What is it?

So you have Raspberry Pi and you are creating lots of exciting new projects and code and you want to back them up or save them or even share them with others.  

You can use USB pens but this can be a faff on, especially if you are away from the Pi and want to access it.  What do you do?
You will have heard of snake charming? Well Python can be charmed to serve you, well to serve your files.  

Python has a really simple but powerful feature that can be used to share any file or folder from your Raspberry Pi.  

A Simple Webpage

You may be familiar with using HTML to code a webpage.   The Python Server also doubles up as a simple method for hosting your webpage or website. Firstly, 
  1. Create a new folder to save the webpage in, let's call it Page 
  2. Within the folder create a new text document and add your HTML code
  3. Save the file as index.html
  4. Open the LX Terminal
  5. Navigate to the 'Page folder' using the cd Page 
  6. type python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000 to start the server
  7. Open your web browser on any device and enter the IP address of the Raspberry Pi and the port 8000, For example, http://192.156.5.56:8000.
  8. Your website will be displayed

Charming Example 

How to Share

Load the LX Terminal and type:
python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000

This sets up your Raspberry Pi as a simple web server that can now be accessed via any web browsers on another devices.  You can view your files and open / download them by doing to another device and type in your IP Address, colon, 8000 into the address bar of your browser.  For example, http://192.156.5.56:8000.  If you do not know your IP Address,

Load the LX Terminal and type:
Hostname -I

This python command will probably share every single file / folder on your Raspberry Pi which is not really advisable or secure practice. It is therefore best to navigate to the folder that you want to share and then run the Python sever.  

Load the LX Terminal and type:
cd nameofthefolderyouwanttoshare
python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000

If you refresh your browser page F5 you should see that only the contents of this folder are now shared and accessible.