livereload

Pub

A simple Dart development server that serves a web app, automatically refreshes when there's a change, and is compatible with single page apllications (SPA) that utilize the history API.

dartdocs.org uses Dart 1.x SDK to generate docs and fails to build, so I need to build the docs myself.

Installation

The implementation of this package is just a proxy server that passes requests to package: build_runner. So, it needs to be installed along with this package.

dependencies:
  livereload:

dev_dependencies:
  build_runner:
  build_web_compilers:

Usage

After running pub get --no-precompile, add this to your main.dart.

import 'package:livereload/client.dart';

main() {
  new ReloadListener().listen();
  // continue with your code...
}

and run

pub run livereload

If you are going to build an SPA, make sure to add a proper <base> so that your routing works.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">

<head>
  <!-- This <base> is needed. -->
  <base href="/">
  <script defer src="main.dart.js"></script>
  <title>SPA</title>
</head>

<body>
  <!-- AngularDart with angular_router -->
  <my-app>Loading...</my-app>
</body>

</html>

Command Line Options

Since this runs pub run build_runner serve under the hood, most of the options replicates those of package: build_runner.

pub run livereload [<directory>:<port>] [options]

By default, the directory is web and the port number is 8080. Please note that this package does not support serving more than one directory at a time, because it would complicate the CLI options. If it is needed, please file an issue. Furthermore, PRs are welcome.

  • -l, --low-resources-mode: Reduces the amount of memory consumed by the build process.
  • -c, --config: Reads build.<name>.yaml instead of the default build.yaml. (required: build_runner >= 0.7.8)
  • -v, --verbose: Enables verbose logging.
  • --define: Sets the global options config for a builder by key. As an example, enabling the dart2js compiler would look like: --define "build_web_compilers|entrypoint=compiler=dart2js" (required: build_runner >= 0.7.9)
  • --hostname: Specifies the hostname to serve on. (defaults to "localhost")
  • --proxy-port: Changes the port number of the proxy server. (defaults to "8000")
  • --websocket-port: Changes the port number of the websocket. (defaults to "4242")
  • --[no-]spa: Serves a single page application. This allows routes controlled by history API to be working. (defaults to on)

Some of the options from package: build_runner are intentionally left out, since it wouldn't match the use case of this package.

Libraries

livereload
API for customizing the livereload server. [...]
livereload_client
API for listening to the livereload events based on dart:html. [...]