Nodejs Auto reload server restart| live to reload example

There are multiple ways we can refresh changes

• --watchoption
• nodemon
• supervisor
• forever

Nodejs projects run a web server with default node command execution. Every time if any changes to these files in the project, Need to stop/start (restart) the server manually to reload the changes.

Is there any way to reload changes without restarting the Node Server?

Yes, reload changes without restart node web server

#How to Auto reload changes

There are multiple ways to do hot reload nodejs changes

• node command with with --watch

with node 1.19 onwards, the node command has a —watch option to monitor changes in a project.

node --watch index.js

• use the nodemon tool.

nodemon is a tool, that checks the project and monitors changes in source code, automatically restarting the server.

It monitors single or multiple files or directories.

You can install globally(-g) to work in the command line in any path.

npm install -g nodemon

or you can also add as devDependencies using the below command, It limits to a given application only.

npm install --save-dev nodemon

Once installed dependency. You can run either as command line as given below

nodemon index.js

or using npm scripts of the package.json file

{
  "scripts": {
    "run": "nodemon index.js"
  }
}

• use supervisor

Another way to use the supervisor npm module with a hot reload feature

npm install -g supervisor
supervisor index.js

Can also use in npm scripts

{
  "scripts": {
    "run": "supervisor index.js"
  }
}

• use forever

forever is a CLI tool to run node programs continuously forever.

npm install -g forever
forever start index.js
forever -w start index.js

option -w for watching changes files in the Node application directory or folder