When you serve a directory, every .marko file in that directory becomes a page. A browser is automatically launched and live-reloads as you make changes. It's the simplicity of a static file server plus the power of the Marko UI language.

Features

• 🚀 Fastest way to build a Marko app
• 💖 No need to configure webpack, babel, etc.
• ⚡️ Pages live-reload as you make changes
• 📁 Directory-based routes
• 💯 Supports route parameters (/blog/:id)
• 🛠 Serve a single component to work on it in isolation

And when you build your production-ready app:

• 🔥 Blazing fast server-side rendering
• 📦 Optimized bundles with automatic code splitting
• ✨ Modern JS & CSS for modern browsers, legacy JS & CSS for legacy browsers

Getting Started

Hello World

Start by creating and entering a new directory, then serve it using npx (requires npm 5.2.0+):

mkdir my-new-app
cd my-new-app/
npx @marko/serve .

By running npx @marko/serve, a browser tab automatically opens for the current working directory. Since our new directory is empty, you should see an empty directory index:

Let's make a web page! Create a hello.marko file within my-new-app/ with the following:

<h1>Hello World</h1>

Once you save this file, the directory index will reload and show hello.marko as a file:

Follow the hello.marko hyperlink to view your new page:

A custom index

Navigate back to the directory index. Let's create an index.marko file with the following:

<h1>Home</h1>

Once you save this file, the directory index will reload and show our custom index instead:

Adding a component

Let's add a menu so we can navigate between our pages. Since it’ll be on every page, we'll create it as a component instead of duplicating code for each page.

1. Create a components/ directory, then add a main-menu.marko file inside with the following:

<nav>
  <a href="/">Home</a>
  -
  <a href="/hello">Hello</a>
</nav>

2. Then, add the <main-menu> component to both pages:

   <h1>Home</h1>
   <main-menu/>

   <h1>Hello World</h1>
   <main-menu/>

3. We can now use the menu to navigate between pages!

   

Route params

What if we want our app to say "Hello" to more than the world? Do we need a new .marko file for each thing we want to say hello to?

Nope. This is where route parameters come in. Route parameters let you use dynamic values from the URL in your templates. Like normal pages, these are powered by your directory structure, but add a special syntax: filenames that contain keywords in square brackets (like [example]) create a parameter with the same name as the text between the brackets.

1. Rename hello.marko to hello/[name].marko, and update its contents to:

   <h1>Hello ${input.params.name}</h1>
   <main-menu/>

2. Try visiting http://localhost:3000/hello/params in your browser.

3. The possibilities are endless! Try adding a few to your menu:

   <nav>
     <a href="/">Home</a>
     -
     <a href="/hello/marko">Marko</a>
     -
     <a href="/hello/params">Params</a>
     -
     <a href="/hello/world">World</a>
   </nav>

Go forth and build

When you're ready to let the world see what you've built, run the build command to get a production-ready app:

npx @marko/build .

This produces a build/ directory that contains the app and its assets, all optimized and compressed.

We no longer need @marko/serve, @marko/build, or any other dependencies. We can run the server using only node:

node build/index.js

Open your browser to http://localhost:3000/ and you'll see the same app, only faster.

This build/ directory can now be deployed to your favorite hosting service. We're excited to see what you make! ✨

CLI

Installation

npm install --save-dev @marko/serve

Examples

marko-serve .                           # serve the current directory
marko-serve ./pages                     # serve a “pages” directory
marko-serve ./components/example.marko  # serve a single component
marko-serve . --inspect-brk             # debug by passing a node argument through

Options

• --port -p: The port to serve on (default 3000)
• --no-browser: Don't automatically open the browser
• --verbose: Show the entire raw build output
• Any node CLI arguments are passed to the Node.js server process

API

Warning: Don't import the @marko/serve package directly yet. A programmatic API is coming soon.