ext_http_server

An extended version of Python's http.server that turns a simple static file server into one supporting HTTPS, HTTP Basic authentication, server-to-client rate limiting, and resumable downloads via HTTP Range requests.

Requirements

ext_http_server supports Python 3.10 through 3.14.

Installation

Install the ext_http_server command with uv:

uv tool install ext_http_server

Generate a certificate

Generate a self-signed certificate, writing the private key and certificate together into cert.pem (the single file --cert expects). This uses a modern ECDSA P-256 key, which every common TLS client supports (Ed25519 keys are newer but are rejected by some clients, including the LibreSSL-based curl that ships with macOS as of June 2026):

openssl req -x509 -newkey ec -pkeyopt ec_paramgen_curve:prime256v1 -noenc -keyout cert.pem -out cert.pem -days 365 -subj "/CN=localhost"

Running ext_http_server

If you have files you want to serve in /tmp/path/to/files/ run the following to serve them up with a max outgoing throughput of 16KBps:

ext_http_server --cert cert.pem -d /tmp/path/to/files -r16 -a foo:bar

Or run it once without installing:

uvx ext_http_server --cert cert.pem -d /tmp/path/to/files -r16 -a foo:bar

By default, you will be able to access the webserver at https://localhost:8000. To authenticate, use the username foo and the password bar as indicated by the -a foo:bar argument. Note that multiple -a arguments can be added to add more than one user.