Virtual hosts

[matthewp]

Would you be open to a feature equivalent to Apache virtual hosts or Nginx server blocks? I'd like to run a single instance of serv that serves multiple directories and differentiate based on host names. If this is something you would consider I'd be happy to implement it.

[scothis]

My goal with serv was to create a quick and dirty way to expose a directory over http for local development. Virtual hosts feels more like a production web server feature, but I'm willing to explore it.

Before you take the time to implement something, what is your proposed user interaction model?

[matthewp]

I share your goal, this is something that I want to use in development. The thing I like about serv is that it's lightweight in comparison to Apache/Nginx, so I have no desire to add production server features. I would propose a small configuration file that can be used as an alternative to the cli options. Perhaps something like:

{
  "servers": [
    { "name": "local.work", "port": 8080 },
    { "name": "local.play", "port": 8081, "path": "/home/matthew/playground", "public": true } 
  ]
}

The options would match the cli options but with the addition of name which is the serverName. In case where 2 servers share a common port we have a single server that separates traffic based on name.

serv still works the way it current does by default, this mode is only activated manually, something like:

serv --config serv.json

[scothis]

Forgive me, what does this have to do with virtual hosts? To me a virtual host is when you distinguish the content that is served based on the HTTP Host header.

[matthewp]

Yes, that is what name is in this example. In Apache it's ServerName, in Nginx it's server_name. I was trying to keep it short but serverName might make it clearer. Does that answer your question?