Restart node upon changing a file

Question

For someone who is coming from PHP background the process of killing node and starting it again after every code change  seems very tedious  Is there any flag when starting a script with node to automatically restart node when code change is saved

User · Answer

Various NPM packages are available to make this task easy.

For Development

nodemon: most popular and actively maintained
forever: second-most popular
node-dev: actively maintained (as of Oct 2020)
supervisor: no longer maintained

For Production (with extended functionality such as clustering, remote deploy etc.)

pm2: npm install -g pm2
Strong Loop Process Manager: npm install -g strongloop

Comparison between Forever, pm2 and StrongLoop can be found on StrongLoop's website.

User · Answer

node-dev   node-dev is great alternative to both nodemon and supervisor for developers who like to get growl  or libnotify  notifications on their desktop whenever the server restarts or when there is an error or change occur in file   Installation   npm install -g node-dev   Use node-dev  instead of node   node-dev app js   Notification on Changing file so server start automatically    console out put

User · Answer

You should look at something like nodemon   Nodemon will watch the files in the directory in which nodemon was started  and if they change  it will automatically restart your node application   Example   nodemon   server js localhost 8080   or simply  nodemon server

User · Answer

forever module has a concept of multiple node js servers  and can start  restart  stop and list currently running servers  It can also watch for changing files and restart node as needed   Install it if you don t have it already   npm install forever -g   After installing it  call the forever command  use the -w flag to watch file for changes   forever -w   my-script js   In addition  you can watch directory and ignore patterns   forever --watch --watchDirectory   path to dir --watchIgnore   log   start file

User · Answer

I use runjs like   runjs example js   The package is called just run  npm install -g run

User · Answer

You can also try nodemon   To Install Nodemon  npm install -g nodemon   To use Nodemon  Normally we start node program like    node server js   But here you have to do like    nodemon server js

User · Answer

A good option is Node-supervisor and Node js Restart on File Change is good article on how to use it  typically    npm install supervisor -g   and after migrating to the root of your application use the following   supervisor app js

User · Answer

Follow the steps    npm install --save-dev nodemon Add the following two lines to  script  section of package json     start    node   bin www    devstart    nodemon   bin www    as shown below     scripts          test    echo   Error  no test specified    amp  amp  exit 1        start    node   bin www        devstart    nodemon   bin www       npm run devstart   https   developer mozilla org en-US docs Learn Server-side Express Nodejs skeleton website

[node.js] Restart node upon changing a file

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