Example Node Server w/ Babel
Getting Started
First we'll install babel-cli
.
$ npm install --save-dev babel-cli
Along with some presets.
$ npm install --save-dev babel-preset-es2015 babel-preset-stage-2
Then create our server in index.js
.
$ touch index.js
import http from 'http';
http.createServer((req, res) => {
res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
res.end('Hello World\n');
}).listen(1337, '127.0.0.1');
console.log('Server running at http://127.0.0.1:1337/');
Then we'll add our first npm start
script in package.json
.
"scripts": {
+ "start": "babel-node index.js --presets es2015,stage-2"
}
Now let's start our server.
$ npm start
You should now be able to visit http://127.0.0.1:1337
and see Hello World
.
nodemon
Watching file changes with We can improve our npm start
script with nodemon
.
$ npm install --save-dev nodemon
Then we can update our npm start
script.
"scripts": {
- "start": "babel-node index.js"
+ "start": "nodemon index.js --exec babel-node --presets es2015,stage-2"
}
Then we'll restart our server.
$ npm start
You should now be able to make changes to index.js
and our server should be
restarted automatically by nodemon
.
Go ahead and replace Hello World
with Hello {{YOUR_NAME_HERE}}
while our
server is running.
If you visit http://127.0.0.1:1337
you should see our server greeting you.
Getting ready for production use
So we've cheated a little bit by using babel-node
. While this is great for
getting something going, it's not a good idea to use it in production.
We should be precompiling our files, so let's do that now.
First let's move our server index.js
file to lib/index.js
.
$ mv index.js lib/index.js
And update our npm start
script to reflect the location change.
"scripts": {
- "start": "nodemon index.js --exec babel-node --presets es2015,stage-2"
+ "start": "nodemon lib/index.js --exec babel-node --presets es2015,stage-2"
}
Next let's add two new tasks, npm run build
and npm run serve
.
"scripts": {
"start": "nodemon lib/index.js --exec babel-node --presets es2015,stage-2",
+ "build": "babel lib -d dist --presets es2015,stage-2",
+ "serve": "node dist/index.js"
}
Now we can use npm run build
for precompiling our assets, and npm run serve
for starting our server in production.
$ npm run build
$ npm run serve
This means we can quickly restart our server without waiting for babel
to
recompile our files.
Oh, let's not forget to add dist
to our .gitignore
file:
$ touch .gitignore
dist
This will make sure we don't accidentally commit our built files to git.
.babelrc
Saving Babel options to Let's create a .babelrc
file.
$ touch .babelrc
This will host any options we might want to configure babel
with.
{
"presets": ["es2015", "stage-2"],
"plugins": []
}
Now we can remove the duplicated options from our npm scripts
"scripts": {
+ "start": "nodemon lib/index.js --exec babel-node",
+ "build": "babel lib -d dist",
"serve": "node dist/index.js"
}
Testing the server
Finally let's make sure our server is well tested.
Let's install mocha
.
$ npm install --save-dev mocha
And create our test in test/index.js
.
$ mkdir test
$ touch test/index.js
import http from 'http';
import assert from 'assert';
import '../lib/index.js';
describe('Example Node Server', () => {
it('should return 200', done => {
http.get('http://127.0.0.1:1337', res => {
assert.equal(200, res.statusCode);
done();
});
});
});
Next, install babel-register
for the require hook.
$ npm install --save-dev babel-register
Then we can add an npm test
script.
"scripts": {
"start": "nodemon lib/index.js --exec babel-node",
"build": "babel lib -d dist",
"serve": "node dist/index.js",
+ "test": "mocha --compilers js:babel-register"
}
Now let's run our tests.
$ npm test
You should see the following:
Server running at http://127.0.0.1:1337/
Example Node Server
✓ should return 200
1 passing (43ms)
That's it!