rogah / gulp-express

gulp plugin for express

Gulp plugin for express

Description

This plugin is simple using a child process to let you run node command, thus, it can start your customized server you have. The most commonly usage might be like this:

Issues with the output should be reported on the gulp-express issue tracker.

Install

$ npm install --save-dev gulp-express

Usage

// gulpfile.js
var gulp = require('gulp');
var server = require('gulp-express');

gulp.task('server', function () {
    // Start the server at the beginning of the task
    server.run({
        file: 'app.js'
    });
    
    // Restart the server when file changes
    gulp.watch(['app/**/*.html'], server.notify);
    gulp.watch(['app/styles/**/*.scss'], ['styles:scss']);
    gulp.watch(['{.tmp,app}/styles/**/*.css'], ['styles:css', server.notify]);
    gulp.watch(['app/scripts/**/*.js'], ['jshint']);
    gulp.watch(['app/images/**/*'], server.notify);
    gulp.watch(['app.js', 'routes/**/*.js'], [server.run]);
});

// app.js
var express = require('express');
var app = module.exports.app = exports.app = express();
app.use(require('connect-livereload')());

API

server.run([options])

Run or re-run the script file, which will create a server, a express server in most of the case, probably. Returns a ChildProcess instance of spawned server.

options

Type: Object

Options to pass to gulp-express:

• env NONE_ENV value of child process. Default: 'development'.
• file Application entry point file. Default: 'app.js'.
• port LiveReload server port. Default: 35729

server.notify(event)

Send a notification to the livereload server in order to trigger a reload on page.

event

Type: Object

Event object that is normally passed to gulp.watch callback. Should contain path property with changed file path.