lorenzoh / liveserver.jl

Simple development server with live-reload capability for Julia.

Live Server for Julia

This is a simple and lightweight development web-server written in Julia, based on HTTP.jl. It has live-reload capability, i.e. when modifying a file, every browser (tab) currently displaying the corresponding page is automatically refreshed.

LiveServer is inspired from Python's http.server and Node's browsersync.

Installation

To install it in Julia ≥ 1.0, use the package manager with

pkg> add LiveServer

Usage

The main function LiveServer exports is serve which starts listening to the current folder and makes its content available to a browser. The following code creates an example directory and serves it:

julia> using LiveServer
julia> LiveServer.example() # creates an "example/" folder with some files
julia> cd("example")
julia> serve() # starts the local server & the file watching
✓ LiveServer listening on http://localhost:8000/ ...
  (use CTRL+C to shut down)

Open a Browser and go to http://localhost:8000/ to see the content being rendered; try modifying files (e.g. index.html) and watch the changes being rendered immediately in the browser.

Serve docs

servedocs is a convenience function that runs Documenter along with LiveServer to watch your doc files for any changes and render them in your browser when modifications are detected.

Assuming you are in directory/to/YourPackage.jl and that you have a docs/ folder as prescribed by Documenter.jl, just run:

julia> using YourPackage, LiveServer
julia> servedocs()
[ Info: SetupBuildDirectory: setting up build directory.
[ Info: ExpandTemplates: expanding markdown templates.
...
└ Deploying: ✘
✓ LiveServer listening on http://localhost:8000/ ...
  (use CTRL+C to shut down)

Open a browser and go to http://localhost:8000/ to see your docs being rendered; try modifying files (e.g. docs/index.md) and watch the changes being rendered in the browser.

Note: this works with Literate.jl as well. See the docs.