Restarting server on changes

Description

Is there anyway to start/ stop/ restart the server during test?

Expected outcome

to start separate server to run jasmine tests then stop the server after test complete

Actual outcome

Not sure how to stop server other than usual CTRL + C command

[franciscop]

So I had big plans for Server.js (large overhauls, big plugin system) but then started working fulltime in a demanding job so now it’s in maintenance[1]. Everything there should work, but I’m not rewriting/making large changes to it for the time being. I still do some experiments from time to time.

One large issue with server.js is that I never thought too well is how devs would test their apps running this library. I’ve since learned and in my recent projects I even include examples for testing.

Another thing is that, when I eventually build server.js 1.1 or 2.0, I want the APIs to be mostly backwards compatible (even if 2.0 implies breaking changes, I’m trying to minimize those). So any API that I’m not completely sure, I think it’s best not to have it officially supported.

So yeah, you can definitely use server().then(ctx => ctx.close()) if you want; I’m using it in fact, but I’m not comfortable making that single function official until there’s a whole story on testing. In fact, there are two large parts that are unfinished, one is testing and another is error handling (or better said, the documentation about error handling):

• Unfinished, outdated docs about testing.
• Unfinished, outdated docs about errors

That said, I just added a small note in Advanced Topics about server().then(app => app.close()) (and named it app to avoid confusing it with the normal middleware context).

[1] The main reason, while I’ve been doing other projects, is scale. Server.js (along with probably Picnic CSS) is probably the largest and most complex project I’ve built. To do small but important new features/changes it takes dozens of hours (I am very strict on not breaking things in this project), which I still do (see the new head() method), and to give the love the project needs to be 1st class it’d require few months of full time work IMHO. I simply don’t have that time/energy right now, I hope to have it in the future but as right now I’m just doing my best to maintain the project.

[mindplay-dk]

To answer your question, yes there is as @SidneyNemzer mentioned. However this is not a production-ready method and might change in the future, so please use with care (note: it will probably not change, but only the documented API should be considered stable).

However please note that close() will return a promise

…

Conclusion

As soon as I figure out how to fix these two issues and test it enough, I will release run for production, with its documentation and tests.

What’s the status on this one?

I just discovered server.js and immediately loved the elegant, minimal API - looks perfect for testing on my project, and frankly I’d prefer not to mess around with express, either by itself, or by breaking into the implementation details of server.js.

I looked everywhere in the manual for some way to stop a server - but context.close() remains undocumented 3 years later?

There is a list of useful issues and caveats in this issue - these would make good work items… and the issue doesn’t appear to have been (officially) resolved, so I would suggest to reopen this, if you wouldn’t mind?