eco-webserver

The objective of eco-webserver is to propose a nodejs server able to reduce the network footprint of a static site or a single page application (SPA).

To do so, the server uses different strategies depending on the types of files it hosts.

Features

• [X] Cache files
• [X] Reverse proxy
• [X] Isomorphic application
• [X] GZIP implementation
• [X] Include Etag
• [X] Include html minifiers
• [X] Include css minifiers
• [X] Include json minifiers
• [X] Include js minifiers with terser
• [ ] Optimize images and convert them to webp
• [ ] Optimize svg path
• [ ] Optimize fonts and convert them to woff2

Usage

Installation

npm install -g eco-webserver

Command line

cd project
eco-webserver

By default, the eco-webserver command does not take any parameters. If no configuration file is present in the current directory, the application will automatically create one.

Configuration

Create ecoconf.js at the base path of the project :

module.exports = {
    port: 8080,
    cacheCycle: 1800,
    distDir: "dist",
    cacheDir: "cache",
    logDir: "/tmp/eco-webserver.log",
    enableIsomorphic: true,
    header: {
        "Server": "eco-webserver",
        "Cache-Control": "max-age=86400",
        "X-XSS-Protection": "1;mode=block",
        "X-Frame-Options": "DENY",
    },
    contentType: {
        "mp4": "video/mpeg",
    },
    proxy: {
        "/articles": "https://articles.flavien.io/"
    },
}

• port: The default port of the application.
• cacheCycle: Duration in seconds between two cache check cycles.
• distDir: Location of website files to be exhibited.
• cacheDir: Location of the working cache.
• logDir: Location of log file.
• enableIsomorphic: Calculates a rendering of the JavaScript scripts before sending the page to the client.
• header: Html headers of the different queries.
• contentType: Allows you to add Content-Types if those supported by default by the application are not enough.
• proxy: Allows you to associate a remote resource with a local URL in order to cache it.

For PaaS or Docker platform users, it is possible to inject configuration through environment variables :

• ECO_PORT: The default port of the application.
• ECO_CACHE_CYCLE: Duration in seconds between two cache check cycles.
• ECO_DIST_DIR: Location of website files to be exhibited.
• ECO_CACHE_DIR: Location of the working cache.
• ECO_LOG_DIR: Location of log file.

With Docker

Ports

• 8080: HTTP

Volumes

• /dist
• /cache

Docker-compose example

dns:
  image: flavienperier/eco-webserver
  container_name: eco-webserver
  restart: always
  volumes:
    - ./dist:/dist
    - ./cache:/cache
  ports:
    - 8080:8080
  environment:
    ECO_CACHE_CYCLE: 1800

File organisation

If a client queries an unknown URL, the server will automatically redirect the request to the index.html file. If the server has a 404.html file, the server will redirect its requests to this file.

How the cache works ?

Each time a user requests a resource, it is cached. If the resource is requested again, its TTL will be incremented by 1 to a maximum of 10.

At each cache cycle (every 15 minutes in the default configuration), all TTL values are decremented by 1 and those falling to 0 are deleted from the cache.

Minification operations on resources are kept in a disk cache. The objective here is not to redo a minification operation that would have already been done in the past. Consequently, the cache associates the sha256 sum of a resource with its result after processing.