servitsy

servitsy

Local HTTP server for static files, coming in a small package.

• Small: zero dependencies, 24 kilobytes gzipped.
• What: for your local testing needs.
• How: with decent defaults, and no cool features.

Quick start

npx servitsy [directory] [options]

By default, servitsy will:

• serve the current directory at http://localhost:8080 (listening on hostname 0.0.0.0);
• try the next port numbers if 8080 is not available;
• serve index.html files for folders, and .html files when the extension was omitted in the URL;
• show directory contents (for folders without an index file).

See npx servitsy --help — or the Options section — if you want to configure this behavior.

When you shouldn’t use this package

⛔️ In production

There are safer and faster tools to serve a folder of static HTML to the public. Apache, Nginx, fastify-static, etc.

🤔 For web app development…

… if you want nice dev features like live-reload, transpilation, bundling, etc. — use something like Vite instead.

🌈 If you love another

There are good established alternatives to this package. Here is a brief and subjective comparison of a few packages I like:

Package	Size on disk†	Dependencies	Highlights
servitsy (v0.1.2)	112 kB	0	Tiny
servor (v4.0.2)	144 kB	0	Tiny, some cool features
sirv-cli (v2.0.2)	392 kB	12	Small, good options
serve (v14.2.3)	7.6 MB	89	Good defaults, easy to use
http-server (v14.1.1)	8.9 MB	45	Good defaults, featureful

The philosophy of servitsy is to have few opinions and bells and whistles (like sirv-cli), and to try to offer that in a zero-dependency package (like servor).

If size and dependency count is not a concern and you want something stable and battle-tested, I recommend serve and http-server.

† Size on disk is the uncompressed size of the package and its dependencies (as reported by /usr/bin/du on macOS with an APFS filesystem; exact size may depend on the OS and/or filesystem).

Options

cors

Adds Cross-Origin Resource Sharing headers to responses. Defaults to false.

Currently, setting this option to true will add a Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * header with every response (except directory listings).

# Enable
servitsy --cors
servitsy --cors true

# Disable (default)
servitsy --cors false

dirFile

File names to look up when a request matches a directory. Defaults to index.html.

servitsy --dir-file 'index.html'
servitsy --dir-file 'page.html,page.htm'

dirList

Whether to list directory contents when a request matches a directory and no dirFile is found. Defaults to true.

# Enable (default)
servitsy --dir-list
servitsy --dir-list true

# Disable
servitsy --dir-list false

exclude

Block access to files and folders matched by the provided pattern(s). Patterns may use the wildcard character *, but not slashes or colons (/, \ or :). Use a pattern starting with ! to negate an exclusion rule.

Defaults to blocking all dotfiles, except for .well-known (see Well-known URI):

servitsy --exclude '.*' --exclude '!.well-known'

Patterns can also be provided as comma-separated values:

servitsy --exclude '.*,!.well-known'

Blocked requests will result in a 404 error. A request will be block if any file or folder name in the requested file's path matches an exclusion rule (while not matching a negative exclusion rule).

For example, if a request resolves to a readable file at <root_dir>/subfolder/data.json, access will be:

• blocked with --exclude 'sub*' (fully matches subfolder);
• blocked with --exclude '*.js*' (fully matches data.json);
• allowed for --exclude '.json' (does not fully match data.json).

ext

File extensions to look for when resolving a request. Defaults to .html.

Typically, this allows serving a page-name.html file for a request URL path of /page-name.

servitsy --ext '' # disable
servitsy --ext '.html' # default
servitsy --ext '.xhtml' --ext '.html'

header

Add custom HTTP headers to responses, for all files or specific file patterns. Headers can be provided using a header:value syntax, or as a JSON string:

# header:value syntax
servitsy --header 'cache-control: max-age=5' --header 'server: servitsy'

# JSON syntax
servitsy --header '{"cache-control": "max-age=5", "server": "servitsy"}'

To add headers to specific responses, use file matching patterns before the value:

# header:value syntax
servitsy --header '*.rst content-type: text/x-rst'

# JSON syntax
servitsy --header '*.rst {"content-type": "text/x-rst"}'

See the exclude option for more information about file matching patterns.

host

Host address that the server will listen on. May be a domain name or an IP address.

Defaults to 0.0.0.0, which means that the server will be available both on http://localhost:<port>/ and from other computers connected to the same network.

servitsy --host localhost
servitsy --host mysite.local

port

Port number to use for the server. Three formats are supported:

servitsy --port 3000
servitsy --port 3000+
servitsy --port 8080-8099

• <number>: specify a single port number, will error out if that port is busy;
• <number>+: specifies the first port number to try, and allow trying the next few port numbers if the first one is busy;
• <number>-<number>: a range of port numbers to try (from first to last).

Defaults to 8080+.