Monex

Execute one or multiple scripts, interactively or in daemon mode, individually or in cluster mode, and restart them whenever they crash or a watched file changes.

Features

This is basically a lightweight all-in-one alternative to nodemon, concurrently and to some extent even pm2.

• Much simpler: Compared to those libraries Monex is much much simpler, both in terms of implementation and API surface, while for a lot of use cases being just as powerful as they are.
• Much smaller: Compared to those libraries Monex requires ~38MB fewer code to be installed for it to work (~40MB vs ~2MB, and most of that is just readmes and stuff), which from a security perspective is a nice feature if you need to install this on a sensitive machine, like your personal machine or a server.
• Better watching: This library uses watcher for watching the filesystem instead of chokidar, meaning it handles more filesystem issues that may potentially arise and it can natively watch paths recursively under Windows.

Install

npm install --save-dev monex

Usage

You can use Monex either from the command line or programmatically, in interactive mode or in daemon mode.

Usage - Interactive

Interactive mode means that scripts don't run in the background and won't survive terminating the current process.

Command Line

You would usually run the monex command from a package.json script, but you can also call npx monex manually.

The command has the following interface:

monex --name foo --watch pathToWatch --ignore globToIgnore --exec 'script to execute'

• -c, --cluster
  • It's optional.
  • The number of processes to execute the script in, 1 by default.
  • This option is advanced, and mainly intended for clustering Node servers in daemon mode.
• -d, --delay
  • It's optional.
  • The minimum delay between restarts, 1000ms by default.
• -n, --name:
  • It's optional.
  • It provides a name to use for debugging purposes.
  • You can provide multiple names if you are executing multiple scripts, one for each script, by writing multiple names after --name or by using the option multiple times.
• -r, --restart:
  • It's optional.
  • You pass it the name of the script to restart when restarting manually.
  • By default all scripts are restarted when restarting manually.
• -w, --watch:
  • It's optional.
  • It supports either relative or absolute paths.
  • You can watch multiple paths by writing multiple paths after --watch or by using the option multiple times.
  • Remember to quote paths containing whitespaces or they will be interpreted as multiple paths, e.g. './path/to/my nice script.js'.
• -i, --ignore:
  • It's optional.
  • Globs are matched against absolute paths pointing to watched files and folders.
  • Globs interally are parsed using zeptomatch.
  • You can use multiple ignore globs by writing multiple globs after --ignore or by using the option multiple times.
  • Remember to quote globs otherwise they might get expanded by your shell, e.g. '**/node_modules/**'.
• -x, --exec:
  • It's required.
  • You pass it a full-blown shell script to execute, with no magic behind it, just write the full script you want to execute.
  • You can execute multiple scripts by writing multiple scripts after --exec or by using the option multiple times.
  • When executing multiple scripts names, watch paths, and exec commands are grouped by index and executed in groups.
  • A shorthand notation for running NPM scripts is supported, e.g. npm:foo gets expanded automatically to npm run foo.
  • Remember to write the full script, e.g. node path/to/script.js.
  • Remember to quote the full script if it contains any whitespaces, e.g. --exec 'node path/to/script.js'.

If you want to restart the script(s) manually just send rs in the terminal.

That's it, super simple, there's very little to remember.

Programmatic API

You can also instantiate Monex programmatically, the API is essentially the same as the one exposed by the CLI.

import monex from 'monex';

const controller = monex ({
  name: ['foo'],
  watch: ['dist'],
  ignore: ['**/.git/**'],
  script: ['node path/to/script.js']
});

// Provided APIs for manually controlling the script
controller.start (); // Start the script (started by default)
controller.stop (); // Stop the script
controller.restart (); // Restart the script
controller.stat (); // Retrieve an object containing some useful monitoring stats

Usage - Daemon

Daemon mode means that scripts run in the background and will survive terminating the current process.

Command Line

You would usually run the monex-daemon command, or monexd for short, from a package.json script, but you can also call npx monex-daemon manually.

Configuration

First of all a JSON configuration file containing an array with the following interface is needed:

type Config = [ // Array of script options to execute
  { // Options for a script to execute
    color?: 'red' | 'green' | 'yellow' | 'blue' | 'magenta' | 'cyan',
    name?: string,
    watch?: string[],
    cluster: 0,
    delay?: number,
    ignore?: string[],
    exec: string
  },
  { // Options for another script to execute
    // ...
  }
  // ...
]

• color:
  • It's an optional color assigned to the script, if not provided one will be selected automatically.
• name:
  • It's an optional name assigned to the script, if not provided one will be inferred automatically.
• watch:
  • It works just like the watch option in the interactive API.
• cluster:
  • It works just like the cluster option in the interactive API, 0 for auto, 1 by default.
• delay:
  • It works just like the delay option in the interactive API.
• ignore:
  • It works just like the ignore option in the interactive API.
• exec:
  • It works just like the exec option in the interactive API.

Commands

Various sub-commands are provided by the context-daemon command for managing the daemon.

start

The start command starts a daemon with the provided configuration.

If an existing daemon is found that's terminated automatically before starting the new one.

monex-daemon start --config path/to/config.json
monex-daemon start

• -c, --config:
  • It's optional.
  • It's a path to the JSON file containing the configuration to load.
  • If it's not present Monex will try to find a file named monex.json automatically, walking up the filesystem starting from the current directory.

stop

The stop command terminates the daemon.

monex-daemon stop

ping

The ping command just tells you if the daemon is currently alive or not.

monex-daemon ping

log

The log command outputs the stdout and stderr buffers for each script.

monex-daemon log --lines 50

• -n, --lines:
  • It's optional.
  • It sets the maximum number of lines to output for each buffer, older lines won't be outputted.

stat

The stat command outputs a JSON array containing monitoring stats for all the scripts.

monex-daemon stat --pretty

• -p, --pretty:
  • It's optional.
  • It ouputs stats in a more human-friendly way not meant for post processing.

Programmatic API

You can also control the daemon programmatically, the API is essentially the same as the one exposed by the CLI.

import monex from 'monex/daemon';

// Provided APIs for manually controlling the daemon
monex.start (); // Starts the daemon
monex.stop (); // Stops the daemon
monex.ping (); // Returns either "true" or "false"
monex.log (); // Returns the output of the "log" command as a string
monex.stat (); // Returns the JSON object containing monitoring stats

License

MIT © Fabio Spampinato