dumb-http

README

dumb-http

Simple HTTP Server and an optional Single Host Reverse Proxy.

This tool is useful to proxy to backend like an API and also serve static content and avoid CORS Errors.

Though there's no harm is using this in Production, there are servers with better implementation like Caddy and Nginx, they should be preferred over this. For development usecase, certainly this is the best way to work with Single Page Frontend apps and Backend APIs and avoid any CORS issues that slow down the development.

Usage

$ dumb-http -h
Usage of dumb-http
  -basic-auth-password string
        Password for basic auth
  -basic-auth-realm string
        Realm for basic auth (default "DUMB-HTTP")
  -basic-auth-username string
        Username for basic auth
  -host string
        Host to listen on (default "0.0.0.0")
  -path string
        Path to serve from (default ".")
  -port int
        Port to listen on (default 8000)
  -proxy-path string
        Reverse Proxy path (default "/proxy/")
  -proxy-strip-prefix
        Strip Prefix while proxying
  -proxy-upstream string
        Reverse Proxy upstream (backend service). Proxy is disabled if empty

Examples

Static Server

To quickly show some projects built that uses Javascript and calls a bunch of APIs.

$ dumb-http -path ./docs
Serving with dumb-http/latest at http://0.0.0.0:8000/ from ./docs
 Root Configuration: http://0.0.0.0:8000/ -> "./docs"
127.0.0.1 - - [06/Jul/2018 17:05:36] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 0 16.76µs "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.13; rv:61.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/61.0"
127.0.0.1 - - [06/Jul/2018 17:05:37] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 304 0 173ns "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.13; rv:61.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/61.0"

Static Server with Proxy

To enable API access at path /api/ and pass the request to upstream. Also / serves the static files from -path mentioned.

$ dumb-http -path ./public -proxy-upstream http://127.0.0.1:8001 -proxy-path /api/
Serving with dumb-http/latest at http://0.0.0.0:8000/ from ./public
 Root Configuration: http://0.0.0.0:8000/ -> "./public"
Proxy Configuration: http://0.0.0.0:8000/api/ -> http://127.0.0.1:8001/api/

In case if the Backend/Upstream doesn't have the path /api/ that is passed in -proxy-path one can strip that and avoid it being passed to Backend/Upstream using -proxy-strip-prefix that will change the behaviour accordingly.

$ dumb-http -path ./public -proxy-upstream http://127.0.0.1:8001 -proxy-path /api/ -proxy-strip-prefix
Serving with dumb-http/latest at http://0.0.0.0:8000/ from ./public
 Root Configuration: http://0.0.0.0:8000/ -> "./public"
Proxy Configuration: http://0.0.0.0:8000/api/ -> http://127.0.0.1:8001

Static Server with Basic Auth

In case if there's a need to add basic auth in the server, maybe sharing something over a public network one can use the basic auth flags.

Basic auth needs username and password arguments -basic-auth-username and -basic-auth-password respectively, once set this start serving and gives error code 401 Unauthorized in case if the username and password is incorrect.

The first call will be a 401 as there are no credentials passed from Browser, to ask for password the server sends WWW-Authenticate header as Basic with realm which can be defined via another flag -basic-auth-realm. This asks for password and subsequent requests work properly.

$ dumb-http -path ./docs -basic-auth-username john -basic-auth-password JohnDoe
 Root Configuration: http://0.0.0.0:8000/ -> "./public"
127.0.0.1 - - [18/Sep/2021 10:41:09] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 401 0 34.641µs "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:92.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/92.0"

Note: The server does not have SSL Implemented yet, so eventually over a public network the Authorization header can be sniffed, this means the implementation is not secure by default.

Acknowledgments

• Concept is inspired from Python module http.server.
• Go logging was implemented using snippet mentioned in this GitHub Gist

LICENSE

MIT