Creating an HTTPS server in Python

For a test suite I need to create a local SSL-enabled HTTPS server in my Python project. I googled around and found various recipes using pyOpenSSL, but all of those are quite complicated, and I didn’t even get the referenced one to work.

Also, Python has shipped its own built-in SSL module for quite a while. After reading some docs and playing around, I eventually got it to work with a remarkably simple piece of code using the builtin ssl module:

from http.server import HTTPServer, SimpleHTTPRequestHandler
import ssl

context = ssl.SSLContext(ssl.PROTOCOL_TLS_SERVER)
context.load_cert_chain(certfile='/tmp/cert.pem', keyfile='/tmp/key.pem')
context.check_hostname = False

with HTTPServer(("localhost", 4443), SimpleHTTPRequestHandler) as httpd:
    httpd.socket = context.wrap_socket(httpd.socket, server_side=True)
    httpd.serve_forever()

(I use port 4443 so that I can run the tests as normal user; the usual port 443 requires root privileges).

Way to go, Python!

  • Updated on 2019-03-09: Move to Python 3.
  • Updated on 2023-07-20: Avoid deprecated ssl.wrap_socket(), move to SSLContext
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