NodeJS + CoffeeScript, render coffeescript compiled js on request

Question

What I would like to do is add the following to me already running coffeescript written server

app.get '/test.js', (req, res) ->
    render coffee somecoffeefile.coffee

Is something like this possible with NodeJS, Express, and Coffeescript?

Thanks!

Jose

Answer 1

Good news: This is already comes with Connect (and therefore Express, which extends Connect) as a plugin! It's not well-documented; in fact, I wrote something similar myself (connect-coffee) before I was informed that such a thing already existed.

Here's how you'd go about setting it up with Express:

# Notice the following code is coffescript
# You must add the parens for the app.use method to use in js
coffeeDir = __dirname + '/coffee'
publicDir = __dirname + '/public'
app.use express.compiler(src: coffeeDir, dest: publicDir, enable: ['coffeescript'])
app.use express.static(publicDir)

Now when, say, http://yourapp/foo.js gets requested, if no such file exists in your public directory, foo.coffee will automatically be compiled, and the resulting foo.js will be served. Note that it's important for static to be set up after compiler.

Update: As of Connect 1.7, the compiler middleware has been removed. Partly because of that, and partly to provide a more Rails 3.1-like experience, I've created a new middleware called connect-assets. Install it with npm, then set it up like so:

app.use require('connect-assets')(directory)

where directory is the folder your CoffeeScript files are in (the default is assets). Simple, right? Try it out and let me know what you think.