budō

This is a browserify development server inspired by beefy and wzrd, but specifically focused on incremental reloading, LiveReload integration (including CSS injection), and other high-level features.

To install:

npm install budo -g

Running budo will start a server with a default index.html and incrementally bundle your source on filesave. The requests are delayed until the bundle has finished, so you won't be served stale or empty bundles if you refresh the page mid-update. Examples:

# serve file on port 9966 and open browser
budo index.js --open

# enable LiveReload on HTML/CSS/JS file changes
budo index.js --live

# pass some options to browserify
budo index.js --live -- -t babelify

Then open http://localhost:9966/ to see the content in action.

Budo emits ndjson, so a pretty-printer like garnish or bistre is recommended for better logging. Example:

# install garnish if you don't have it
npm install garnish -g

# pipe to garnish for pretty-printing
budo index.js | garnish

Result:

See docs for more details. PRs/suggestions/comments welcome.

features

At a glance:

• stubs a default index.html
• fast incremental bundling, suspending the response until the new source is ready
• watches HTML and CSS files for changes; CSS is injected without reloading the page
• allows for detailed logging with garnish
• provides clear error messaging during development in DOM and console

Below is an example of how syntax errors look during development, using the babelify transform.

docs

• command line usage
• API usage
• running tests and examples
• rapid prototyping with budō
• experimental script injection with budo-chrome

usage

CLI

Details for budo command-line interface.

Usage:
  budo index.js [opts] -- [browserify opts]

Options:
  --help, -h       show help message
  --version        show version
  --port, -p       the port to run, default 9966
  --host, -H       the host, default internal IP (localhost)
  --dir, -d        a path, or array of paths for base static content
  --serve, -s      override the bundle path being served
  --live, -l       enable default LiveReload integration
  --live-port, -L  the LiveReload port, default 35729
  --open, -o       launch the browser once connected
  --pushstate, -P  always render the index page instead of a 404 page
  --onupdate       a shell command to trigger on bundle update
  --poll=N         use polling for file watch, with optional interval N
  --no-stream      do not print messages to stdout
  --no-debug       do not use inline source maps
  --no-portfind    will not attempt auto-portfinding
  --no-error-handler  disable default DOM error handling

By default, messages will be printed to process.stdout, and --debug will be sent to browserify (for source maps). You can turn these off with --no-stream and --no-debug, respectively.

Everything after -- is passed directly to browserify. Example:

budo index.js --live -- -t [ babelify --extensions .es6 ]

API

The API mirrors the CLI except it does not write to process.stdout by default.

var budo = require('budo')
var babelify = require('babelify')

budo('./src/index.js', {
  live: true,             // setup live reload
  port: 8000,             // use this port
  browserify: {
    transform: babelify   // ES6
  }
}).on('connnect', function (ev) {
  console.log('Server running on %s', ev.uri)
  console.log('LiveReload running on port %s', ev.livePort)
}).on('update', function (buffer) {
  console.log('bundle - %d bytes', buffer.length)
})

See API usage for details.

See Also

budō combines several smaller and less opinionated modules.

• watchify-middleware - the underlying request handler for serving incremental reloads
• watchify-server - a less opinionated alternative to budo, built on the same underlying modules
• simple-html-index - a stream for a default index.html file

License

MIT, see LICENSE.md for details.