How to get grunt.js to start an express app for testing

Question

My current situation is that I use grunt to make a production version of my express app (minimize and merge all the js/css, copy all the files in place) and then I have to run a

Answer 1

If you check grunt-express which is a plugin for express web-server tasks via grunt.

express-keepalive

Note that this server only runs as long as grunt is running. Once grunt's tasks have completed, the web server stops. This behavior can be changed by appending a express-keepalive task at the end of your task list like so

grunt.registerTask('myServer', ['express', 'express-keepalive']);
Now when you run grunt myServer, your express server will be kept alive until you manually terminate it.

Such feature can also be enabled ad-hoc by running the task like grunt express express-keepalive.

This design gives you the flexibility to use grunt-express in conjunction with another task that is run immediately afterwards, like the grunt-contrib-qunit plugin qunit task. If we force express task to be always async, such use case can no longer happen.

From the guide grunt-contrib-qunit package is used to run QUnit unit tests in a headless PhantomJS instance. Also mind the last line, if you force express to be always async it would be of no use.

npm link for grunt-express.