# Technical Documentation: svenstaro/miniserve

> ℹ️ **Provenance:** Multi-Tier Ingestion · [CodeWiki Reference](https://codewiki.google/github.com/svenstaro/miniserve)

### Overview (`README.md`)

<p align="center">
  <img src="data/logo.svg" alt="miniserve - a CLI tool to serve files and dirs over HTTP"><br>
</p>

# miniserve - a CLI tool to serve files and dirs over HTTP

[](https://github.com/svenstaro/miniserve/actions)
[](https://cloud.docker.com/repository/docker/svenstaro/miniserve/)
[](https://crates.io/crates/miniserve)
[](https://github.com/svenstaro/miniserve/blob/master/LICENSE)
[](https://github.com/svenstaro/miniserve/stargazers)
[](https://github.com/svenstaro/miniserve/releases)
[](https://github.com/svenstaro/miniserve)

**For when you really just want to serve some files over HTTP right now!**

**miniserve** is a small, self-contained cross-platform CLI tool that allows you to just grab the binary and serve some file(s) via HTTP.
Sometimes this is just a more practical and quick way than doing things properly.

## Screenshot



## How to use

### Serve a directory:

    miniserve linux-distro-collection/

### Serve a single file:

    miniserve linux-distro.iso

### Set a custom index file to serve instead of a file listing:

    miniserve --index test.html

### Serve an SPA (Single Page Application) so that non-existent paths are forwarded to the SPA's router instead

    miniserve --spa --index index.html

### Require username/password:

    miniserve --auth joe:123 unreleased-linux-distros/

### Require username/password as hash:

    pw=$(echo -n "123" | sha256sum | cut -f 1 -d ' ')
    miniserve --auth joe:sha256:$pw unreleased-linux-distros/

### Require username/password from file (separate logins with new lines):

    miniserve --auth-file auth.txt unreleased-linux-distros/

### Generate random 6-hexdigit URL:

    miniserve -i 192.168.0.1 --random-route /tmp
    # Serving path /private/tmp at http://192.168.0.1/c789b6

### Bind to multiple interfaces:

    miniserve -i 192.168.0.1 -i 10.13.37.10 -i ::1 /tmp/myshare

### Insert custom headers

    miniserve --header "Cache-Control:no-cache" --header "X-Custom-Header:custom-value" -p 8080 /tmp/myshare
    # Check headers in another terminal
    curl -I http://localhost:8080

If a header is already set or previously inserted, it will not be overwritten.

### Start with TLS:

    miniserve --tls-cert my.cert --tls-key my.key /tmp/myshare
    # Fullchain TLS and HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS)
    miniserve --tls-cert fullchain.pem --tls-key my.key --header "Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload" /tmp/myshare

If the parameter value has spaces, be sure to wrap it in quotes.
(To achieve an A+ rating at https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/, enabling both fullchain TLS and HSTS is necessary.)

### Upload a file using `curl`:

    # in one terminal
    miniserve -u -- .
    # in another terminal
    curl -F "path=@$FILE" http://localhost:8080/upload\?path\=/

(where `$FILE` is the path to the file. This uses miniserve's default port of 8080)

Note that for uploading, we have to use `--` to disambiguate the argument to `-u`.
This is because `-u` can also take a path (or multiple). If a path argument to `-u` is given,
uploading will only be possible to the provided paths as opposed to every path.

Another effect of this is that you can't just combine flags like this `-uv` when `-u` is used. In
this example, you'd need to use `-u -v`.

### Create a directory using `curl`:

    # in one terminal
    miniserve --upload-files --mkdir .
    # in another terminal
    curl -F "mkdir=$DIR_NAME" http://localhost:8080/upload\?path=\/

(where `$DIR_NAME` is the name of the directory. This uses miniserve's default port of 8080.)

### Use the raw renderer for use with simple viewers

You can pass `?raw=true` with requests where you only require minimal HTML output for CLI-based browsers such as `lynx` or `w3m`.
This is enabled by default without any extra flags:

    miniserve .
    curl http://localhost:8080?raw=true

You can enable a convenient copy-pastable footer for `wget` using `--show-wget-footer`:

    miniserve --show-wget-footer .

Afterwards, check the bottom of any rendered page.
It'll have a neat `wget` command you can easily copy-paste to recursively grab the current directory.

### Use query parameter to do a simple filter

You can pass a `?search=<keyword>` query parameter to only show files and directories whose name contains the `<keyword>`, for example:

    miniserve .
    # Then visit http://127.0.0.1:8080/src/?search=file

This filter feature is case insensitive.

### Take pictures and upload them from smartphones:

    miniserve -u -m image -q

This uses the `--media-type` option, which sends a hint for the expected media type to the browser.
Some mobile browsers like Firefox on Android will offer to open the camera app when seeing this.

## Features

- Easy to use
- Just works: Correct MIME types handling out of the box
- Single binary drop-in with no extra dependencies required
- Authentication support with username and password (and hashed password)
- Mega fast and highly parallel (thanks to [Rust](https://www.rust-lang.org/) and [Actix](https://actix.rs/))
- Search/filter by file or directory name
- Folder download (compressed on the fly as `.tar.gz` or `.zip`)
- File uploading
- Directory creation
- Pretty themes (with light and dark theme support)
- Scan QR code for quick access
- Shell completions
- Sane and secure defaults
- TLS (for supported architectures)
- Supports README.md rendering like on GitHub
- Range requests
- WebDAV support
- Healthcheck route (at `/__miniserve_internal/healthcheck`)

## Usage

```
/* Detailed source-code truncated for AI context efficiency. */
```

## How to install

<a href="https://repology.org/project/miniserve/versions"><img align="right" src="https://repology.org/badge/vertical-allrepos/miniserve.svg" alt="Packaging status"></a>

**On Linux**: Download `miniserve-linux` from [the releases page](https://github.com/svenstaro/miniserve/releases) and run

    chmod +x miniserve-linux
    ./miniserve-linux

Alternatively, if you are on **Arch Linux**, you can do

    pacman -S miniserve

On [Termux](https://termux.com/)

    pkg install miniserve

**On OSX**: Download `miniserve-osx` from [the releases page](https://github.com/svenstaro/miniserve/releases) and run

    chmod +x miniserve-osx
    ./miniserve-osx

Alternatively install with [Homebrew](https://brew.sh/):

    brew install miniserve
    miniserve

**On Windows**: Download `miniserve-win.exe` from [the releases page](https://github.com/svenstaro/miniserve/releases) and run

    miniserve-win.exe

Alternatively install with [Scoop](https://scoop.sh/):

    scoop install miniserve

**With Cargo**: Make sure you have a recent version of Rust. Then you can run

    cargo install --locked miniserve
    miniserve

**With Docker:** Make sure the Docker daemon is running and then run

    docker run -v /tmp:/tmp -p 8080:8080 --rm -it docker.io/svenstaro/miniserve /tmp

**With Podman:** Just run

    podman run -v /tmp:/tmp -p 8080:8080 --rm -it docker.io/svenstaro/miniserve /tmp

**With Helm:** See [this third-party Helm chart](https://codeberg.org/wrenix/helm-charts/src/branch/main/miniserve) by @wrenix.

## Shell completions

If you'd like to make use of the built-in shell completion support, you need to run `miniserve
--print-completions <your-shell>` and put the completions in the correct place for your shell. A
few examples with common paths are provided below:

    # For bash
    miniserve --print-completions bash > ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions/miniserve
    # For zsh
    miniserve --print-completions zsh > /usr/local/share/zsh/site-functions/_miniserve
    # For fish
    miniserve --print-completions fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/miniserve.fish

## systemd

A hardened systemd-compatible unit file can be found in `packaging/miniserve@.service`. You could
install this to `/etc/systemd/system/miniserve@.service` and start and enable `miniserve` as a
daemon on a specific serve path `/my/serve/path` like this:

    systemctl enable --now miniserve@-my-serve-path

Keep in mind that you'll have to use `systemd-escape` to properly escape a path for this usage.

In case you want to customize the particular flags that miniserve launches with, you can use

    systemctl edit miniserve@-my-serve-path

and set the `[Service]` part in the resulting `override.conf` file. For instance:

    [Service]
    ExecStart=
    ExecStart=/usr/bin/miniserve --enable-tar --enable-zip --no-symlinks --verbose -i ::1 -p 1234 --title hello --color-scheme monokai --color-scheme-dark monokai -- %I

Make sure to leave the `%I` at the very end in place or the wrong path might be served.
Alternatively, you can configure the service via environment variables:

    [Service]
    Environment=MINISERVE_ENABLE_TAR=true
    Environment=MINISERVE_ENABLE_ZIP=true
    Environment="MINISERVE_TITLE=hello world"
    ...

You might additionally have to override `IPAddressAllow` and `IPAddressDeny` if you plan on making
miniserve directly available on a public interface.

## Binding behavior

For convenience reasons, miniserve will try to bind on all interfaces by default (if no `-i` is provided).
It will also do that if explicitly provided with `-i 0.0.0.0` or `-i ::`.
In all of the aforementioned cases, it will bind on both IPv4 and IPv6.
If provided with an explicit non-default interface, it will ONLY bind to that interface.
You can provide `-i` multiple times to bind to multiple interfaces at the same time.

## Why use this over alternatives?

- darkhttpd: Not easily available on Windows and it's not as easy as download-and-go.
- Python built-in webserver: Need to have Python installed, it's low performance, and also doesn't do correct MIME type handling in some cases.
- netcat: Not as convenient to use and sending directories is [somewhat involved](https://nakkaya.com/2009/04/15/using-netcat-for-file-transfers/).

## Releasing

This is mostly a note for me on how to release this thing:

- Make sure [CHANGELOG.md](./CHANGELOG.md) is up to date.
- `cargo release <version>`
- `cargo release --execute <version>`
- Releases will automatically be deployed by GitHub Actions.
- Update Arch package.

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