This package has been deprecated

Author message:

Unmaintained

NeoServer

NeoServer is a Node.js module to create a web server easily.

How to install

To install NeoServer, you first needs to install the NodeJS Package Manager (npm).

Then, type the following command in your terminal :

npm install neo-server -g

NOTE : The -g argument install NeoServer globally. This permit to use NeoServer everywhere and access to the 'neo' command.

Create your server

Now, let's create your own server ! First, create an empty folder anywhere on your computer, and then go into using a terminal.

mkdir neo-site
cd neo-site

Create a first page, named index.html, and put into a content like Hello world !

Then, run the server.

neo

The server will be launched on port 8080. Open a browser like Firefox, and type in the URL bar : http://localhost:8080 And see the result !

Command-line options

Argument	Default	Description
--port	8080	Port to run the server
--encoding	utf-8	The web pages encoding
--rootfile	index.html	Files to use when the URL terminates by a slash
--disable-neoserv-files	false	Set to "true" to disable .neoserv files execution
--log-requests		Set to a value to log all incoming requests and store it in the specified file
--dynamic-neoserv-file	false	Set to "true" to reload .neoserv file at each incoming requests
--benchmark	false	Set to "true" to display time spent to send the request (in miliseconds)
--debug		Include this argument to see errors' details
--mods		List of mods, all names separated by a comma

.neoserv files

.neoserv files permit to perform actions on the server, like .htaccess on Apache. A .neoserv file is organized around categories and parameters. There is one thing by line.

Example :

rootfile = index.html,index.htm
xcutable = html,htm
 
[mime-types]
jsp = application/javascript
 
[deny]
private/
 
[errorDocument]
ErrorDocument 404 errors/404.html
 
[rewrite]
RewriteUrl errors/* errors/$1.html

Let's see how it does... First, we define two globals parameters : rootfile and xcutable.

rootfile permit to override the same command-line parameter. File names all separated by commas. xcutable define files which can have inline runable JavaScript content.

Next, this file define a category : mime-types. This category permit to define the Mime-Type of different file extensions. Here, there is a parameter to define .jsp extension as application/javascript mime-type.

Next, the deny category, that make client unable to access to certain URLs. To forbid access to an entire directory, make the name terminate by a slash, like here.

The errorDocument indicate what HTML page use when there is an error. If you don't specify an error document, the default document is used : a big title that indicate there was an error. Here, the page errors/404.html is called each time there is a 404 (Not Found) error.

Finally, the rewrite category, the most powerful too, permit to redirect URLs to others. The URL in the client's URL bar will not be changed, but the server will deliver the content of the specified page. For example, if the client access to errors/500, the server will deliver the content of the page errors/500.html.

Use inline JavaScript

In an executable web page (default : all files with .html extension), you can use inline JavaScript. That's a JS code which perform operations. Example of using :

<p>You are seeing the URL : <% request.url %></p>

The code between <% and %> is runned and the result is placed in the page. For example, if the URL is documents/interview.html, the displayed content will be :

<p>You are seeing the URL : documents/interview.html</p>

You can access to only three variables : require, request and response. request and response are Node.js variables.

Using NeoServer in a Node.js application

You can create a server from a Node.js application by using the following commands :

var neo = require('neo-server');
var server = neo.server; // Node.js http server