About

If you're familiar with node.js then you're familiar with the provided REPL. You can embed a REPL in your programs and make it available via tcp or unix sockets so that you can connect to a long running node.js program and play around with it on a command line. Webrepl takes the same idea but makes the repl available via an interactive web page so that you can have all the fun of using a repl right in your web browser.

• Node.js repl for your process in your browser
• Tab completion is included!
• Command history via up and down arrows
• Webrepl also makes the properties in your context accessible via restful http calls.
• UI inspired by http://search.npmjs.org/
• Optional http authentication

Requires: Node v0.8.0 or higher (for webrepl version 0.4.7+).

Installation

npm install webrepl

Or just dump all the files into your project's directory. Node module http-digest required for auth. This will be fetched by npm, but you will have to fetch it yourself if you're not using npm and want auth.

Usage

var webrepl = require('webrepl');
webrepl.start(8080);

Then point your browser to http://localhost:8080 and have fun!

You can provide context variables just like the regular repl:

var webrepl = require('webrepl');
var foo = { 'bar': 1, 'day': new Date() };
webrepl.start(8080).context.foo = foo;

HTTP Authentication can be set (uses http digest authentication):

var webrepl = require('webrepl');
var options = { 'username': 'user', 'password': 'password' };
webrepl.start(8080, options);

Available options:

var options = {
   'username': 'username for http authentication, password must also be set',
   'password': 'password for http authentication, username must also be set',
   'hostname': 'hostname to listen on. ex: localhost, 192.168.0.1, etc'
}

You can also access context variables via HTTP, for example:

~ mmattozzi$ curl -i "http://localhost:8080/context/foo"
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
Connection: keep-alive
Transfer-Encoding: chunked

{"bar":1,"two":"dos","today":"2011-02-15T05:33:57.672Z"}

~ mmattozzi$ curl -i "http://localhost:8080/context/process.pid"
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
Connection: keep-alive
Transfer-Encoding: chunked

33814

Security Note

Webrepl can be used to do all sorts of harm to the host system using the require keyword. Think twice, then a few more times before exposing webrepl to the world. Optional auth can be used to prevent unwanted access, but the connection is still insecure/unencrypted.