flamingo-carotene-dev-server

Module flamingo-carotene-dev-server

The dev server module is there to make the development of a Flamingo Carotene frontend easier.

It includes the functionality to register chokidar file watchers and dispatch commands when these noticed a change.

In addition to that a socket.io socket will be opened and its client will be injected into the webpack config (if available) to automatically reload the browser after a potential successful rebuild.

The NODE_ENV is set to development when executing the dev servers command.

How to use

Get the module by running:

npm i -D flamingo-carotene-dev-server

The dev server will listen to the dev command.

By executing:

npx flamingo-carotene dev

the dev server will start gathering all configured watchers used inside your project and start separate file watchers.

Setup File Watchers

To set up file watchers you can easily add a watcher config to your module definition with the following structure

{
  'watchId': 'myId',
  'path': [
    path.join(config.paths.src, '**', '*.ext')
  ],
  'command': 'commandName',
  'callbackKey': 'configKey',
  'watcherConfig': {
    ignored: /(^|[/\\])\../ // dot files or folders
  },
  'unwatchConfig': path.join(config.paths.src, '**', 'special.ext')
}

watchId A unique id (at least in your project) to identify the file watcher.

path The glob paths that the file watcher should check for file changes.

command The command that will be dispatched when a file change was recognized.

callbackKey A key from the config where to find a buildCallback function. Only one level supported yet, e.g. when your callback function is located here: config.myKey.buildCallback the callbackKey would be myKey. This function is also used to allow the rebuild functionality when changes are made during a running build.

watcherConfig (optional) A custom config object for this chokidar file watcher.

unwatchConfig (optional) string or array of strings of file-, directory-, or glob-paths

The watcher configurations will be automatically gathered by the dev server by calling the getWatchers function, that must be provided by your module to expose your watcher configs.

How to configure

This module exposes the following config

config.devServer = {
  port: 3000,
  injectSocket: true,
  useCaroteneDisplay: true,
  watcherConfig: {
    ignored: /(^|[/\\])\../ // dot files or folders
  }
}

port The port of the dev server is used for the socket connection to the client. injectSocket Set this to false, if you dont want dev-server code to be injected into your app.js while watcher is running. Note: carotenedisplay and hot/autoreload cant be used. useCaroteneDisplay Set this to false, if you dont want to display build and/or debug information in your browser while watcher is running.

How socket client injection works

The socket client will be injected into the webpack config's entries. If you have more that one entry for js, each entry will get the ability to open its socket to the server on execution. When the dev command was dispatched and the last build was no dev build - no socket client was injected - the js watcher command will be triggered right away to ensure that the next page load will have the ability to communicate via the socket.