Manually restarting Node.js application is a tiring and tedious job. Nodemon is the best solution available to autorestart a nodejs app server in development mode.
Step 1
Organize the source directory src and initiate it with an app.js or index.js or server.js or any other convention you use to bootstrap a Node.js server.
Update the package.json file accordingly by adding a start script.
Step 2
Add express or any other framework as dependency to bootstrap a minimal server.
Code for a minimal server:
In first terminal window start the server:
In second terminal window, request the url to test if the api is working and to see the response message:
Now if I change the response message, I have to restart the server to get the desired result:
Use Ctrl + C to stop the currently running server and restart it by using the same command before: npm run start.
Using the curl command again from terminal window we get the desired result:
This whole process is repetitive will slow your development of any package or application. Better solution is to use nodemon.
Step 3
Add nodemon as devDependency:
Step 4
Make another script dev under npm scripts in package.json file:
Now run $ npm run dev and request using curl command, we will see the last familiar result:
If I change the response message in index.js file back to Hello World, this time I don't I have to restart the server since nodemon is watching for the changes using inside the src directory, through its --watchparameter. If I use the curl command again, the result is familiar with the update
One can verify by observing the log messages in the terminal window where nodemon is running:
To stop the nodemon process, use Ctrl + C.
Full Source at this Github Repository.