ServeMyApp
🚀 Serve your Javascript application and/or add an API to it in a minute!
This package allows you to add a NodeJS Express server easily and quickly to your Javascript application.
✨ Features:
Includes a fully customizable Express Server, which allows you to:
- Serve your Javascript application, with routing handling.
- Add directly your api routes into your project, without thinking to something else.
Table of contents
Getting started
In this ReadMe, we will take an example with a create-react-app application, and a @vue/cli one is coming. But it can be what you want, so please, let us know if you tested it with another framework or app. It will be added to this doc.
Installation
cd my-app
npm install serve-my-app express
Automatic initialisation
npx sma-init
Configuration
The serve-my-app
binary will serve your frontend and your api.
It has several configuration parameters.
See usage section to understand how to use them.
Most useful ones:
Option | Type | Default value | Usage |
---|---|---|---|
--srv | string / false | false |
Serve api routes from this folder (relative path) |
--src | string / false | false |
Serve your application from this folder (browser compatible files) |
--watch | false |
false |
Restart server if change detected in --srv folder |
--proxify | boolean | false |
Proxify calls from your app to the express server (depends of you app dev server) |
Other ones:
Option | Type | Default value | Usage |
---|---|---|---|
--host | string |
HOST if set or '0.0.0.0'
|
Specify server host |
--port | integer |
PORT if set or 3001
|
Specify server port |
--https | boolean |
HTTPS if set or false
|
Specify if displayed url should use https |
Usage
Automatic initialisation
You really should use the sma-init
command to configure your server, but see below to understand how tu use ServeMyApp
I only want to serve my frontend code in production
-
Build your application files (depends on your application framework/type):
npm run build
-
Serve them.
serve-my-app --src=build
Explanation:
-
--src
: We're assuming that previous command will output compiled files tobuild
folder.
I only want to add some api routes.
-
Create an api file as described below.
-
Serve it for development purpose:
serve-my-app --srv=srv --watch
-
Add your routes
-
Serve it for production:
serve-my-app --srv=srv
Explanation:
-
--srv
: We're assuming that your api entrypoint is insrv
folder. -
--watch
: Server will restart when a route will be added.
I want to serve both my frontend code and add some api routes.
- Create an api file as described below.
Then :
-
For development purpose:
-
Launch the server
serve-my-app --srv=srv --proxify --watch
-
Launch your frontend application (depends on your framework):
npm run start/serve
Explanation:
-
--srv
: We're assuming that your api entrypoint is insrv
folder. -
--watch
: Server will restart when a route will be added. -
--proxify
: All the relative xhr/fetch calls made in the application will be proxyfied to the server.
-
-
To run the server only once for production:
-
Build your app files (depends on your framework):
npm run build
-
Launch the server
serve-my-app --srv=srv --src=build
Explanation:
-
--srv
: We're assuming that your api entrypoint is insrv
folder. -
--src
: We're assuming that previous command will output compiled files tobuild
folder.
-
👍 In all cases, you can use relative urls for xhr/fetch calls in your code.
🚀 Again, all the ServeMyApp related commands and files can be generated using the sma-init
cli tool.
FAQ
What should the server entrypoint look like?
It's a file exporting a function, which will receive the Express application as its first parameter, and the node http server as its second. With both you can do anything you want with your server.
For example:
const { json } = require('express');
const socketIO = require("socket.io");
module.export = (app, http) => {
app.use(json());
app.get('/foo', (req, res) => {
res.json({msg: 'foo'});
});
app.post('/bar', (req, res) => {
res.json(req.body);
});
socketIO(http).on("connection", client => {
client.emit("message", "Welcome");
});
}
I want to use some transpilation process for my server (Webpack, TypeScript...).
And you're right, it's a good idea!
In that case, you just have to handle the compilation process on your own, and specify an other folder for —srv
files.
For example, for a TypeScript transpilation, and an "outDir": "../dist"
in srv/tsconfig.json
, you can update your script in package.json
as:
"build:server": "rm -rf dist && tsc -p srv",
"sma": "serve-my-app --srv=dist [...]"
🤘 For Typescript transpilation ts-node
will be used if your api entrypoint is detected as a typescript file.
It allows you to use directly your typescript file for development:
"sma:dev": "serve-my-app --srv=srv --watch [...]"
😉 To help you in your Typescript development, you can import the ApiFunction type from 'serve-my-app':
import { ApiFunction } from 'serve-my-app'
const api: ApiFunction = (app, server) => {
//
}
export default api
🔗 See a full example at: mathieutu/starter-kit-react-express
package.json
behaves in a weird manner: a proxy
key comes and goes in it.
My To proxify xhr calls from the front dev server to the express server, create-react-app uses a proxy
key in the package.json.
This is why this package adds it automatically if --proxify
argument is provided.
This should be transparent for you, but if you want to disable it and handle yourself (or not) the proxy, you can do it by not passing the -—proxify
flag.
You can find the documentation about proxies in create-react-app here.
Another question?
Please feel free to ask it!
License
This package is an open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license.
Contributing
Issues and PRs are obviously welcomed and encouraged, for new features as well as documentation.