dat simple server

Do you remember the time you'd drop a .php file into a ftp folder, and instantly, it was deployed?

Well, welcome to that again :)

Getting started

You can run the server quickly with npx dat-simple-server.

Here are the command line options:

• --public=./: The public folder to serve
• --port=8001: The port for your server
• --host=0.0.0.0: The host for your server

When running with default options, you'll end up with a server running on http://0.0.0.0:8001 which will be serving javascript files under ./ similarly to lambdas.

A minimal example for a file to serve is:

module.exports = async (req, res) => {
  res.end('hello world')
}

You don't need to re-run the server. Just make an other request (refresh your browser?) and you should be good to go.

Going further

You can have this server running in a monitored environment with pm2 and its folder exposed as part of an (s)ftp server, while handling service as an upstream with nginx.

Doing so, the experience should be pretty similar to "php-fpm + drag&drop php file to my ftp" deployment process.

Importing in an application

The middleware responsible for loading the script is compatible with express and similar (req, res) libraries. You can reuse it easily:

const { middleware } = require('dat-simple-server')
express.use('/', middlewware(`${process.cwd()}/api`, 30000))