How do I kill SimpleHTTPServer from within a Python script?

Question

I am trying to use http.server to test all the links in a Python project. I can get my script to work if I start the server before running my script, and then the server stops when I close the terminal window. But I'd really like the script itself to start and stop the server.

I made a test script to simply start the server, get a page and prove the server is running, and then stop the server. I can't seem to get the pid of the server. When I try to kill the pid that this script reports after the script runs, I get a message that there is no such process; but the server is still running.

How do I get the correct pid for the server, or more generally how do I stop the server from the script?

import os
import requests
from time import sleep

# Start server, in background.
print("Starting server...")
os.system('python -m http.server &')
# Make sure server has a chance to start before making request.
sleep(1)

print "Server pid: "
os.system('echo $$')

url = 'http://localhost:8000/index.html'
print("Testing request: ", url)
r = requests.get(url)
print("Status code: ", r.status_code)

Answer 1

Here is what I am doing:

import threading

try: 
    from http.server import HTTPServer, SimpleHTTPRequestHandler # Python 3
except ImportError: 
    from SimpleHTTPServer import BaseHTTPServer
    HTTPServer = BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer
    from SimpleHTTPServer import SimpleHTTPRequestHandler # Python 2

server = HTTPServer(('localhost', 0), SimpleHTTPRequestHandler)
thread = threading.Thread(target = server.serve_forever)
thread.daemon = True
thread.start()

def fin():
    server.shutdown()

print('server running on port {}'.format(server.server_port))

# here is your program

If you call fin in your program, then the server shuts down.

Answer 2

A slight modification to User's code above:

import threading
try: 
  from http.server import HTTPServer, BaseHTTPRequestHandler # Python 3
except ImportError: 
  import SimpleHTTPServer
  from BaseHTTPServer import HTTPServer # Python 2
  from SimpleHTTPServer import SimpleHTTPRequestHandler as BaseHTTPRequestHandler
server = HTTPServer(('localhost', 0), BaseHTTPRequestHandler)
thread = threading.Thread(target = server.serve_forever)
thread.deamon = True
def up():
  thread.start()
  print('starting server on port {}'.format(server.server_port))
def down():
  server.shutdown()
  print('stopping server on port {}'.format(server.server_port))

Answer 3

This is a closure solution to the problem. Works on python 3.

import os
import threading
import webbrowser
from http.server import HTTPServer, SimpleHTTPRequestHandler


def simple_http_server(host='localhost', port=4001, path='.'):

    server = HTTPServer((host, port), SimpleHTTPRequestHandler)
    thread = threading.Thread(target=server.serve_forever)
    thread.deamon = True

    cwd = os.getcwd()

    def start():
        os.chdir(path)
        thread.start()
        webbrowser.open_new_tab('http://{}:{}'.format(host, port))
        print('starting server on port {}'.format(server.server_port))

    def stop():
        os.chdir(cwd)
        server.shutdown()
        server.socket.close()
        print('stopping server on port {}'.format(server.server_port))

    return start, stop

simple_http_server which will return start and stop functions

>>> start, stop = simple_http_server(port=4005, path='/path/to/folder')

which you can use as

>>> start()
starting server on port 4005

127.0.0.1 - - [14/Aug/2016 17:49:31] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 -

>>> stop()
stopping server on port 4005