I am slowly working on two new projects involving web-based interactive Python tutorials and had to set up a local web server for handling ajax request. After browsing the web, I stumbled upon the following one-liner in the Python documentation that I had completely forgotten about:
python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000
Then, simply pointing the browser at "http://localhost:8000" and all is set to go. Granted, it is not what one might consider a traditional "one-liner" but it works for me. Python's batteries included is certainly a nice feature!
