Launching your app

Summary#

Opens your app in a browser, served by the local platform (Running a local platform). It compiles the source on your disk into the app first — so what you see is what you just wrote — and then opens the app's local address. Your app serves its own login and access rules exactly as in production; this only opens the page.

Signature#

osy launch [path] [--page <route>] [--print-url] [--no-compile] [--dev] [--as <login>]

Description#

osy launch finds the local platform for your project, ensures your app exists there, compiles the current source into it, and opens http://<your-app>.localhost:<port>/ in your browser. Edit, osy launch, see the result. If no platform is running for the project, it starts one for you in the background first, so a single command takes you from source to an open page (Running a local platform; Stopping the local platform shuts it down).

• --print-url prints the app's URL and opens nothing — for an editor that wants to open the page its own way. In this mode the URL is the only thing written to standard output.
• --page <route> opens the app at one of its pages instead of its front page: osy launch --page /books. The route is the page's own address and starts with a slash. It is refused together with --dev or --as, which each open an address of their own.
• --no-compile opens the app as it was last compiled, without recompiling first — a quick re-open.
• --dev opens the app's dev page instead of the app (Dev seeds: a fixture you can load into the running app).
• --as <login> opens the app signed in as one of its own accounts, with no password and no login page. See below.

Opening it signed in — --as#

osy launch --as [email protected] opens the app as that account. The address that opens is a link that works once: the tab that opens it is signed in as the account, and the same link opened again — in another tab, from your history, by anyone it was pasted to — opens a page saying the link is spent. It also expires five minutes after it is made.

• It is for the local platform only, and it is yours to make because the platform is running on your computer. A deployed app has no such link.
• The account must exist. Add one with Adding an account, or load a seed that makes some (Dev seeds: a fixture you can load into the running app). A login the app does not hold is refused, and the answer lists the ones it does.
• It skips the login page, never the rules: the tab is that account, so its roles and your security { } blocks decide what it sees.
• The session belongs to the one tab. A second tab on the same address is signed out; run the command again for another.
• With --print-url the one-time address is printed instead of opened.

A brand-new app has no page yet, so its address returns "not found" until you add one — the app is there; it just has nothing to show at /.

If the browser runtime your pages are drawn with is not being served, launch says so before it opens anything, and names the command that builds it. Pages are drawn in the browser, so without it the address answers perfectly well and shows a blank screen — the one failure that looks exactly like a bug in the app you just wrote.

Examples#

osy launch                 # starts the platform if needed, compiles, opens in the browser
osy launch --print-url     # just print http://<app>.localhost:<port>/
osy launch --page /books   # open it at one of its pages
osy launch --as [email protected]   # open it signed in as that account, once, in one tab

See also#

Launching the page you're on — press F5 in your editor and land on the page you are editing, not on /.

Running a local platform — the local platform your app runs on, and how to start it.

Running tests locally — run your app's tests against the same local platform.