Gulp plugin to run a local webserver with livereload enabled via socket.io
Package Exports
gulp-server-livereload
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Readme
gulp-server-livereload
Gulp plugin to run a local webserver with live reload using socket.io
Serve a folder over HTTP and watch it for changes, telling the browser to
reload itself when a change happens.
Uses socket.io - livereload mechanism works even
if your browser does not support WebSockets (PhoneGap developers rejoice!).
window.console capture - it can capture console output from the
client-side and transmit it to the back-end for display. This is useful for
when testing from Phonegap, etc.
Supports CSS injection (no need to reload the whole page if just your CSS
has changed).
Proxy mode - proxy requests arriving at certain URLs to other servers.
The folder supplied to gulp.src() will be the root folder from which files will be served.
var gulp =require('gulp');var server =require('gulp-server-livereload');
gulp.task('webserver',function(){
gulp.src('app').pipe(server({livereload:true,directoryListing:true,open:true}));});
If you run gulp webserver your browser should automatically open up to http://localhost:8000 and show a directory listing of the app folder.
Note: In order for the livereload browser-side code to be injected properly
your HTML must have a closing `
tag.
Command-line
Install the package globally:
$ npminstall-g gulp-server-livereload
Then you can run the livereload command to serve files out of the current folder.
Here are the available options:
$ livereload help
Usage: livereload [options]
Options:
-h, --help output usage information
-V, --version output the version number
-n, --no-browser do not open the localhost server in a browser
-l, --log[type] log level (default: info)
-p, --port<n> the port to run on
Options
Note: not all of these options are currently available via the CLI executable
Key
Type
Default
Description
host
String
localhost
hostname of the webserver
port
Number
8000
port of the webserver
livereload
Boolean/Object
false
whether to use livereload. For advanced options, provide an object.
livereload.port
Number
35729
port for livereload server to listen on.
livereload.filter
Function
-
function to filter out files to watch (default filters out node_modules).
livereload.clientConsole
Boolean
false
whether to capture window.console output from the client and send it to the back-end for display.
directoryListing
Boolean/Object
false
whether to display a directory listing. For advanced options, provide an object. You can use the path property to set a custom path or the options` property to set custom serve-index options.
defaultFile
String
index.html
default file to show when root URL is requested. If directoryListing is enabled then this gets disabled.
open
Boolean/Object
false
open the localhost server in the browser
https
Boolean/Object
false
whether to use https or not. By default, gulp-server-livereload provides you with a development certificate but you remain free to specify a path for your key and certificate by providing an object like this one: {key: 'path/to/key.pem', cert: 'path/to/cert.pem'}.
log
String
info
If set to debug you will see all requests logged to the console.
proxies
Array
[]
a list of proxy objects. Each proxy object can be specified by {source: '/abc', target: 'http://localhost:8080/abc', options: {headers: {'ABC_HEADER': 'abc'}}}.
Livereload behaviour
By default when a file changes the livereload script in the browser does the
following:
Checks to see whether the changed file is a CSS file
If it is a CSS file then it reloads the changed CSS files in the browser
Otherwise it reloads the whole page
To override the default behaviour define the following method in Javascript:
/**
* This method gets called by the livereload script when the server notifies it
* that something has changed.
*
* @param {Object} file File which changed.
*/
window._onLiveReloadFileChanged=function(file){// do whatever you want here, e.g. location.reload(); }
The file parameter has the following structure:
{"path":...full path to file which changed..."name":...file name(without path)..."ext":...file extension name...}
FAQ
Why can't I reach the server from the network?
Set 0.0.0.0 as the host option.
How can I set main.html to automatically load when I visit the URL?
How can I use livereload if my HTML is already being served up by a node.js/other app?
You'll have to add some Javascript to dynamically load in the browser-side scripts. For example, if the gulp-server-livereload livereload port is set to 34322 then you would add: