Python http.server: how open indexOtherName.html?

Question

I am using a python 3 web server. I have four webpages that I'm developing and need to view in the browser at different times, say index1.html, index2.html, index3.html, index4.html. These files have dependencies on stylesheets and scripts in subfolders.

In my CLI I use: python -m http.server to start the server

Is there some other command whereby localhost:8000 will display a specific file rather than the default index.html?

Thanks

Answer 1

Unfortunately not.

If you look at the http.server source code at https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/3.7/Lib/http/server.py#L687-L693 , you will see it only searches the current directory for index.html or index.htm files and if not found, it returns the directory listing.

for index in "index.html", "index.htm":
    index = os.path.join(path, index)
    if os.path.exists(index):
        path = index
        break
else:
    return self.list_directory(path)

Furthermore, there is no commandline argument to serve only a single file. See https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/3.7/Lib/http/server.py#L1240-L1262