expressodotio

A simple server for lots of things.

Quickstart

In your favourite terminal

npm i -g expressodotio

Find a directory with any file inside and cd into it

expressodotio

Head to http://localhost:3000/<filename>

Done! Files are now being served from your directory

Flags

Flag	Example usage	Description
port	--port 4040	The server will run on this port, defaults to 3000
mode	--mode static	static | spa (more later)
staticFiles	--staticFiles C:\Users<user>\dir	Defines which directory static files will be served from, defaults to ./ and can be either absolute or relative
staticPath	--staticPath /test	Defines which context static files will be served under, defaults to /
help	--help	Prints flags and instructions
v	--v	Prints request information for each request. Standard verbose
vv	--vv	Quite verbose
vvv	--vvv	Hella verbose

Modes

The server can run in different modes for different purposes

Static

A simple static file server, serves everything in the specified directory --staticFiles (default is ./) under the context specified by --staticPath (default is /).

SPA

Similar to static mode except resources that cannot be found will respond with the index.html. This way any route resolution will be handled by the single page application router.

Examples

expressodotio

will serve everything in the current directory under http://localhost:3000/.

Let's suppose you have a file named notes.txt, if you head to http://localhost:3000/notes.txt, there you will find the file.

expressodotio --staticPath /application

In this situation, your file notes.txt will be served at http://localhost:3000/application/notes.txt.

expressodotio --staticPath /application --staticFiles ./public

With the staticFiles flag we're specifying that we want to use the contents of ./public as static files, and they will be served under /application.

index.html

In any case, if a file named index.html is found in your files directory, it will be served under the current staticPath, which defaults to / if not specified.

Middleware

It is possible to include any number of middlewares with a similar syntax:

expressodotio middleware1.s middleware2.js

They will be called on every request in the same order as specified when starting expressodotio

middleware1.js could look like this:

module.exports  =  function(req,  res,  next)  {  
    console.log("Middleware")
    next() 
}

Calling next() is very important as not doing so will fail to pass the request to any additional middleware, stalling your call indefinitely