Python Simple HTTP Server and Requests

Every once in a while you need to distribute files to a group of people on a local network or host a webpage, and you think, well, how am I going to do that?

Simple Server

Python, because they are thoughtful and caring and want us to be happy, comes with a simple HTTP server by default, which we can stand up in seconds. It used to be called SimpleHTTPServer in Python2, but now it is:

$python3 -m http.server

This will stand up a server that hosts the directory (and all other files under that directory) that you ran the command in. Pretty awesome, super convenient, and somewhat of a security risk (on your local network) if you run it too high in your directory structure and share too many files.

In your browser, go to the ip address and port it is running on and look at the files being served! You are able to download whatever you need.

Requests Library

Now of course, clicking around in a browser isn't hardcore enough for us. Sure, we could use curl or wget to grab it from the CLI, but let's say we want to do some python scripting.

Now it is time for one of my favorite libraries, requests. It's an elegant library that lets you do whatever you want to do with HTTP (and HTTPS if you wrap it). Use these docs to write a short script that can grab all the files on your local server and save them.

For your assignment, submit the script.