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Dev Mode

Starting the dev server​

npx rapidreact dev

This runs two processes in parallel, sharing your terminal's output:

  • Server - restarts on every change under src/ or app/. Uses nodemon if it's installed (as an optional peer dependency), otherwise falls back to plain tsx --watch.
  • Client bundle watcher - vite build --watch, rebuilding hydration bundles on every app/ change. Only relevant if you're using hydrate on a route.

If either process exits with a non-zero code, the other is shut down too.

By default rapidreact dev looks for a server entry file in this order: src/server.ts, src/server.tsx, src/index.ts, src/index.tsx. Pass one explicitly if yours doesn't match:

npx rapidreact dev src/server.ts

Live reload, without a separate dev server​

There's no Vite dev server running here. RapidREST's own server provides live reload directly, over a small Server-Sent-Events endpoint:

  1. The browser opens a persistent connection to <route-prefix>/__rapidrest__/reload (e.g. /app/__rapidrest__/reload for a route mounted at /app/*).
  2. When vite build --watch finishes a rebuild and writes a new manifest, RapidREST notices (via a debounced file watch) and pushes a reload event over that connection.
  3. The browser reloads the page.
  4. If the server restarts instead (a source change under src/), the SSE connection simply drops. The injected client script detects this and polls until the server responds again, then reloads.

This gives full-page-refresh-on-change without the complexity of Vite's own dev-server/HMR pipeline, appropriate for server-rendered pages, where a full reload is usually what you want anyway.

If you'd rather run it by hand​

# Terminal 1: server
npx tsx --watch src/server.ts

# Terminal 2: only needed if any route uses hydrate
npx vite build --watch

Production builds​

npx rapidreact build

rapidreact build compiles your server with tsc and bundles the client with vite build, producing the same two outputs a real deployment needs: the compiled server under dist/ and, if any route uses hydrate, the hashed client bundles plus manifest.json under dist/public/ (or wherever createViteConfig's outDir points). It's a one-shot build — unlike rapidreact dev, it doesn't watch files or start a server; run the compiled output yourself (e.g. node dist/server.js) with NODE_ENV=production afterward.

If you want a fully static, server-less site instead of a running server, see Static Export.