SimpleSite

Host a website in three lines of Python. SimpleSite is a thin, ergonomic layer over Quart that removes the boilerplate of serving static pages, without hiding Quart underneath if you ever need it.

from SimpleSite.easyhost import App

app = App()
app.hostStatic("/", "index.html")
app.hostStatic("/about", "<h1>About us</h1>")
app.run(port=8000)

Why?

Serving a simple static page or two with Quart/Flask normally means writing a route, a view function and wiring up templates by hand. Every time. SimpleSite collapses that down to one call per page, while still giving you:

• File or inline HTML: point hostStatic at a file, a folder or just pass raw HTML directly

• Automatic error pages: Drop a 404.html / 500.html / etc. into your templates/ folder and SimpleSite serves it automatically on the matching error. No file? You get a built-in fallback instead of a stack trace.

• Still just Quart: The underlying app is a real quart.Quart instance. Nothing is hidden. More on how to still use quart.Quart later. You can reach in and use Quart/Jinja features directly whenever you need to.

Install

Requires Python>=3.10

pip install quart-simplesite

The PyPI distribution is named quart-simplesite (the name SimpleSite was already taken), but the import stays the same:

from SimpleSite.easyhost import App

Quick start

from SimpleSite.easyhost import App

app = App()

# Serve a file
app.hostStatic("/", "index.html")

# Serve a whole folder (looks for index.html inside it)
app.hostStatic("/docs", "docs/")

# Serve raw HTML directly, no file needed
app.hostStatic("/hello", "<h1>Hello, world!</h1>")

# Finally host the page
app.run(host="127.0.0.1", port=8000)

Custom error pages

SimpleSite scans your templates/ folder at startup for files named after HTTP status codes:

templates/
├── 404.html
├── 500.html
└── 403.html

If a matching file exists, it's served automatically when that error occurs. If not, SimpleSite falls back to a built-in error page. Your site never shows a raw traceback to visitors thanks to the fallbacks.

Supported codes out of the box: 400, 401, 403, 404, 405, 500, 502, 503

API reference

App

Creates a new SimpleSite application, wrapping a Quart app internally.

app.hostStatic(route: str, source: str, secure: bool = False)

Registers a route

source is...	Behaviour
a file path	Serves that file at route
a directory path	Serves index.html from that directory
a raw HTML string	Serves the string directly as the page content

To distinguish those three types, SimpleSite checks if the source is a file. If that check misses, it checks if the path is a directory. If that misses too, it currently assumes that it is a raw HTML string.

---

route should be named /<route> as a naming convention, but can also be <route>.

super duper route to my site
will be parsed as
/super-duper-route-to-my-site.

---

Hosts with the secure=True attribute will require being logged in. For that one has to create a .env-file within the project directory (see Auth / login below), and html has to point at a real template file rather than a raw string or directory.

app.createLogin(route: str, html: str = None, admin: bool = False)

Registers a login endpoint at route: GET serves the login form, POST checks the submitted user / password form fields and, on success, logs the user in.

• html: optional path to a custom login-page template. If omitted, a minimal built-in form is served.
• Requires auth to be configured (see below) — raises if DEF_USER/DEF_PASS/SECRET_KEY aren't set.

app.createLogin("/login")
app.hostStatic("/dashboard", "dashboard.html", secure=True)

app.run(host="127.0.0.1", port=5000)

Starts the server (via uvicorn under the hood)

How to still use Quart if needed?

from SimpleSite.easyhost import App

app = App()

# Use the Quart component to create a specific endpoint
@app.app.route("/")
async def index():
    return await app.quart.render_template("index.html")

Name	What it is	What it can be used for
app	The Quart-Object	Used to add more routes or websockets
quart	The thing	Call any function requires the application context, but not the object (e.g. render_template())

Structure

SimpleSite

SimpleSite/
├── conf/
│   ├── paths.toml
│   └── customs.toml
├── requirements.txt
├── ReadMe.md
├── .gitignore
├── templates/
├── .env
├── easyhost.py
└── error_registry.py

Content for .env:

DEF_USER='Admin-Username'
DEF_PASS='super-secure-admin-pass'
SECRET_KEY='some-long-random-string'
USE_DB=True

Fieldname	What it is used for	IsRequired	What happens without?
DEF_USER	The username you need for any login added using SimpleSite	False	Auth is considered disabled: createLogin() and secure=True both raise, since there's no login to check against
DEF_PASS	The password you need for any login added using SimpleSite	False	Same as above
SECRET_KEY	Signs the login session cookie (via quart-auth)	Only if DEF_USER/DEF_PASS are set	The app refuses to start (RuntimeError) — a login without a secret key can't be trusted
USE_DB	Determine if the DB should be used	False	The database won't be used. However, if DEF_PASS and DEF_USER are given it uses plain-text comparison. With DB an Argon2 hash will be used.

Auth / login

Set DEF_USER and DEF_PASS in .env to turn auth on. Once that's done, SECRET_KEY becomes required too — SimpleSite raises at startup if it's missing, rather than starting up with an insecure or broken login.

from SimpleSite.easyhost import App

app = App()
app.createLogin("/login")
app.hostStatic("/", "index.html")
app.hostStatic("/admin", "admin.html", secure=True)
app.run(port=8000)

Without USE_DB, credentials are checked directly against DEF_USER/DEF_PASS. With USE_DB=True, credentials are checked against the database instead (Argon2-hashed).

Project built with SimpleSite

SimpleSite/
Project/
├── main.py
├── templates (folder with all html-files)
├── static (folder with all scripts/stylesheets etc)
└── others

Import for main.py

from SimpleSite.easyhost import App

Roadmap

• hostFolder(): auto-map an entire directory to routes, file-based-routing style
• Dev mode with live reload
• Config file support for error template overrides
• Login-Templating (createLogin(html=...))

License

MIT