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***Requires node v4.0.0 or higher. Install the [previous release](https://github.com/75lb/local-web-server/tree/prev) for older node support.***

# local-web-server
At its core, local-web-server is an application shell for building a specialised command-line web server to support productive Web Platform engineers. When combined with built-in and custom features it's in intended to by a powerful tool in helping build and debug Web applications. It comes bundled with a middleware stack covering common requirements but any arbitrary stack can be specified from the command line or config.

Being an npm module, it is trivial is bundle and distribute/deploy with your web application.

**Typically used for building:**

* Simple static site
* Single Page Application
  * Works well with React, Angular or vanilla JS.

**Backend scenarios covered:**

* Existing API
* Mock API
* Websocket server

**Server options**

* HTTP or HTTPS server
  * HTTPS is strictly required by some modern techs (ServiceWorker, Media Capture and Streams etc.)
* Configurable middleware stack
  * Use any combination of built-in and custom middleware
  * specify options (for command line or config)
  * Accepts Koa v1 or 2 middleware

**Built-in Middleware stack**

  * Rewrite routes to local or remote resources
  * Efficient, predictable, entity-tag-powered conditional request handling (no need to 'Disable Cache' in DevTools, slowing page-load down)
  * Configurable log output, compatible with [Goaccess, Logstalgia and glTail](https://github.com/75lb/local-web-server/blob/master/doc/visualisation.md)
  * Proxy server
    * Map local routes to remote servers. Removes CORS pain when consuming remote services.
  * Back-end service mocking
    * Prototype a web service, microservice, REST API etc.
    * Mocks are defined with config (static), or code (dynamic).
  * CORS-friendly, all origins allowed by default.

**Personalised stack**


## Synopsis
local-web-server is a command-line tool. To serve the current directory, run `ws`.

<pre><code>$ ws --help

<strong>local-web-server</strong>

  A simple web-server for productive front-end development.

<strong>Synopsis</strong>

  $ ws [--verbose] [<server options>] [<middleware options>]
  $ ws --config
  $ ws --help

<strong>Server</strong>

  -p, --port number   Web server port.
  --key file          SSL key. Supply along with --cert to launch a https server.
  --cert file         SSL cert. Supply along with --key to launch a https server.
  --https             Enable HTTPS using a built-in key and cert, registered to the domain
                      127.0.0.1.

<strong>Middleware</strong>

  -r, --rewrite expression ...   A list of URL rewrite rules. For each rule, separate the 'from' and 'to'
                                 routes with '->'. Whitespace surrounded the routes is ignored. E.g. '/from ->
                                 /to'.
  -b, --forbid path ...          A list of forbidden routes.
  -n, --no-cache                 Disable etag-based caching -forces loading from disk each request.
  -c, --compress                 Serve gzip-compressed resources, where applicable.
  -f, --log.format string        If a format is supplied an access log is written to stdout. If not, a dynamic
                                 statistics view is displayed. Use a preset ('none', 'dev','combined',
                                 'short', 'tiny' or 'logstalgia') or supply a custom format (e.g. ':method ->
                                 :url').
  -s, --spa file                 Path to a Single Page App, e.g. app.html.
  -d, --directory path           Root directory, defaults to the current directory.

<strong>Misc</strong>

  -h, --help    Print these usage instructions.
  --config      Print the stored config.

  Project home: https://github.com/75lb/local-web-server
</code></pre>


## Install

```sh
$ npm install -g local-web-server
```
* * *

&copy; 2013-16 Lloyd Brookes <75pound@gmail.com>. Documented by [jsdoc-to-markdown](https://github.com/jsdoc2md/jsdoc-to-markdown).