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.

• 🔄 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

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

1. Install dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

2. Run the server:

   python Server.py

3. Or specify a custom directory:

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

# 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

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 └── ... 

• 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

The server automatically adds these headers to prevent browser caching:

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

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

• HTTP Server: 3000
• WebSocket Server: 3001

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

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. ================================================== 

Download the requirements.txt file.

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

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

The live reload feature requires WebSocket support:

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

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

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

Made with ❤️ for modern web development