Server#

Rsbuild comes with a built-in dev server designed to improve the development experience. When you run the rsbuild dev or rsbuild preview commands, the server will start, providing features such as page preview, routing, and hot module reloading.

Base path#

By default, the base path of the server is /, and users can access output files such as index.html and public folder assets through http://localhost:3000/.

Rsbuild supports modifying the base path of the server through server.base. If you to access these files through http://localhost:3000/foo/, you can configure the following:

export default {
  server: {
    base: '/foo',
  },
};

View static assets#

After starting the dev server, you can access /rsbuild-dev-server to view all static assets generated during the current build.

For example, open http://localhost:3000/rsbuild-dev-server in the browser, you will see:

Page routing#

Rsbuild server offers a set of default routing convention, and allows users to customize it through configurations.

Default behavior#

Rsbuild server will generate the corresponding page route based on the server.base and source.entry configurations.

When entry is index, the page can be accessed through /; when entry is foo, the page can be accessed through /foo.

When server.base is /base, the index page can be accessed through /base and the foo page can be accessed through /base/foo.

export default {
  source: {
    entry: {
      index: './src/index.ts',
      foo: './src/pages/foo/index.ts',
    },
  },
};

Fallback behavior#

By default, when the request meets the following conditions and the corresponding resource is not found, it will fallback to index.html:

• The request is a GET or HEAD request
• Which accepts text/html (the request header accept type is text/html or */*)

export default {
  server: {
    htmlFallback: 'index',
  },
};

Custom fallback behavior#

When Rsbuild's default server.htmlFallback configuration cannot meet your needs, for example, if you want to be able to access main.html when accessing /, you can set it up using server.historyApiFallback.

export default {
  source: {
    entry: {
      main: './src/index.ts',
    },
  },
  server: {
    htmlFallback: false,
    historyApiFallback: {
      index: '/main.html',
    },
  },
};

HTML output path#

Normally, / points to the dist root directory, and the HTML file is output to the dist root directory. At this time, the corresponding HTML page can be accessed through /some-path.

If you output HTML files to other subdirectories by modifying output.distPath.html, you need to access the corresponding HTML page through /[htmlPath]/some-path.

For example, if you set the HTML file to be output to the HTML directory, index.html will be accessed through /html/, and foo.html will be accessed through /html/foo.

export default {
  source: {
    entry: {
      index: './src/index.ts',
      foo: './src/pages/foo/index.ts',
    },
  },
  output: {
    distPath: {
      html: 'html',
    },
  },
};

Rspack dev server#

Rsbuild has a built-in lightweight dev server, which is different from the dev servers built into Rspack CLI or webpack CLI. There are some differences between them, including different configuration options.

Comparison#

Compared with the dev server built into Rspack CLI, Rsbuild's dev server has the following differences:

• Configuration: Rsbuild provides richer server configuration options.
• Log Format: The log format of Rspack CLI is basically consistent with webpack CLI, while Rsbuild's logs are clearer and more readable.
• Dependencies: Rsbuild is implemented based on lightweight libraries like connect, which has fewer dependencies and faster startup speed compared to express used by @rspack/dev-server.

Configuration#

Rsbuild does not support using Rspack's devServer config. Instead, you can use Rsbuild's dev and server configs.

In Rsbuild, dev contains some configs that are only work in development mode, while the server config works for both dev and preview servers.

Below are the Rsbuild configs that correspond to the Rspack CLI's devServer config:

For more configurations, please refer to Config Overview.

Middlewares#

Rsbuild's middlewares implementation is built on connect, a lightweight HTTP server framework, and uses the standard Node.js request and response objects for handling HTTP interactions.

Register middlewares#

Rsbuild provides three ways to register middlewares:

1. Use the dev.setupMiddlewares configuration.

export default {
  dev: {
    setupMiddlewares: [
      (middlewares, server) => {
        middlewares.push((req, res, next) => {
          next();
        });
      },
    ],
  },
};

2. In the Rsbuild plugin, you can register middlewares through the onBeforeStartDevServer hook.

const myPlugin = () => ({
  setup(api) {
    api.onBeforeStartDevServer(({ server }) => {
      server.middlewares.use((req, res, next) => {
        next();
      });
    });
  },
});

3. When using the Rsbuild JavaScript API, you can create a dev server instance through the rsbuild.createDevServer method and use the use method to register middlewares.

const server = await rsbuild.createDevServer();

server.middlewares.use((req, res, next) => {
  next();
});

Integrate third-party server frameworks#

When migrating from other server frameworks (such as Express), the original middleware may not be used directly in Rsbuild. For example, the req.params, req.path, req.search, req.query and other properties provided by Express cannot be accessed in the Rsbuild middleware.

If you need to reuse existing middleware in Rsbuild, you can use the following method to introduce the server application as a whole as middleware:

import express from 'express';
import expressMiddleware from 'my-express-middleware';

// Initialize Express app
const app = express();

app.use(expressMiddleware);

export default {
  dev: {
    setupMiddlewares: [
      (middleware) => {
        middleware.unshift(app);
      },
    ],
  },
};

Custom server#

If you want to integrate Rsbuild dev server into a custom server, you can get the instance methods of Rsbuild dev server through the createDevServer method of Rsbuild and call them on demand.

For details, please refer to Rsbuild - createDevServer.