I’m using a browser inside RF for testing fonts inside the app without any need to launch another program. So far the idea is working very well. But for some reason I need to launch a http server inside the RF which seems to be impossible. Running a simple http server outside RF is very simple. I just need to run this in shell:

> cd cwd
> python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8080

I’ve realized that every python command should be terminated in the Robofont and if the command is still running the app halts and launching the HTTPServer makes the app hang. If it was possible to run the server on another thread it would be great too but when the server is launched on another thread with the following method the server terminates after the interpreter reaches the last line.

import threading
import SimpleHTTPServer
import SocketServer
class RunHttpdServer():
    """
    Runs a httpd server on another thread so you can
    do other things while the server is running.
    """
    def __init__(self):
        self.Handler = SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler
        self.port = 8000
        self.address = ''
        while True:
            try:
                self.httpd = SocketServer.TCPServer(('', self.port), self.Handler)
                self.address = 'http://localhost:%s/' %self.port
                print 'Serving on address:\n%s' %self.address
                self.thread = threading.Thread(target = self.httpd.serve_forever)
                self.thread.daemon = True
                self.thread.start()
            except SocketServer.socket.error as exc:
                if exc.args[0] != 48:
                    raise
                print 'Port', self.port, 'already in use'
                self.port += 1
            else:
                break
    def stop(self):
        self.httpd.shutdown()
        print 'Server terminated on the address:\n%s' %self.address
r = RunHttpdServer()

I can use the time.sleep(10) to make the server alive but it will also make the app hang. Do you think is there anyway to launch the server within RF and making it run forever (or a limited time) without making the RF hang? For example like launching another process in the background.

Thanks in advance