@ind.ie/https-server

https-server

An HTTPS server that uses nodecert.

Design goals

• ✔ Command-line app
• ✔ Easy integration with Express, etc.
• To-do: Seamless switch to using ACME/Let’s Encrypt in production

Installation

npm i -g @ind.ie/https-server

Usage

Commandline

https-server [folder-to-serve] [port]

Both arguments are optional. Currently, if you want to specify the port manually, you must also specify the folder-to-serve.

• [folder-to-serve] defaults to . (the current directory)
• [port] defaults to 443 (automatically privileges Node.js to bind to it on Linux. This is not an issue on macOS & Windows.)

If you do not already have TLS certificates, they will be created for you automatically using nodecert.

All dependencies will be installed automatically for you if they do not exist if you have apt, pacman, or yum (untested) on Linux or if you have Homebrew or MacPorts (untested) on macOS.

API

http-server provides a createServer method that behaves like the built-in https module’s createServer function so anywhere you use https.createServer, you can simply replace it with httpsServer.createServer.

createServer([options], [requestListener])

• options: (Object) Accepts options from tls.createServer(), tls.createSecureContext() and http.createServer(). Populates the cert and key properties from the automatically-created nodecert certificates and will overwrite them if they exist in the options object you pass in.

• requestListener: (Function) A listener to be added to the 'request' event.

• Returns: https.Server instance, configured with locally-trusted certificates.

Example

const httpsServer = require('https-server')
const express = require('express')

const app = express()
app.use(express.static('.'))

const server = httpsServer.createServer(options, app).listen(443, () => {
  console.log(` 🎉 Serving on https://localhost\n`)
})

serve([pathToServe], [port])

• pathToServe: (string) path to serve using Express.static.

• port: (number) the port to serve on. Defaults to 443. (On Linux, privileges to bind to the port are automatically obtained for you.)

Example

const httpsServer = require('https-server')

// Serve the current directory over https://localhost
const server = httpsServer.serve()

Help wanted

I can use your help to test https-server on other the following platforms:

• Windows 64-bit (should work without requiring any dependencies)
• Linux with yum
• macOS with MacPorts

Please let me know how/if it works. Thank you!

Thanks

• thagoat for confirming that installation works on Arch Linux with Pacman.