basic-dev-server

Basic Development Server

This project aims at providing a very (very (very)) basic development server with minimal configuration and maximum ease of use in order to make the setup of a simple develpoment environment deadly fast and easy.

The project is built with the Express framework and is intended to be modular and adaptable.

Installation

To use this dev server you need to have Node.js installed on your machine.
Then clone this repository in the directory of your choice and launch : npm install in that directory.

To run the server : npm start.
The server should now be up on localhost and listening on port 8081 (default).
Note : you can change the port on which the server will be listening by changing the value of the port constant in server.js.

You can stop the server by typing Ctrl+C.

Usage

This little dev server was first developed in order to mock basic REST APIs. The idea is to provide a simple way to build a fake API that will be used to test another app that use this API. By extension it allows you to prototype your API and test some aspects of its behavior before you start a project.

Create an API

To create a new API, just create a new JS file in the /src/apis directory (ideally this file should have its name ending with -api).
This file will contain your API implemention, it must exports a function that take a server parameter and that defines your API as in an Express app. Below is an example for default-api.js :

// A basic API for development purpose
module.exports = (server) => {
  server.get('/api', (req, res, next) => {
    res.send('<h1>Default API</h1>');
  });
  server.get('/', (req, res, next) => {
    res.send('<h1>Hello World !</h1>');
  });
  server.get('/:name', (req, res, next) => {
    res.send(`<h1>Hello ${req.params.name} !</h1>`);
  });
};

Note : the basic-dev-server use the nodemon server to provide an even easier development experience, once the server is started you can start editing your API code and it will be automatically reloaded when saving, so that you can immediately test it (e.g in your favorite browser).

Use an API

To use an API of your choice you must specified its name when starting the server :

npm start <api-name>

Here <api-name> is the name of the file that contains the API definition. For example, if my /src/apis directory contains a file named my-awesome-api.js with the definition of my awesome API, then I would load this API with the following command : npm start my-awesome-api.
It is also possible to load multiple APIs at the same time : npm start api1 api2 ....
If no API is given on the command line, then the default-api is loaded.

Contributing

This basic-dev-server is published under the GPLv3 so feel free to use, copy, redistribute and/or improve it as you like !

(see LICENSE for more details).