option : Live reload triggering ?

[0gust1]

Hello,
Thanks a lot for this metalsmith plugin.

I was looking for a livereload functionnality (because it's so useful when writing front-end code), and I have something working now.

I had to tell the livereload server which file have changed, so I added 1line (and one require call for the request lib) in the rebuilder function of the metalsmith-watch plugin (after the rebuilt file has been written on disk).

How do you think this should be implemented ?

• a callback which can be called after each file rebuild ?
• an option flag passed to the watch plugin ?
• ...

var rebuilder = function ( metalsmith ) {
  return function(filepath, name){
    // metalsmith isn't exposing the `read()` function
    // reimplement it on our own.
    fs.readFile(filepath, function(err, buffer){
      var files = {};
      files[name] = { contents : buffer };

      if ( utf8(buffer) ){
        var parsed = front(buffer.toString());
        files[name] = parsed.attributes;
        files[name].contents = new Buffer(parsed.body);
      }

      // Rerun the plugin-chain only for this one file.
      metalsmith.ware.run(files, metalsmith, function(err){
        if ( err ) { throw err; }

        // metalsmith deletes the output directory when writing files, so we
        // need to write the file outselves
        for( var file in files ) {
          var data = files[file];
          var out = path.join(metalsmith.destination(), file);
          return fs.writeFile(out, data.contents, function(err) {
            if ( err ) { throw err; }
            console.log ( chalk.green( '...rebuild' ));
            //tell the livereload server which file have changed  
            request.get("http://localhost:35729/changed?files="+file);
          });
        }
      });
    });
  };
};

[FWeinb]

Great idea. This should be implemented like in grunt-contrib-watch. Will have a look at it.

[FWeinb]

I implemented it in fd2f168. It is in the 0.0.4 release.

[0gust1]

Ahah, I was writing a response, and you've already implemented it :-).

Thinking about it, it's maybe 2 congruent needs :

• Ability to trigger custom code when a metalsmith-watch's rebuild has finished
• Embedding livreload functionnality with metalsmith-watch

Ok, I saw your code, you have taken the 2nd option. Great, it's less bloated than grunt.

[FWeinb]

Yeah, I went with option two. This seamed like the right thing to do. Maybe we can build a metalsmith-connect plugin to create a little web server to serve content from the build folder.

[0gust1]

As you see in https://gist.github.com/0gust1/10752096 , setting up connect or tiny-lr is pretty straightforward.

For livereload, I'm wondering if a connect+tiny-lr based plugin could be a good solution. As metalsmith-connect-lr + metalsmith-watch (which would take a callback as parameter, or a flag and a port to activate). However, I may miss something, as I don't know metalsmith very well.

If you make metalsmith-watch extensible to other needs (sending file over network after build, copying it, commit it, etc.), it will greatly leverage all metalsmith's qualities (simplicity, plugability, extensibility).