Universal Reloader

Universal reloader is a simple command line tool that refreshes your browser window when you change a file.

Why use it?

This tools aims to be super simple and compatible with almost anything.

• It works with your editor (notepad, vim, Sublime, Visual Studio, Eclipse, anything else)
• It works with your backend (PHP, ASP, Ruby, and more)

How does it work?

• You run the program on the command line
• It hosts your page in an iframe
• It opens a websocket
• It watches the filesystem
• You open your browser to Universal Reloader's webpage
• You open a file and make a change
• Your browser refreshes automatically

Usage

npm install -g universal-reloader

universal-reloader [arguments]

--debounce, -d Debounce interval for throttling websocket publications [default: 100] --folder, -f Root folder to watch for changes [default: "."] --mask, -m Pipe-delimited file patterns to watch (e.g., /*.css|/.html) [default: "**/"] --port, -p Port to run on [default: 8080] --recent, -r Interval of checks to the most-recently modified file [default: 100] --verbose, -v Toggle verbose logging --url, -u Url to auto-reload on file changes (e.g., http://example.com) [required]

For example, the following would watch all js and css files in the current directory while hosting example.com at http://localhost:8080:

universal-reloader --mask "/*.js|/*.css" --url http://example.com

Notes

Because this tool uses an iframe, sites that publish an "X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN" header won't work with universal-reloader.

License

MIT