Spigot

A simple, hackable HTTP server

A lightweight, simple HTTP server written in C for quickly serving static files.

Warning: Do not use in production of any kind

Designed for:

• spinning up a quick local server
• demoing basic web development to your friends who ask questions

• whenever you have a .html file and need to spin up a quick server
• basic testing

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What’s built into it so far

• Serve files from any directory
• Runs on localhost
• Multithreaded (handles multiple requests)
• Optional live reload
• Basic HTTP support (GET only)
• MIME type detection
• Directory listing (if no index.html)
• Basic path safety protections
• Clean request logging

Add to it, or don’t. That’s up to you

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Build

Make sure you have gcc installed.

make

This will produce:

./spigot

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Usage

./spigot

Serve current directory on default port 8080

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./spigot <directory>

Serve a specific directory:

./spigot public

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./spigot <port>

Serve current directory on custom port:

./spigot 3000

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./spigot <directory> <port>

Serve directory on custom port:

./spigot public 3000

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Add to your path to trigger globally

chmod +x spigot
sudo install -m 755 spigot /usr/local/bin/spigot

Or add an alias (use your shell’s config file (.bashrc, .zshrc, etc.))

echo 'alias serve="spigot"' >> ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc

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Live Reload

Enable automatic browser refresh when files change:

./spigot --reload

or:

./spigot public 3000 --reload

How it works

• Server scans for file changes
• Injects a small script into HTML pages
• Browser polls server for updates
• Page reloads automatically when changes are detected

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Directory Behavior

• If a directory contains index.html → it is served
• Otherwise → a basic file listing is generated

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Security Notes

Basic protections included:

• Blocks .. (directory traversal)
• Sanitizes request paths

• Basic url decoding

This is not production-ready

• No HTTPS
• No authentication
• No advanced request validation

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Supported File Types (for now)

• .html → text/html
• .css → text/css
• .js → application/javascript
• .png → image/png
• .jpg/.jpeg → image/jpeg
• default → application/octet-stream

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Example Output

Serving directory: .
URL: http://localhost:8080

Request logs:

[GET] /index.html → 200
[GET] /style.css → 200
[GET] /missing.txt → 404

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In the end

This project is intentionally:

• simple
• readable
• hackable

It is not meant to replace full web servers, but to:

• prototype quickly
• use for convenience only
• use when needed for something quick
• minor testing

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Limitations

• GET requests only
• No HTTP/2
• No persistent connections
• Thread-per-request model (not scalable)
• Live reload uses polling (not websockets)

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License

Use it, modify it, break it, learn from it. That’s the entire point.

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ytho?

Because sometimes you just want:

./spigot

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…and we’re done.