gulp-dev-express

This is a gulp plugin that restars Express.js server using a fibonacci backoff. This is useful when you want to monitor server files for changes and restart Express server. Why do this? If your server fails to start for whatever reason, you don't want to continuously hammer on it trying to restart it in a loop. When you make a change and server start up, the backoff will reset.

Installation

npm install gulp-dev-express

Usage Example

gulpfile.js example:

var gulp = require('gulp');
var express = require('gulp-dev-express');

gulp.task('dev', function () {
  gulp.watch('src/**/*.js', express('src/server.js'));
});

server.js needs to call process.send() to let the watcher know that it's ready:

var express = require('express');
var app = express();

...

app.listen(3000, function () {
  process.send && process.send('express ready');
});

API

express(serverFilePath, {message, initialDelay, maxDelay})

• serverFilePath is a string file path to the express server.
• message is a string with default value of express ready that server needs to process.send when it's ready.
• initialDelay is a number of ms by at which fibonacci back off begins its delay.
• maxDelay is a number of ms at which finobachi backoff will max out its delay.

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright 2015 Alex Gorbatchev

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.