opnr

Sniffs process.stdin for ndjson and launches the browser when a message with url and type: 'connect' is consumed.

It looks for JSON objects with the following format:

{ type: 'connect', url: 'some-page.com' }

URLs are parsed as addresses, so the above opens the default browser to http://some-page.com/. You can configure the action to listen for with the --type field.

This can be used alongside ndjson-emitting CLI tools, like budo:

# launch the browser once an available port is found
budo index.js | opnr

Usage

Usage:
  opnr [opts]

Opts:
  --type    the "type" to launch on, defualt "connect"

Example

A common scenario might be an async action triggered by a CLI tool that involves a browser launch.

server.js

var http = require('http')

//get next available port
require('getport')(function(err, port) {
  if (err) 
    throw err

  //start your server
  var server = http.createServer(function(req, res) {
    res.end('hello')
  })
  server.listen(port, function(err) {
    if (err)
      throw err

    //print ndjson logs
    console.log(JSON.stringify({ 
      url: 'localhost:'+port, 
      type: 'connect',
      name: 'my-server',
      message: 'server running on '+port 
    }))
  })
})

Install opnr, and optionally garnish for prettier logs.

npm install opnr garnish -g

Now you can pipe things together to run your server and open the browser when ready.

node server.js | opnr | garnish

License

MIT, see LICENSE.md for details.