Fire up a web browser for a folder? - ruby

Question

Is there an easy way to fire up a web browser for a folder?
eg.
I am in a folder that contains a website (index.html and other files) and I want to browse the site through a browser. Is there a gem that I just launch to make this folder browsable?
In this way I don't have to install nginx just for a specific folder. And when you install nginx you have to bother with configuration files and so on.
Kinda how Rails does it with:
rails server

Answer 1

Yes, there is... Throw the following in a file called webserver:
#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'webrick'
include WEBrick
server = HTTPServer.new(:Port => 3000, :DocumentRoot => Dir::pwd)
trap("INT"){ server.shutdown }
server.start
Then, perform the following (This assumes Mac OSX):
$ sudo chmod 755 webserver
$ sudo chown root:wheel webserver
$ sudo cp webserver /usr/local/bin/webserver (or somewhere in your path)
Now, just run webserver from the directory you want to use as the document root. A webserver will now be running on localhost:3000.
Hope this helps!
UPDATE
I just remembered after reading a post on Phusion Passenger 3.0 progress that there will be a passenger lite option...

Answer 2

Easiest way I've found is this little Python one-liner:
2.x:
python -m SimpleHTTPServer
3.x:
python -m http.server 8080
Unless you want to execute Ruby dynamically, of course. But that wasn't explicit in your question. Only static HTML.

Answer 3

The webbrick example works great, thanks to Brian. However, I just wanted to follow up on his update.
Assuming you have a working ruby and rubygems installed:
gem install passenger
put all files in a subdirectory called public
example project dir:
.
├── any
│   ├── old crap
│   └── that will not be on the website
└── public
├── favicon.ico
├── images
│   ├── ajax-loader-large.gif
│   ├── bg.jpg
│   ├── bg_home.jpg
│   ├── bg_nav.gif
├── index.html
├── javascripts
│   ├── jquery.liveSearch.js
├── robots.txt
└── stylesheets
├── all.css
Then run passenger start
The first time it will install a bunch of things (including nginx, but you won't have to worry about configuring it), but it should work faster after that.

Answer 4

And, if you have PHP >= 5.4.0, you can:
php -S localhost:8000
That's pretty easy!
Reference: http://php.net/manual/en/features.commandline.webserver.php