Harp

zero-configuration web server with built in pre-processing

What is Harp?

Harp is a static web server that also serves Jade, Markdown, EJS, Less, Stylus, Sass, and CoffeeScript as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript without any configuration. It supports the beloved layout/partial paradigm and it has flexible metadata and global objects for traversing the file system and injecting custom data into templates. Optionally, Harp can also compile your project down to static assets for hosting behind any valid HTTP server.

Why?

Pre-compilers are becoming extremely powerful and shipping front-ends as static assets has many upsides. It's simple, it's easy to maintain, it's low risk, easy to scale, and requires low cognitive overhead. I wanted a lightweight web server that was powerful enough for me to abandon web frameworks for dead simple front-end publishing.

Features

• easy installation, easy to use
• fast and lightweight
• robust (clean urls, intelligent path redirects)
• built in pre-processing
• first-class layout and partial support
• built in LRU caching in production mode
• can export assets to HTML/CSS/JS
• does not require a build steps or grunt task
• fun to use

Supported Pre-Processors

	Language Superset	Whitespace Sensitive
HTML	EJS	Jade, Markdown
CSS	LESS, Sass (SCSS)	Stylus, Sass
JavaScript	(TBD)	CoffeeScript

Resources

• Server Documentation - harpjs.com/docs/
• Platform Documentation - harp.io/docs
• Source Code - github.com/sintaxi/harp

Authored and maintained by @sintaxi. Made for the @HarpPlatform.

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Installation

sudo npm install -g harp

Quick Start

Creating a new harp application is a breeze...

harp init myproj
harp server myproj

Your Harp application is now running at http://localhost:9000

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Documentation

Harp can be used as a library or as a command line utility.

CLI Usage

Usage: harp [command] [options]

Commands:

  init [path]                 initalize new harp application (defaults to current directory)
  server [path] [options]     start harp server
  compile [path] [options]    compile project to static assets
  multihost [path] [options]  start harp server to host directory of harp apps

Options:

  -h, --help     output usage information
  -V, --version  output the version number

Start the server in root of your application by running...

harp server

You may optionally supply a port to listen on...

harp server --port 8002

Compile an application from the root of your application by running...

harp compile

You may optionally pass in a path to where you want the compiled assets to go...

harp compile --output /path/to/cordova/project/www

Lib Usage

You may also use harp as a node library for compiling or running as a server.

Serve up a harp application...

var harp = require("harp")
harp.server(projectPath [,args] [,callback])

Or compile harp application

var harp = require("harp")
harp.compile(projectPath [,outputPath] [, callback])

Or use as Connect/ExpressJS middleware

var express = require("express");
var harp = require("harp");
var app = express();

app.configure(function(){
  app.use(express.static(__dirname + "/public"));
  app.use(harp.mount(__dirname + "/public"));
});