Start http web server then open browser

Question

I'm trying to start a simple HTTP server then open it in the default browser. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, it's either not starting the server at all, or it's stopping as soon as it gets to the end of the script (isn't it supposed to run forever?).

import BaseHTTPServer, SimpleHTTPServer, webbrowser, thread
def start_server():
  httpd = BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer(('127.0.0.1', 3600), SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler)
  httpd.serve_forever()
thread.start_new_thread(start_server,())
url = 'http://127.0.0.1:3600'
webbrowser.open_new(url)

Answer 1

A thread continues to exist as long as the application continues to run, in the case webbrowser.open_new() is not blocking so the browser will hardly finish running the application, what you should do is make a blocker to prevent the application finish of execute:

import sys
import thread
import webbrowser
import time

import BaseHTTPServer, SimpleHTTPServer

def start_server():
    httpd = BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer(('127.0.0.1', 3600), SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler)
    httpd.serve_forever()

thread.start_new_thread(start_server,())
url = 'http://127.0.0.1:3600'
webbrowser.open_new(url)

while True:
    try:
        time.sleep(1)
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        sys.exit(0)

Answer 2

Here is a Python 3 version of the answer by @eyllanesc using the newer http.server and the threading module

import sys
import time
import threading
import webbrowser
from http.server import HTTPServer, SimpleHTTPRequestHandler

ip = "127.0.0.1"
port = 3600
url = f"http://{ip}:{port}"


def start_server():
    server_address = (ip, port)
    httpd = HTTPServer(server_address, SimpleHTTPRequestHandler)
    httpd.serve_forever()


threading.Thread(target=start_server).start()
webbrowser.open_new(url)

while True:
    try:
        time.sleep(1)
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        sys.exit(0)