How to Run HTML File on Localhost

How to run html file on localhost?

You can use python -m http.server. By default the local server will run on port 8000. If you would like to change this, simply add the port number python -m http.server 1234

If you are using python 2 (instead of 3), the equivalent command is python -m SimpleHTTPServer

How to run a html file on localhost (any port)

IIRC macOS comes with PHP preinstalled, and PHP has built-in web-server which should be enough for serving static content.

So, open Terminal.app and then:

cd your/project/dir
php -S localhost:8080

After than you can navigate to http://localhost:8080/ and see your site in the browser (given you have index.html in your project, otherwise there will be "Not Found" message).

There are more advanced and/or less terminal-oriented ways, of course, but since you already tinkering with python and node, another terminal command should not be a problem.

BTW, you might want to look at that terminal window from time to time, as it outputs nice log of what things were requested from server. Good if you want to check for invalid references, 404 errors, etc. Here is a sample output:

$ php -S localhost:8080
PHP 7.3.6 Development Server started at Sat Jun 22 20:00:28 2019
Listening on http://localhost:8080
Document root is /private/tmp/test
Press Ctrl-C to quit.
[Sat Jun 22 20:00:32 2019] [::1]:51640 [200]: /
[Sat Jun 22 20:00:32 2019] [::1]:51641 [200]: /style.css
[Sat Jun 22 20:02:35 2019] [::1]:51670 [404]: /oops.html - No such file or directory

As you can see, root folder (/, which was translated to index.html in my case) and a stylesheet (style.css) were requested and successfully delivered (code is 200). But non-existent file oops.html resulted in error (code is 404).

Running HTML file in localhost:8080

You need to add an option that'll put your website on port 8080 because the http.server command defaults to port 8000.

You can do this using:

python3 -m http.server 8080

Then when you go to 0.0.0.0:8080 it should show you your webpage instead of a download prompt.

Also, you might have another instance of http.server running on port 8080.

You can find the PID of this task using:

ps -A | grep "python3"

Which should show something that looks like this:

Command Output

Then you could kill it using:

kill <PID-FOR-PYTHON3-INSTANCE>

Or in my case the task that's running on port 8080 is:

kill 6856

Or, if you don't mind, just kill all Python3 tasks using:

killall python3

Which in my case would kill both Python3 tasks.

WARNING: be very, VERY careful before running the killall command, because this command will NOT save your work.

UPDATE: that blurry section in the picture is my username, I wasn't sure if it would be against the rules to include it.

Good luck.

How to host a local html file in localhost using python alone

if you are using python3, go to working directory where the files are located.
Then run the following from terminal

python3 -m http.server

now open a browser and navigate to localhost:8000

in the case of python2:

python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000

How to display HTML using Python Alone in localhost

There's way to do so using the python web frameworks like Flask or Django. In a typical flask scenario your code would look like this:-

1) Install flask:-

pip install flask

2) Write your code.py like this:-

from flask import Flask, url_for
from flask import render_template

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route('/')
def index():
    return render_template('hello.html')

3) Next create a templates folder inside which put your html file which I have named it to be hello.html

templates > hello.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <title>title</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="./css/style.css">
</head>
<body>
    <header>
        <img class="resize" src="./pictures/logo.png" alt="logo">
        <nav>
            <ul class="nav-links">
                <li class="active"><a href="./index.html">Home</a></li>
                <li><a href="./contact.html">Contact</a></li>
            </ul>
            <script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.5.0.js"></script>
            <script type="text/javascript">
                $(document).on('click', 'ul li', function(){
                    $(this).addClass('active').siblings().removeClass('active')
                })
            </script>
        </nav>
    </header>
</body>
</html>

4) Your directory structure would look like this:-

/code.py
/templates
    /hello.html

5) Run python code.py and you can see your page on localhost:5000.

Difference between Localhost and opening html file

Fundamentally, assuming at some point you're going to host the result on an actual web server, the former matches the target environment while the latter doesn't. Browsers treat local files and files served from web servers (even localhost web servers) differently, although very similarly. One aspect of this is the encoding: When you retrieve a file from a web server, the process of determine what encoding the data is in is different from opening a local file.

How does this also affect interactions with other server ie. ajax requests?

This is one of the primary ways in which they're handled differently, and it even varies from browser to browser. A page loaded from a file:// URL has origin null from a Same Origin Policy standpoint. Some browsers (like Chrome) disallow Cross-Origin Resource Sharing entirely for origin null, even when the server you're trying to talk to has a wide-open CORS policy (*). Others (like Firefox) allow origin null to match the wildcard.

In general, for best results, ensure that your development environment matches your deployment environment in the important ways. That means doing your development using a web server process rather than local files. Most IDEs will happily provide that process for you; if not, Apache or Nginx aren't hard to install.

How to Run HTML File on Localhost