Grunt livereload with node.js application

Question

I have written an application in Node.js (with Express & socket.io) and I would like to use Grunt to compile my client-side stuff with livereload while developing an

Answer 1

Not sure if you have solved this question yet, but I have done this by adding my express application as a middleware attached to the 'connect.livereload.options.middleware' option.

However, automatic reloading of server side code doesn't work. For that you could implement a reload friendly server using a simple 'node ./server.js', create a connect middleware that acts as a transparent proxy to your development server, and invoke that within your Gruntfile.js before your standard connect/livereload server starts.

connect: {
    options: {
        port: 9000,
        // change this to '0.0.0.0' to access the server from outside
        hostname: 'localhost'
    },
    livereload: {
        options: {
            middleware: function (connect) {
                return [
                    lrSnippet,
                    mountFolder(connect, '.tmp'),
                    mountFolder(connect, 'app'),
                    require('./server') // your server packaged as a nodejs module
                ];
            }
        }
    }
}

server.js:

var app = express();

...
// Export your server object.
module.exports = app;