🚀 Professional Web Development Server

A lightweight, feature-rich development server designed for modern web applications with automatic live reload, anti-caching headers, and SPA (Single Page Application) routing support.

✨ Features

🔄 Live Reload - Automatic browser refresh when files change
🚫 Anti-Caching - Prevents browser caching during development
🎯 SPA Support - Handles client-side routing for single-page applications
⚡ Fast & Lightweight - Minimal overhead with efficient file watching
🎛️ Configurable - Customizable host, port, and directory settings
📁 Smart Directory Detection - Automatically detects dist and build folders
🔧 Professional Logging - Clean, informative console output

📋 Requirements

Python 3.6+
Required packages (install via pip install -r requirements.txt):
- watchdog - File system monitoring
- websockets - WebSocket support for live reload

🚀 Quick Start

Install dependencies:
```
pip install -r requirements.txt
```
Run the server:
```
python Server.py
```

Or specify a custom directory:

python Server.py /path/to/your/project/dist

🎛️ Usage

Basic Usage

# Serve current directory on default port (3000)
python Server.py

# Serve specific directory
python Server.py ./dist

# Custom port
python Server.py --port 8080

# Custom host
python Server.py --host 0.0.0.0

# Combined options
python Server.py ./build --port 8080 --host 0.0.0.0

Command Line Options

Option	Short	Default	Description
`directory`	-	Current directory	Directory to serve
`--port`	`-p`	`3000`	HTTP server port
`--host`	`-H`	`localhost`	Server host address

🏗️ Project Structure

This server is designed to work with modern web application builds:

your-project/
├── dist/                 # Built application files
│   ├── index.html       # Main HTML file
│   ├── assets/          # Static assets
│   │   ├── main.js      # JavaScript bundles
│   │   ├── style.css    # Stylesheets
│   │   └── ...
│   └── ...
├── Server.py            # This development server
├── requirements.txt     # Python dependencies
└── ...

⚙️ How It Works

🔄 Live Reload System

File Watcher: Monitors your project directory for changes
WebSocket Connection: Establishes real-time communication with the browser
Debounced Updates: Prevents excessive reloads with 300ms delay
Smart Filtering: Ignores Python files and directories

🚫 Anti-Caching Headers

The server automatically adds these headers to prevent browser caching:

Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate
Pragma: no-cache
Expires: 0

🎯 SPA Routing Support

Serves index.html for all non-existent routes
Perfect for React Router, Vue Router, Angular Router, etc.
Maintains clean URLs without hash routing

🔧 Configuration

Default Ports

HTTP Server: 3000
WebSocket Server: 3001

Environment Detection

The server provides helpful warnings if:

index.html is not found in the target directory
You're not running from a dist or build folder

📊 Server Output

When running, you'll see a professional dashboard:

==================================================
  🚀 Professional Development Server is Running 🚀
  - HTTP Server: http://localhost:3000
  - Live Reload:  Enabled
  - Caching:      Disabled

  Watching for file changes...
  Press Ctrl+C to stop.
==================================================

🛠️ Development

Dependencies

Download the requirements.txt file.

Extending the Server

The server is built with modularity in mind:

DebouncedReloadHandler: Custom file system event handler
SPAEnabledHandler: HTTP request handler with SPA support
WebSocket server for live reload communication

🚨 Troubleshooting

Common Issues

Port already in use:

python Server.py --port 8080

Permission denied:

# Use a port > 1024 for non-root users
python Server.py --port 3000

Live reload not working:

Check that WebSocket port (3001) is not blocked
Ensure your browser supports WebSocket connections
Verify that the index.html file contains the </body> tag for script injection
When still having cache issues try browser-Side Manual Fix: Forcing your browser to ignore its cache for a single request.
On Windows/Linux: Ctrl + Shift + R or Ctrl + F5
On Mac: Cmd + Shift + R

Browser Compatibility

The live reload feature requires WebSocket support:

✅ Chrome 16+
✅ Firefox 11+
✅ Safari 7+
✅ Edge 12+

📝 License

This project is open source and available under the MIT License.

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

Made with ❤️ for modern web development

LMLK-seal/Web-Development-Server