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

local-web-server

The modular web server for productive full-stack development.

Use this tool to:

• Build any flavour of web application (static site, dynamic site with client or server-rendered content, Single Page App, Progessive Web App, Angular or React app etc.)
• Prototype any CORS-enabled back-end service (e.g. RESTful HTTP API or Microservice using websockets, Server Sent Events etc.)
• Monitor activity, analyse performance, experiment with caching strategies etc.
• Build your own, personalised CLI web server tool

Features:

• Modular, extensible and easy to personalise. Create, share and consume only plugins which match your requirements.
• Powerful, extensible command-line interface (add your own commands and options)
• HTTP, HTTPS and HTTP2 support (HTTP2 requires node v8.4.0 or above)
• URL Rewriting to local or remote destinations
• Single Page Application support
• Response mocking
• Configurable access log
• Route blacklisting
• HTTP Conditional and Range request support
• Gzip response compression, HTTP Basic Authentication and much more

Synopsis

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

Static web site

The most simple use case is to run ws without any arguments - this 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
Serving at http://mbp.local:8000, http://127.0.0.1:8000, http://192.168.0.100:8000

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
Serving at http://mbp.local:8000, http://127.0.0.1:8000, http://192.168.0.100:8000

By default, requests for typical SPA paths (e.g. /user/1, /login) return 404 Not Found as a file at that location does not exist. 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.

Read more.

URL rewriting and proxied requests

Another common use case is to re-route certain requests to a remote server if, for example, you'd like to use data from a different environment. The following command would proxy requests with a URL beginning with http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/ to https://internal-service.local/api/:

$ ws --rewrite '/api/* -> https://internal-service.local/api/$1'
Serving at http://mbp.local:8000, http://127.0.0.1:8000, http://192.168.0.100:8000

HTTPS

Launching a secure server is as simple as 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
Serving at https://mbp.local:8000, https://127.0.0.1:8000, https://192.168.0.100:8000

HTTP2

Uses node's built-in HTTP2 support. HTTP2 servers are always secure using local-web-server's built-in SSL certificates (by default) or those supplied by --cert, --key or --pfx. See the wiki for further info about HTTPS options and a guide on how to get the "green padlock" in your browser.

$ ws --http2
Serving at https://mbp.local:8000, https://127.0.0.1:8000, https://192.168.0.100:8000

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.