servbot

A small dev server for local static site development. Essentially a wrapper around http.Server. Fork of servor.

import servbot from 'servbot';

const server = servbot({
    root: './public/',
    reload: true,
    fallback: 'index.html'
});

server.listen(8080);

This is an opinionated fork with some intentional exclusions and smaller scope, and some ideas taken from nativew/serve.

Install

npm install servbot --save-dev

Usage

See types in index.d.ts. servbot accepts a single argument, ServbotOptions; and returns an instance of ServbotServer. See below for the default options.

import servbot from 'servbot';

const server = servbot({
    // root: string
    // Directory to serve. Relative to process.cwd().
    root: '.',

    // reload: boolean
    // Flag to enable manual reload.
    reload: false,

    // fallback: string
    // Filename to fallback to for single-page applications. Relative to `root`.
    // Leaving this empty assumes you are not serving a single-page application
    fallback: '',

    // ignores: RegExp[]
    // *Only applicable when `fallback` is provided and `ignores` is not an empty array*.
    // A list of patterns to *not* route to your fallback.
    // Useful when you want to be able to route non-filetypes to your SPA ("/foo/routename.hi")
    // But otherwise, want to "ignore" routes that should be static files ("/main.css", "/js/jquery.js")
    ignores: [],

    // credentials: object
    // TLS Credentials. Providing these enables an HTTPS server.
    // See https://nodejs.org/api/https.html#httpscreateserveroptions-requestlistener
    credentials: undefined,

    // verbose: boolean
    // Flag to enable server response logging.
    verbose: true
});

// Start server on port 8080
server.listen(8080);

// Close server from new connections
// https://nodejs.org/api/net.html#serverclosecallback
server.close((err) => {
    if (err) process.exit();
});

Using manual reload

Instead of including a filewatcher to automatically reload your app on file changes, servbot includes a manual reload feature. Most modern front-end development build tools already include a built-in watch feature (esbuild, rollup, webpack, parcel, etc.) that can be leveraged by servbot. For an example with rollup, see here.

Outside of build tools, you can also use something like cheap-watch or watchlist. See below for an example using watchlist:

import servbot from 'servbot';
import { watch } from 'watchlist';

const server = servbot({
    root: './example/static/',
    reload: true,
    fallback: 'index.html'
});

server.listen(8080);

(async () => {
    await watch(['./example/static/'], async () => {
        console.log('change detected! reloading...');
        server.reload();
    });
})();

To-Do

• Better tests for SPA example
• HTTP/2 support