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# local-web-server
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A simple web-server for productive front-end development.
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**Requires node v4.0.0 or higher**.
## Synopsis
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For the examples below, assume we're in a project directory looking like this:
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```sh
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.
├── css
│ └── style.css
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├── index.html
└── package.json
```
### Static site
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Fire up your static site on the default port:
```sh
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$ ws
serving at http://localhost:8000
```
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### Single Page Application
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You're building a web app with client-side routing, so mark `index.html` as the SPA.
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```sh
$ ws --spa index.html
```
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By default, typical SPA urls (e.g. `/user/1`, `/login`) would return `404 Not Found` as there is no file at that location on disk. By marking `index.html` as the SPA you create this rule:
*if a file with that url exists (e.g. `/css/style.css`) then serve it, if it does not (e.g. `/login`) then pass it to the SPA.*
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### Access Control
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Access to all files is allowed, beside those you forbid (e.g. config files):
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```sh
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$ ws --forbid .json .yml
serving at http://localhost:8000
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```
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### URL rewriting
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When urls don't map to your directory structure, rewrite:
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```sh
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$ ws --rewrite /css=>/build/css
```
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Rewrite to remote servers (proxy):
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```sh
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$ ws --rewrite "/api => http://api.example.com/api" \
"/npm => http://registry.npmjs.com" \
"/user/:project/repo -> https://api.github.com/repos/:project"
```
### Mock Responses
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*Coming soon*.
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### Stored config
Always use this port and blacklist? Persist it to the config:
```json
{
"name": "example",
"version": "1.0.0",
"local-web-server": {
"port": 8100,
"forbid": "\\.json$"
}
}
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```
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### Logging
By default, local-web-server outputs a simple, dynamic statistics view. To see traditional web server logs, use `--log-format`:
```sh
$ ws --log-format combined
serving at http://localhost:8000
::1 - - [16/Nov/2015:11:16:52 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 12290 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_11_1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/48.0.2562.0 Safari/537.36"
```
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### Other features
Compression, caching, simple statistics view, log, override mime types.
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## Tips
### Use with Google DevTools Workspaces
### Log Visualisation
Instructions for how to visualise log output using goaccess, logstalgia or gltail [here](https://github.com/75lb/local-web-server/wiki/Log-visualisation).
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## Install
Ensure [node.js](http://nodejs.org) is installed first. Linux/Mac users may need to run the following commands with `sudo`.
```sh
$ npm install -g local-web-server
```
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This will install the `ws` tool globally. To see the available options, run:
```sh
$ ws --help
```
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## Distribute with your project
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The standard convention with client-server applications is to add an `npm start` command to launch the server component.
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1\. Install the server as a dev dependency
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```sh
$ npm install local-web-server --save-dev
```
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2\. Add a `start` command to your `package.json`:
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```json
{
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"name": "example",
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"version": "1.0.0",
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"local-web-server": {
"port": 8100,
"forbid": "\\.json$"
},
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"scripts": {
"start": "ws"
}
}
```
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3\. Document how to build and launch your site
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```sh
$ npm install
$ npm start
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serving at http://localhost:8100
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```
## Storing default options
To store per-project options, saving you the hassle of inputting them everytime, store them in the `local-web-server` property of your project's `package.json`:
```json
{
"name": "my-project",
"version": "0.11.8",
"local-web-server": {
"port": 8100
}
}
```
Or in a `.local-web-server.json` file stored in the directory you want to serve (typically the root folder of your site):
```json
{
"port": 8100,
"log-format": "tiny"
}
```
Or store global defaults in a `.local-web-server.json` file in your home directory.
```json
{
"port": 3000,
"refresh-rate": 1000
}
```
All stored defaults are overriden by options supplied at the command line.
To view your stored defaults, run:
```sh
$ ws --config
```
## mime-types
You can set additional mime-type/extension mappings, or override the defaults by setting a `mime` value in your local config. This value is passed directly to [mime.define()](https://github.com/broofa/node-mime#mimedefine). Example:
```json
{
"mime": {
"text/plain": [ "php", "pl" ]
}
}
```
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## API Reference
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{{ > main }}
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## Composition
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* * *
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© 2015 Lloyd Brookes <75pound@gmail.com>. Documented by [jsdoc-to-markdown](https://github.com/jsdoc2md/jsdoc-to-markdown).