EH-mdServer - a minimalist web server

This is a very simple web server which somewhat emulates GitPages for local development.

Installation

Install globally with NPM:

npm install -g ehmdserver

Or, clone the repository and link it:

git clone https://github.com/tdesposito/EH-mdServer.git
cd EH-mdServer
npm install
npm link

Usage

$ cd /my/project/dir
$ ehmdserver --port 3030 --root ./docs --alias /src ./src
ehMDserver: running at http://localhost:3030

Command Line Options

Option	Operation
--port, -p	port number to listen on (default: 8000)
--alias, -a	add a url alias (see below)
--root, -r	set the document root (defaults to cwd())
--style, -s	set the stylesheet url for Markdown files (see more below)
--help, -h	display help
--version	displays the server version

Document Root and URL Aliases

By default, we look for all files in the current directory (where you started the server, not where the server is installed).

If you want to specify the document root, use --root /some/absolute/dir or --root ./some/relative/dir.

If hrefs (or Markdown links) in your source files reference things not under the document root (such as your project's source files), you can add one or more URL aliases to map URL prefixes to alternate file locations.

A common project might look like:

/projectdir
  +- /src
     |- index.js
     |- utility.js
     |- README.md
  +- /docs
     +- index.md
     +- demo.html

If you start the server as ehmdserver --root ./docs from the project directory, references to /demo.html inside of index.md will resolve correctly, since they share a document root. A reference to ../src/README.md would fail; the ../ collapses and the browser will look for the README.md file as /src/README.md.

To solve this, use:

ehmdserver --root ./docs --alias /src ./src

Styling Rendered Markdown

We add a simple CSS stylesheet to our rendered Markdown files. You can override this by providing a (relative or absolute) URL for your preferred stylesheet on the command line, such as ehmdserver --style /static/my.css.

• Credit to Chris Patuzzo for the CSS.