When working with many dev servers, you have to increment and remember ports (e.g. http://localhost:3000, http://localhost:4000, ...).

With minihost, you don't have to think about that.

Works on Windows, Linux and OS X.

Install:

npm install -g minihost

Prefix your commands with h:

~/one$ h -- nodemon
~/two$ h -- npm start

You can then view your running servers on http://localhost:2000 and access them locally on http://<name>*:2000 using any host that resolves to 127.0.0.1.

For example:

# Using dnsmasq and a local .dev domain
# Or /etc/hosts
http://one.dev:2000
http://two.dev:2000

Public wildcard domain names that resolves to 127.0.0.1 are also supported and can be used without any system configuration:

# See til.io
http://one.til.io:2000
http://two.til.io:2000

# See xip.io
http://one.127.0.0.1.xip.io:2000
http://two.127.0.0.1.xip.io:2000

To set a custom name, add -n:

~/one$ h -n app -- nodemon

To set a custom port environment variable name (instead of default PORT), add it after colon in custom name:

~/one$ h -n app:APP_PORT -- nodemon

To enable multiple names and ports repeat -n option:

~/one$ h -n app1:APP1_PORT -n app2:APP_PORT1 -- nodemon

If custom env variable names for ports not defined, PORT_0, PORT_1, ... will be used.

To change the port minihost listens to, run:

echo 8000 > ~/.minihost

For minihost to work, your server need to listen on the PORT environment variable.

From your code:

// KO
app.listen(3000);

// OK
app.listen(process.env.PORT || 3000);

Or from the command-line:

h -- 'cmd -p $PORT'  # Linux, OS X
h -- "cmd -p %PORT%" # Windows

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