I'm looking for a relatively painless way to launch a web server with document root in any folder I specify (or better yet, where I'm launching).

I often try out new things like JS frameworks or so in a new folder somewhere here:

/home/alexander/code/angularjs/

It would then be convenient to just go into this directory and type something like:

start-webserver-here 

so that a web server starts listening on port 80 and serving this directory, and I can try out whatever I'm working on.

I've installed XAMPP but it seems that it's basic apache with a document root I'd have to change, with root privileges even, along with granting permissions for every folder etc.

Is there an easier way?