Auto reloading a Sails.js app on code changes?

Question

Currently is seems that for any code change in a sails.js app you have to manually stop the sails server and run sails lift again before you can see the changes

Answer 1

You can use sails-hook-autoreload

Just lift your app as normal, and when you add / change / remove a model or controller file, all controllers and models will be reloaded without having to lower / relift the app.

Answer 2

Better you use

npm install -g nodemon

i am using this, and it will helps to improve my developing speed. no need to edit any files for this one!.

after installation

nodemon app.js

Answer 3

You have to use a watcher like forever, nodemon, or something else...

Example

1. Install forever by running:

   sudo npm install -g forever

2. Run it:

   forever -w start app.js

---

To avoid infinite restart because Sails writes into .tmp folder, you can create a .foreverignore file into your project directory and put this content inside:

**/.tmp/**
**/views/**
**/assets/**

See the issue on GitHub: Forever restarting because of /.tmp.

Answer 4

For example with nodemon to watch api and config directories

.nodemonignore contents

views/*
.tmp/*
.git/*

Run the command after creating .nodemonignore

$> nodemon -w api -w config

Example for supervisor to ignore 3 directories

$> supervisor -i .tmp,.git,views app.js

Answer 5

I had the same problem and I have solved it using grunt-watch and grunt-forever with sails@beta tasks. The result is 4 grunt commands:

UPDATE: tasks are available in the current sails version (it's no longer beta :>)

• start Starts the server
• stop Stops the server
• restart Restarts the server
• startWatch Starts the server and waits for changes to restart it (using grunt-watch). This is probably your solution, but the other commands are also useful.

Here's the code - I'm using sails@beta, which includes a tasks directory, I don't know if this is included in previous versions:

• First of all you have to install forever in your sails directory:

  npm install grunt-forever --save-dev
  

• tasks/config/forever.js Configure forever task.

  module.exports = function(grunt) {
    grunt.config.set('forever', {
      server: {
         options: {
            index: 'app.js',
            logDir: 'logs'
         }
      }
    });
  
    grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-forever');
  };
  

• tasks/config/watch.js (edit) Edit watch task in order to add a new rule

  // api and assets default rules
  ,
  server: {
      // Server files to watch:
      files: [
          'api/**/*',
          'config/**/*'
      ],
  
      // Restart server
      tasks: ['forever:server:restart']
  }
  

• tasks/register/watchForever.js Register your custom tasks (this file can be renamed to whatever you want)

  module.exports = function(grunt) {
  // Starts server
    grunt.registerTask('start', [
      'compileAssets',
      'linkAssetsBuild',
      'clean:build',
      'copy:build',
      'forever:server:start'
    ]);
  
    // Restarts the server (if necessary) and waits for changes
    grunt.registerTask('startWatch', [
      'restart',
      'watch:server'
    ]);
  
    // Restarts server
    grunt.registerTask('restart', [
      'forever:server:restart'
    ]);
  
    // Stops server
    grunt.registerTask('stop', [
      'forever:server:stop'
   ]);
  };
  

With this you should be able to use

    grunt startWatch

and make your server wait for changes to be restarted :>

Hope this helped!

Answer 6

For anyone coming to this question now, it seems that this is no longer necessary - an application launched with sails lift will have a grunt watch task running, and code changes will be visible without a restart.

I didn't realise this was happening at first because there's nothing to indicate what's happening in the console, but it does seem to work without a restart (I'm using Sails 0.11)