connect-docco

Bringing the literate programing tool docco as a connect/express middleware.

Nothing fancy, the idea is to generate dynamically upon request a docco generated page from files.

or simply to get immediate results of docco against local files, which happen to be quite handy.

** New Hot Stuff:** A mix of docco, socket.io and watch. Save files, get immediate results and see the docco page updated automatically.

install

npm install connect-docco

or if you intend to use the connect-docco bin, you may want to install globally: npm install connect-docco -g

usage

cli

connect-docco --port 5678 --dirname ../../any/folder/you/want

command line arguments overrides the defaults configuration:

• port: 8082
• dirname: pwd

connect middleware

Here is an example of a basic connect server setup using docco middleware with logger, static and directory.

  connect.createServer()
    .use(connect.logger())
    .use(docco(__dirname))
    .use(connect.directory(__dirname))
    .use(connect.static(__dirname))
    .listen(8080);

The middleware handle any docco-compatible extension and next() to the directory/static connect layers if the file extension is not one of the following:

• .coffee
• .js
• .json
• .rb
• .py

You'll have to append a docco querystring parameter (eg. http://localhost:8082/path/to/js/files.js?docco) to get the output of docco for path/to/js/files.js

socket.io/watch

The docco middleware, if given an app instance (that is the server created by express/connect or http.createServer), will walk the dir and watch for any file changes. It then emits back to clients the new content to display.

var app = connect.createServer();

app
  .use(connect.logger())
  .use(docco(conf.dirname, {
    // provides the app reference, so that we could add some socket.io sugar
    app: app
  }))
  .use(connect.directory(conf.dirname))
  .use(connect.static(conf.dirname))
  .listen(conf.port);

This is basic, but ends up working pretty well.