After placing a certificate file on the current working folder, we can create a web server that makes use of this certificate to serve encrypted content to the clients.

Listing 4.10 explains the code for a secure HTTP server as follows:

#!/usr/bin/env python 
# Python Network Programming Cookbook -- Chapter - 4 
# This program requires Python 3.5.2 or any later version 
# It may run on any other version with/without modifications. 
# 
# Follow the comments inline to make it run on Python 2.7.x. 
# Requires pyOpenSSL and SSL packages installed 
 
import socket, os 
from OpenSSL import SSL 
 
from socketserver import BaseServer 
from http.server import HTTPServer 
from http.server import SimpleHTTPRequestHandler 
# Comment out the above 3 lines and uncomment the below 3 lines for Python 2.7.x. 
#from SocketServer import BaseServer 
#from BaseHTTPServer import HTTPServer 
#from SimpleHTTPServer import SimpleHTTPRequestHandler 
 
 
class SecureHTTPServer(HTTPServer): 
    def __init__(self, server_address, HandlerClass): 
        BaseServer.__init__(self, server_address, HandlerClass) 
        ctx = SSL.Context(SSL.SSLv23_METHOD) 
        fpem = 'server.pem' # location of the server private 
               key and the server certificate 
        ctx.use_privatekey_file (fpem) 
        ctx.use_certificate_file(fpem) 
        self.socket = SSL.Connection(ctx, 
        socket.socket(self.address_family, self.socket_type)) 
        self.server_bind() 
        self.server_activate() 
 
 
class SecureHTTPRequestHandler(SimpleHTTPRequestHandler): 
    def setup(self): 
        self.connection = self.request 
        self.rfile = socket._fileobject(self.request, "rb", self.rbufsize) 
        self.wfile = socket._fileobject(self.request, "wb", self.wbufsize) 
 
 
def run_server(HandlerClass = SecureHTTPRequestHandler, 
         ServerClass = SecureHTTPServer): 
    server_address = ('', 4443) # port needs to be accessible by user 
    server = ServerClass(server_address, HandlerClass) 
    running_address = server.socket.getsockname() 
    print ("Serving HTTPS Server on %s:%s ..." %(running_address[0],
     running_address[1])) 
    server.serve_forever() 
 
 
if __name__ == '__main__': 
    run_server() 

If you execute this script, it will result in the following output:

$ python 4_10_https_server.py 
Serving HTTPS Server on 0.0.0.0:4443 ...