Friday, September 09, 2011

Tool of the Day: Mongoose, An Ultra Lightweight Web Server

I wanted a lightweight webserver to run on my netbook, and I wanted to download it while using my cell phone's data connection. Grabbing xampp was tempting, but overkill for my needs, and a bit of a tall order for my T-mobile connection.

I Googled around and quickly found Mongoose. I downloaded mongoose.exe, which was tiny at 128kb, and ran the following:

  mongoose.exe -r . -p 80

To my amazement, I was able to visit http://localhost/ in my browser and instantly the files I wanted to server were available.

No installer to deal with. No configuration files to setup. Just Instant Workingness. I'm sold.

As a bonus, because I was using my Android's hotspot functionality to connect to the web, my cell phone was able to browse my netbook's mongoose server. I just needed to run ipconfig to find out what IP my cell phone had handed to my netbook, and then visit that IP in my phone's web browser. Surprisingly simple and effective.

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