HTML Pages

Simple development http server for file serving and directory listing made by a Designer. Use it for hacking your HTML/JavaScript/CSS files, but not for deploying your final site.
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Table of contents

• Status
• Quick start
• Usage from command line
• What next?
• Version history
• Author

Status

Quick start

Each of us already wanted to share a certain directory on our network by running just a command little command, Am I right? Then this module is exactly what you're looking for: It provides a beautiful interface for listing the directory's contents and switching into sub folders.

In addition, it's also awesome because it comes to serving static sites. If a directory contains an index.html, html-pages will automatically render it instead of serving directory contents, and will serve any .html file as a rendered page instead of file's content as plaintext.

Another huge reason to use this package is that AJAX requests don't work with the file:// protocol due to security restrictions, i.e. you need a server if your site fetches content through JavaScript.

Installation

You need to have node.js (>v.6.6.0) and npm installed. You should probably install this globally.

Npm way

npm install -g html-pages

This will install html-pages globally so that it may be run from the command line.

Manual way

git clone https://github.com/danielcardoso/html-pages
cd html-pages
npm install # Local dependencies if you want to hack 
npm install -g # Install globally 

Usage from command line

You just have to call the command html-pages in your project's directory. Alternatively you can add the path to be a command line parameter.

Command line parameters

Run this command to see a list of all available options:

html-pages --help

Options

• -a, --auth — Enables http-auth using the PAGES_USER and PAGES_PASSWORD environment variables
• -b, --browser string — Specify browser to use instead of system default
• -c, --cache number — Time in milliseconds for caching files in the browser (defaults to 3600)
• -C, --cors — Setup CORS headers to allow requests from any origin
• -d, --directory-index file — The index file of a directory. Set to empty "" to always show the directory listing (defaults to index.html)
• -h, --help — Output usage information
• -i, --ignore string/array — Files and directories to ignore. Use a string (comma-separated string for paths to ignore) if your are using the command line and an array if you are calling it via API
• -L, --layout string — Specify the page layout. Available options grid or list. (defaults to grid)
• -l, --log-level string — Display logs in the console. The possible values are silent, error, warn, info, debug. Any logs of a higher level than the setting are shown. If you define it as info, it will show warn and error outputs also. (defaults to info)
  • silent - It will suppress all application logging. The Fatal errors will be shown.
  • error - Any error which is fatal to the operation, but not the service or application (can't open a required file, missing data, etc.). These errors will force user (administrator, or direct user) intervention. These are usually reserved (in my apps) for incorrect connection strings, missing services, etc.
  • warn - Anything that can potentially cause application oddities, but for which I am automatically recovering. (Such as switching from a primary to backup server, retrying an operation, missing secondary data, etc.)
  • info - Generally useful information to log (service start/stop, configuration assumptions, etc). Info I want to always have available but usually don't care about under normal circumstances. This is my out-of-the-box config level.
  • debug - Information that is diagnostically helpful to people more than just developers (IT, sysadmins, etc.).
• -o, --open — Open browser window after starting the server
• --no-cache — Disabled the caching files in the browser
• --no-clipboard — Don't copy address to clipboard
• --no-listing — Turn off the directory listings
• --no-notifications — Suppress automatic notifications launching
• --no-port-scan — Disabled the port scanning when the selected port is already in use
• -p, --port number — Port to listen on (defaults to 8084)
• -r, --root string — The root directory (defaults to ./)
• -S, --silent — Set log-level to silent mode
• -u, --unzipped — Disable GZIP compression
• -V, --verbose — Set log-level to debug mode
• -v, --version — Output the version number

Default options:

If a file ~/.html-pages.json exists it will be loaded and used as default options for html-pages on the command line. See Options for option names.

Authentication

If you set the --auth flag, this package will look for a username and password in the PAGES_USER and PAGES_PASSWORD environment variables.

As an example, this is how such a command could look like:

PAGES_USER=daniel PAGES_PASSWORD=1904 html-pages --auth

Usage from node

You can also use the package inside your application. Just load it:

const pages = require('html-pages')

And call it with flags (check Command line parameters for the full list):

const pagesServer = pages(__dirname, {
  port: 1904,
  'directory-index': '',
  'no-clipboard': true,
  ignore: ['.git', 'node_modules']
})

To stop the server just use the method:

pagesServer.stop()

What next?

• Enable HTTPS support;
• Add Proxy support;
• Provide a /robots.txt (whose content defaults to 'User-agent: *\nDisallow: /');
• Improve HTML errors;

Version history

• v2.1.0
  • Security updates
• v2.0.0
  • Specify the page layout. Available options grid or list
  • Add host address to bind to. By default it supports "any address"
  • Add localhost option to work only locally, blocking external connections
  • Disable notification by default
  • Minor improvements
• v1.7.0
  • Logs all requests: add options log-level, verbose and silent to filter the logs
  • Minor improvements
• v1.6.0
  • Replace the option --no-browser with the --open or -o
  • Added some logging to console
  • Improve HTML errors
  • Minor improvements
• v1.5.0
  • Using Travis CI (Linux and Mac Build Status)
  • Using AppVeyor (Windows Build Status)
  • CORS support
  • Load initial settings from ~/.html-pages.json if exists
  • Minor improvements
  • Improve tests
• v1.4.0
  • Update dependencies
• v1.3.0
  • Code Refactoring
• v1.2.0
  • Add web browser launching support:
    • it uses opn to allow opening links in different browsers;
  • Minor improvements
• v1.1.0
  • Add icons with the file types to the directory listing;
  • Add example files;
• v1.0.0
  • Initial release

Author

Daniel Cardoso (@DanielCardoso) - DanielCardoso.net