sendhttp

Summary

Imagine you just want to send a file over the network, but your counterpart, does not understand how to use netcat. Sendhttp is the solution for this problem. There is only a small command necessary on your machine to send anybody in you local network your favorite file:

$ sendhttp yourfavoritefile.rb

Your counterpart now points his browser to http://you.rip.add.res:12345/yourfavoritefile.rb , and she will immediately have your file (time may depend on your network connection and the size of the file). If the amount of typing is bothering her, you can even turn on sendhttp’s directory listing feature, so she can just click on the file.

Features

• easy to configure
• directory listing
• rewrite file names
• receive files via html form
• quits after a certain number of downloads
• delivers it’s own sourcecode to everybody

In depth

Sendhttp is a small httpserver. It’s intention is to to deliver any file to anybody in the local network on the fly. It’s intention is not to host websites or anything else permanently. Most of it is written in ruby, some parts are written in C. It can utilize a complete gigabit ethernet connection with big files. It requires at least ruby1.8. I am anxiously waiting for ruby1.9/2.0, as it contains some highly useful features like the sendfile systemcall. Until it becomes stable, I have to keep my own C wrapper for sendfile.

Future Features

• a man page
• partial downloads
• password authentication
• restrict client’s ip address
• configuration via YAML file
• webdav up- and downloading

Development

You can get the newest version with:

$ git clone git://johannes.krude.de/sendhttp

Sendhttp is licensed under the AGPLv3, this license has some special features. If you are testing your modified version of sendhttp at home, and your mum accidentally connect’s with netcat to it. You have to hand her over your modified sourcecode if she requests it. Otherwise you would be in violation with the license. To ease this problems, sendhttp always delivers it’s own sourcecode to anyone requesting it. If you create some useful changes to sendhttp, please send me a git commit or just a patch, so everybody benefit’s from your work.

Sendhttp’s Rakefile is ready to build gentoo ebuilds, so you can use portage to install it.