'


if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(debug=True)

The return value, in this case <title>Hello World</title>, is rendered has HTML. You can also use HTML template files for more complex pages.

Here's a good, short, youtube tutorial that explains it better.