webapp-builder

Webapp Builder is a tool designed to make it easier to develop website with node, particularly by managing static assets. For a brief video describing a basic use case for a static website, check out this screencast.

Quick start

npm install -g webapp-builder
webapp serve

This will start a web server on a random port and begin serving the current directory. On Mac OS X, it will open a brower window to the local URL automatically.

Features

The above basic usage has the following built-in features configured by default:

• Automatic reloading for all files: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files.
• Packaging of CommonJS modules using modulr.
• Compilation of CoffeeScript.
• Cmpilation of LessCSS.
• Advanced custom build rules by creating a Makefile.

CLI Usage

There are 3 main commands webapp:

• webapp serve - Starts a static asset server in the current directory. See webapp serve --help for all options.
• webapp build - Builds every rule specified in the Makefile. See webapp build --help for all options.
• webapp monitor COMMAND ARGS - Loads another node module COMMAND and runs it. While it is running, if any source file referenced changes, it will kill and restart the process.

Programmatic Usage

If you ware developing a dynamic website build would like to take advantage of the automatic compilation and packaging that webapp provides, you can use it via the API.

var webapp = require('webapp-builder');
var express = require('express');

var app = express();
app.use(app.router);
app.use(webapp.middleware({
    watchFileSystem: true,
    fallthrough: false
});

app.listen(process.env.PORT || 5000);