Serve a directory

runStaticServer() provides a convenient interface to start a server to host a single static directory, either in the foreground or the background.

Usage

runStaticServer(
  dir = getwd(),
  host = "127.0.0.1",
  port = NULL,
  ...,
  background = FALSE,
  browse = interactive()
)

Arguments

dir

The directory to serve. Defaults to the current working directory.

host

A string that is a valid IPv4 address that is owned by this server, or "0.0.0.0" to listen on all IP addresses.

port

A number or integer that indicates the server port that should be listened on. Note that on most Unix-like systems including Linux and macOS, port numbers smaller than 1024 require root privileges.

...

Arguments passed on to staticPath

path

The local path.

indexhtml

If an index.html file is present, should it be served up when the client requests the static path or any subdirectory?

fallthrough

With the default value, FALSE, if a request is made for a file that doesn't exist, then httpuv will immediately send a 404 response from the background I/O thread, without needing to call back into the main R thread. This offers the best performance. If the value is TRUE, then instead of sending a 404 response, httpuv will call the application's call function, and allow it to handle the request.

html_charset

When HTML files are served, the value that will be provided for charset in the Content-Type header. For example, with the default value, "utf-8", the header is Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8. If "" is used, then no charset will be added in the Content-Type header.

headers

Additional headers and values that will be included in the response.

validation

An optional validation pattern. Presently, the only type of validation supported is an exact string match of a header. For example, if validation is '"abc" = "xyz"', then HTTP requests must have a header named abc (case-insensitive) with the value xyz (case-sensitive). If a request does not have a matching header, than httpuv will give a 403 Forbidden response. If the character(0) (the default), then no validation check will be performed.

background

Whether to run the server in the background. By default, the server runs in the foreground and blocks the R console. You can stop the server by interrupting it with Ctrl + C.

When background = TRUE, the server will run in the background and will process requests when the R console is idle. To stop a background server, call stopAllServers() or call stopServer() on the server object returned (invisibly) by this function.

browse

Whether to automatically open the served directory in a web browser. Defaults to TRUE when running interactively.

Value

Starts a server on the specified host and port. By default the server runs in the foreground and is accessible at http://127.0.0.1:7446. When background = TRUE, the server object is returned invisibly.

See also

runServer() provides a similar interface for running a dynamic app server. Both runStaticServer() and runServer() are built on top of startServer(), service() and stopServer(). Learn more about httpuv servers in startServer().

Examples

if (FALSE) { # interactive()
website_dir <- system.file("example-static-site", package = "httpuv")
runStaticServer(dir = website_dir)
}