Skip to main content

Servers

Development and runtime servers used by Webstir.

Overview​

  • Dev Web Server: ASP.NET Core app that serves built frontend assets, provides live reload via SSE, and applies clean URLs with dev caching.
  • Node API Server: Runs the compiled backend entry (build/backend/index.js), restarted on changes.
  • Proxy: In dev, the web server proxies /api/* to the Node process.

See also: Engine and Services.

Dev Web Server​

  • Serves build/frontend/** during watch.
  • Clean URLs: /about serves /pages/about/index.html; / serves /pages/home/index.html.
  • Live reload: SSE endpoint notifies connected browsers after frontend rebuilds.
  • Caching: static assets cache with short TTL in dev; HTML not cached.
  • Logs: prints server URL and proxy target on startup.
  • Client Errors: accepts POST /client-errors (JSON, <=32KB). Returns 204 on success, 415 for non-JSON, 413 if too large. Forwards to ErrorTrackingService and includes correlation id.

Prod‑parity Toggles (Kestrel only)​

The following flags affect only the ASP.NET Core dev server. They do nothing for nginx/S3/CloudFront.

  • Engine:AppSettings:EnableSecurityHeaders: adds CSP and standard security headers.
  • Engine:AppSettings:EnablePrecompression: serves precompressed .br files when available.
  • Engine:AppSettings:EnableEarlyHints: attempts HTTP 103 Early Hints and also adds Link headers to final responses.

Defaults are false for fast, simple dev. Turn them on only when you want to simulate production locally.

Node API Server​

  • Entry: build/backend/index.js produced by the backend compile step.
  • Lifecycle: spawned by the watch workflow; restarted on backend file changes.
  • Environment: respects PORT and base URL env variables used by the template.
  • Health: template exposes GET /api/health.

Proxy Rules​

  • Path: /api/*.
  • Method/headers/body are forwarded as-is to the Node server.
  • Errors: if the Node server is down, proxy responses reflect connection failure clearly.

Production (Sandbox)​

  • For production-like testing, use the Docker sandbox: nginx serves dist/frontend/** and forwards to the Node API. See Sandbox.

Errors & Resilience​

  • Dev server survives frontend rebuilds and continues serving.
  • Proxy returns actionable messages if the API is unavailable.
  • Node server restarts are throttled to avoid loops on persistent errors.