Instant File Server: turn any directory into a webserver with a simple command
Our engineering team has been neck-deep in configuration hell lately. Editing 2000-line Solr configuration files, trying to get Apache Oozie integrated into DataStax Enterprise, Cassandra 1.2 upgrades, and more – and the one thing in common with all of these tasks is the prevalence of enormous XML configuration files.
Having wasted countless hours trying to use tools like SCP and various Sublime Text plugins to try to edit (or hell, even view) the configuration files on our dozens of Linux machines, I finally had a “fuck this shit” moment this week and wrote instant-fileserver, a stand-alone file server that you can start using a single command on any directory on any operating system.
instant-fileserver (ifs) allows you to:
- expose the contents of any file system via HTTP;
- view individual files as well as directory listings;
- create, read, update, or delete any file using ifs’ dead-simple RESTful API;
- create multiple ifs instances using a simple command; and
- safely edit any file from the comfort of your Windows / OS X machine and push the results back onto your Linux servers once you’re finished.
- Here’s an example usage:
$ npm install -g ifs
$ (ifs is added to your PATH; go anywhere on your system)
$ ifs -help
$ ifs [arguments...]
... starting ifs on 0.0.0.0:1337- Here’s a quick demo video to show you how easy ifs is compared to the alternative
- If you hate having to move heaven and earth to do something as mundane as edit a damn file, IFS is the werewolf-destroying silver bullet you desperately need.
- ifs is built using Node.JS and it has a tremendously slim codebase, so anyone can edit it or extend it if they wish. ifs is licensed under the MIT permissive license.
Fork the ifs source code on Github – we accept pull requests!
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I'm the CTO and founder of Petabridge, where I'm making distributed programming for .NET developers easy by working on Akka.NET, Phobos, and more..
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