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Archaeopteryx (Archy for Short)

A fork of Denoliver, which is a small, zero config dev & static file server with live reloading written in TypeScript for Deno intended for prototyping and Single Page Applications. This fork adds support for multiple ip-detection, along with more robust error handling.

Prerequisites

To run this you need to have Deno 1.0 or later installed.

Key Features

  • Dependency free! No third party dependencies.
  • Live reload
  • Supports client side routing for Single Page Applications.
  • Directory lists
  • Supports HTTPS
  • Allows for programmatic use as a module
  • Boilerplating for rapid prototyping.
  • Injectable HTTP request interceptors. (TS & JS)

Getting started

Install as a Deno executable.

NOTE: Deno is a secure runtime by default. You need to include the --allow-net, --allow-read, --allow-write, --allow-sys flags to make sure Archaeopteryx can serve your directory.

deno install -n archy --allow-net --allow-read --allow-write --allow-run --allow-sys https://deno.land/x/archaeopteryx/mod.ts

Why do I need the --allow-run flag?

You don’t need it! You can still use Archaeopteryx as normal without this flag.

Currently Deno does not provide a way to access local network interfaces, so to do this you need to allow archaeopteryx to spawn the subprocess ipconfig and fetch the address from there. When this implementation gets finished, this module will probably be deprecated.

This code is published for you to use here: https://github.com/joakimunge/deno-local-ip/

Running

Serve your directory

$ archy ./demo

Options

Archaeopteryx comes with a couple of options to customize your experience.

-h                 # Help
-n                 # Disable live reload - Defaults to false
-s                 # Disable all output - Defaults to false
-p <PORT>          # Specify desired port - Defaults to 8080
-d                 # Debug for more verbose output - Defaults to false
-t                 # Use HTTPS - Requires a trusted self-signed certificate
-l                 # Use directory listings - Disables routing (SPA)
-c                 # Use CORS - Defaults to false
--before=<..>   # Before request Interceptor(s)
--after=<..>    # After request Interceptor(s)
--certFile=<..>    # Specify certificate file - Defaults to archaeopteryx.crt
--keyFile=<..>     # Specify key file - Defaults to archaeopteryx.key
--entry=<..>       # Specify optional entrypoint - Defaults to index.html

Directory Listing

Archaeopteryx supports indexing of served directories and provides a simple interface, with dark mode support, for navigating a project folder.

Directory listing

Optional boilerplating

If the given directory doesn’t exist, archaeopteryx will ask you if you want to create a boilerplate. This will generate an a basic project folder and serve it for you. Very useful to get up and running quickly.

├── index.html
├── index.css
├── app.js

Interceptors

Archaeopteryx allows you to inject your own request interceptors to be fired before or after the HTTP requests has been handled by the server. This can be one or more functions which have access to the request object (instance of Deno.Request) and gets called in the order they are defined with the output of the previous function (piped). These functions must all return the request object.

Interceptors can be a single function, for example:

// before.ts

export default (req: ServerRequest) => {
  req.headers.set('Authorization', 'Bearer some-token')
  return req
}

or an array of functions:

const setHeaders = (req: ServerRequest) => {
  req.headers.set('Authorization', 'Bearer some-token')
  return req
}

const logRequestUrl = (req: ServerRequest) => {
  console.log(req.url)
  return req
}

export default [setHeaders, logRequestUrl]

of course this can also be used when using Archaeopteryx as a module:

const server = archaeopteryx({
  port: 6060,
  before: (req: ServerRequest) => {
    req.headers.set('Authorization', 'Bearer some-token')
    return req
  },
})

Configuration

If you want, you can place a configuration file called archaeopteryx.json in the folder you are serving to avoid having to use command line arguments to customize its behaviour. By default it will look like this:

{
  "root": ".",
  "port": 8080,
  "disableReload": false,
  "silent": false,
  "debug": false,
  "secure": false,
  "cors": false,
  "list": false,
  "before": "before.ts",
  "after": "after.ts",
  "certFile": "some_file.crt",
  "keyFile": "some_file.key",
  "entryPoint": "index.html"
}

API

Archaeopteryx can also be used as a module in any Deno project. This exposes an instance of Deno.Server.

The main function accepts the same config object as specified in the config file above.

import archaeopteryx from 'https://deno.land/x/archaeopteryx/mod.ts'

const server = archaeopteryx({ port: 6060, cors: true })

server.close() // Close the server

Serve over HTTPS

To use HTTPS you will need a trusted self-signed certificate. If you’re on macOS you can use This bash script to easily generate one.

Name the cert and key files archaeopteryx.crt and archaeopteryx.key and place them in your working dir. You can configure these names to be whatever you want with the config file, or the --certFile and --keyFile flags.

Disclaimer

This project is not intended for production use. It started out as a way for me personally to learn Deno, and is merely a tool to quickly get a file server up and running.

Acknowledgements

This project was heavily inspired by lukejacksonns fantastic Servor