SimpleReload

Super simple reloading of multiple browser windows. SimpleReload listens to the window.load event in a browser window, the broadcasts the current url to all other listening browsers via [socket.io][http://socket.io]. Preliminary support has been added for [turbolinks][http://github.com/rails/turbolinks/] and [pjax][http://github.com/defunkt/jquery-pjax].

Requirements

You need to have node with npm installed. Then, run npm install to install socket.io.

Usage

First, start the WebSockets server using:

node server.js

An optional host and port can be specified via RELOAD_HOST, RELOAD_SERVER_PORT, RELOAD_CLIENT_PORT. Variables are optional, 127.0.0.1 will be used as host, 9876 as server port, and 9877 as client port.

Then, assuming defaults, add the following Javascript to your pages:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://127.0.0.1:9877/client.js"></script>

The socket.io server runs on port RELOAD_SERVER_PORT, the client javascript will be served using port RELOAD_CLIENT_PORT.

To use SimpleReload on your mobile devices, connect them to the same WiFi as your web server, figure out your ip address using something like ifconfig and use that as RELOAD_HOST.

Caveats

For now, each url only gets sent once, refreshing a page will not refresh other windows. This is to prevent going into an infinite loop.