nodejs express hot reload

To implement hot reloading in a Node.js Express application, you can follow these steps:

  1. Install the required dependencies: First, you need to install the necessary packages. Open your terminal and navigate to your project directory. Then, run the following command:
npm install nodemon --save-dev

This will install the nodemon package as a development dependency in your project.

  1. Update the start script in package.json: Open the package.json file in your project directory and locate the "scripts" section. Modify the "start" script to use nodemon instead of node, like this:
"scripts": {
  "start": "nodemon app.js"
}

This tells nodemon to watch for changes in your application and automatically restart the server whenever a change is detected.

  1. Configure the hot reload behavior: Create a file named nodemon.json in your project directory. Add the following content to the file:
{
  "ext": "js,json",
  "ignore": ["node_modules/*"],
  "watch": ["./"],
  "exec": "npm start"
}

This configuration specifies the file extensions to watch for changes (js and json), the directories to ignore (node_modules), and the command to execute when a change is detected (npm start).

  1. Start the application: Finally, start your Express application by running the following command in your terminal:
npm start

This will launch your application with hot reloading enabled. Now, any changes you make to your code will be automatically detected and applied without the need to manually restart the server.

That's it! You have successfully implemented hot reloading in your Node.js Express application using nodemon. This will greatly improve your development workflow by saving you time and effort in manually restarting the server after each code change.