livecable

A small browser agnostic live-reload library that does not require manual client-side code

Getting started

Standalone

You can either use this as a standalone server by cloning this repo and run the command npm start. Then just replace files inside static folder and you are good to go.

NPM Package

OR you can install livecable as a package through npm. Livecable at the moment works only with ExpressJS

npm install --save-dev livecable

Sample

Below you can find the most minimal setup needed for livecable to work. For a list of options check the configuration section below.

 
const express = require('express')
const livecable = require('livecable')
 
const app = express()
 
livecable(app, {
  pathToWatch: `${process.cwd()}/static`
})
 
... rest of your code
 

Single Page Applications

Livecable has experimental support for single page applications. Please refer to the configuration options on how to enable this.

How it works

Livecable is built on the idea that the fetched page from the browser does not need user interaction to add client-side code. Livecable automatically injects the required client-side code to establish a websocket connection. Then its a matter of watching for changes in the specified path. Special props to live-server which this project is based off of.

Configuration options

There are few configuration parameters you can pass to livecable. (see sample above)

pathToWatch

type: String

As the name suggests, its the root path that livecable will watch for. Its best to use process.cwd() and then the folder name. e.g. process.cwd()/dist

entryPointFile

type: String

This option tells livecable what the default entryPoint in the pathToWatch directory is. The default is index.html

socketAddress

type: String

If your app already connects to a websocket address and for coincidence the socket path ends in livecable, you can change it here to avoid conflicts. Default is livecable e.g. ws://localhost:8080/livecable

spa

type: Boolean

If you are working with a single-page application then you need to enable this. Default false

Contribution

Feel free to open up issues and make pull requests.