Requires node v8 or above. Upgraders, please read the release notes.

local-web-server

A modular, personalisable HTTP, HTTPS and HTTP2 command-line web server.

Use this tool to:

• Build any type of front-end web application (static, dynamic, Single Page App, Progessive Web App, React etc).
• Prototype a back-end service (REST API, microservice, websocket or Server Sent Events service etc).
• Monitor activity, analyse performance, fine-tune caching strategy etc.

Local-web-server is a distribution of lws bundled with a "starter pack" of useful middleware.

Synopsis

This package installs the ws command-line tool (take a look at the usage guide).

Static web site

Running ws without any arguments will host the current directory as a static web site. Navigating to the server will render a directory listing or your index.html, if that file exists.

$ ws
Listening on http://mbp.local:8000, http://127.0.0.1:8000, http://192.168.0.100:8000

This clip demonstrates static hosting plus a couple of log output formats - dev and stats.

Single Page Application

Serving a Single Page Application (an app with client-side routing, e.g. a React or Angular app) is as trivial as specifying the name of your single page:

$ ws --spa index.html

With a static site, requests for typical SPA paths (e.g. /user/1, /login) would return 404 Not Found as a file at that location does not exist. However, by marking index.html as the SPA you create this rule:

If a static file is requested (e.g. /css/style.css) then serve it, if not (e.g. /login) then serve the specified SPA and handle the route client-side.

SPA tutorial.

URL rewriting and proxied requests

Another common use case is to forward certain requests to a remote server.

The following command proxies blog post requests from any path beginning with /posts/ to https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/. For example, a request for /posts/1 would be proxied to https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1.

$ ws --rewrite '/posts/(.*) -> https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/$1'

This clip demonstrates the above plus use of --static.extensions to specify a default file extension and --verbose to monitor activity.

HTTPS

Launch a secure server by setting the --https flag. See the wiki for further configuration options and a guide on how to get the "green padlock" in your browser.

$ ws --https

HTTP2

Launch a secure HTTP2 server. Follow the same instructions as --https to use certs, get the "green padlock" etc.

$ ws --http2

Features

• Full control over request handling. The middleware stack is personalisable - use one or more custom or pre-built middleware plugins.
• Single Page Application (SPA) support
• URL Rewriting
• Proxy requests to remote resources
• HTTP Conditional Request support
• Range request support
• Gzip response compression
• HTTP Basic Authentication
• Configurable access log
• Route blacklisting and more

Further Documentation

See the wiki for plenty more documentation and tutorials.

Install

Requires node v8 or above. Install the previous release for node >= v4.0.0.

$ npm install -g local-web-server

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© 2013-19 Lloyd Brookes <75pound@gmail.com>. Documented by jsdoc-to-markdown.